New York, NY –- Drivers are sometimes among the most aggravating things about printers, however, they are the means by which the device communicates to your computer about status, its capabilities and so forth.
A few recent developments in regards to patents have caught the attention of Conceivably Tech, a technology website, as was reported by PC Magazine. Apple has just filed two patents with the US Patent and Trademark Office (US PTO), one of which is called “Walk-Up Printing Without Drivers” and the other one is called “Data Formats to Support Driverless Printing”.
With regards to the first patent, information about the printer’s capabilities would be generated on an ad hoc basis when it is needed. Currently, when one buys and sets up a printer, the drivers come either pre-packaged with the operating system, can be downloaded from the manufacturer website, or must be run from a CD. None of these options necessarily offer the same convenience as what Apple is outlining. Additionally, having to install drivers for multiple printers on a device makes mobile/cloud computing more difficult than it needs to be.
The second patent application is calling for a “computer-readable storage medium which stores a data structure that facilitates driverless printing, wherein the data structure specifies the following capabilities which are supported by a printer: resolutions; color spaces; bit depths; input slots; face-up/face-down input orientation; output bins; face-up/face-down output orientation; duplex printing support; media types; copy support; supported finishings; and print quality.” These are all things commonly found in a driver, but do they have to be is the question Apple seems to be asking. In this case, then, there would be no onus on the user/client to store this information about the printer beyond when they need to use it.
Many printer manufacturers, recognizing the jumble of printer brands and types across office environments have created universal print drivers (UPDs) to eliminate some of the hassle, especially in MPS environments. That system though requires users to either host the UPD on their device or for it to be stored on a print server. Not having to worry about such things, despite their universality, is certainly not a bad thing. As the cloud printing movement moves forward, we will be watching to see how these two patents fit into the puzzle.
