Print from your iPad, iPod, and iPhone on your Mac - for FREE

Printing from your iOS device can be a little mysterious. If you have a version of iOS that supports 'AirPrint', you've seen the 'Print' button. However, you click it and no printers show up. Well, thanks to a nice little exclusive agreement with HP, only select HP printers get the privilege of being able to be printed on. Apple really blew this one for the consumer.

No worries though.. some third party apps will let you use YOUR printer as long as your Mac is up and running and you have a printer(s) connected to it. .

First up is Printopia, from Ecamm. This is a great app offering more than just printing to all of your printers, it can also print a file to PDF, send it to your Dropbox, Evernote, or your Mac. You simply install the $20 app and it goes into your Mac's control panel and is instantly working. It's a breeze. I wasn't able to fully test it since my 7 day trial expired before I could write the review. Still, a good option, and I've read glowing reviews about it. Sadly, they didn't respond to my NFR request, so I couldn't give it a  good look. Originally version 1 of the App was $10. Version 2 upped the price to $20.

If FREE is more your style, and you only want to print to your printer, then all you need is AirPrint Activator from Netputing.com. This is a cool little app that will enable a Mac with OSX 10.6.5+ and iTunes 10.1+ feature to print to your printers that are connected to your Mac. Install this little app and you can print to any of your available printers.

Works great, and it's FREE. Just be sure to install the proper version for your OS. AirPrint Activator 2 (beta) is for OSX 10.5, 10.6 and 10.7 (Lion).

Apple Sept 1 Event - Live Coverage

Update on Wednesday, September 1, 2010 at 2:49PM by jcost

iPod Shuffles w/ Voice Recognition & Buttons 

iPod Nano - Multi-Touch. Sweet. 

iPod Touch: A4 Processor w/ Retina Display, Game Center, and Cameras for Facetime. 

new $99 AppleTV. Teeny Tiny. All HD Streaming device w/ Netflix, movie rentals, TV Rentals, picture streaming, etc. 

iTunes 10 w/ some social networking features called 'PING'. 

Apple Bingo & Streaming for Sept 1 Event

It's that time again, and you can get your very own Bingo Card (compliments of CarrieActually.com to play along during the keynote.  If you don't like her predictions, print out this Blank Card and fill in your own. 

And even cooler, Apple is STREAMING this event. I think the reason is probably two fold. One to show off that they can stream a huge event and are setup for delivering huge amounts of content, and two, they don't want any MiFis and live bloggers hogging up the bandwidth and spectrum creating problems akin to the last keynote. Apple is using HTTP open standards, but from what I hear, it's not available on Windows. So, you need an iOS device (iPhone or iPod Touch) or a Mac with OS X 10.6; I'm sure TWIT.TV will be simulcasting it. With all of the problems Apple has had this year, I REALLY have my fingers crossed that this goes off well. 

Just for good measure, I'll also be watching the GDGT Liveblog. They always do an excellent job. 

Prediction wise, for me, I'm prepared to be underwhelmed. I think there will be an new Apple TV-ish device, but I don't think it will be everything that people expect. Will it run some apps? Probably, such as Netflix, etc. . However, I don't expect to be gaming on it. Be prepared to be underwhelmed. I promise you will be. 

I do expect to see iOS 4 for the iPad, and I bet it will have some custom features not available on the iPhone. That's been a long time coming, and is sure to make users happy. 

New iPod Touches for sure. Definitely Front and rear cameras, but I'm not sure about the retina display. It would be killer if they added that. 

I REALLY hope for a new iLife suite, but I doubt they would announce it at an event. Well, then again, they may announce it, but not spend any demo time. Hey at least that's ONE affordable Apple product I'm going to buy sight unseen. 

We'll know tomorrow @ 10am PST / 1PM EST

Update on Wednesday, September 1, 2010 at 3:09PM by jcost

My Bingo Card.

Check your iPhone & iPod for Water Damage

It's going to happen. Your iPhone or iPod will like need some warranty repair from Apple. If it's under warranty, you can either send it in or take it to an Apple Store. I have a case open right now for my wife's iPhone 3GS. In her case, the sound of phone calls (when holding it up to your ear) is really low and sounds like the person is inside of a tunnel; the speakerphone and headset work fine.

I called Apple Care and they told me it sounds like it might need replaced if a full restore doesn't fix it. I tried the restore, and sure enough, it's still broken. The Apple Care rep informed me that if there was any water damage, the warranty was void. I pretty much expected this, as it's standard on almost all cell phones. Typically they put a white dot behind the battery, that when touched by water, it turns red. That's an easy way for a store technician to deny you a warranty, and it keeps us honest.

That's fine and dandy, but what if you used it in the rain, and didn't drop it in the toilet? Well, you could be a victim of a voided warranty. Yes, even if you have the extended Apple Care warranty, it will still be voided.

Luckily you can go to Apple's website and they show you exactly what they are looking for. You can check for water damage by looking inside the headphone jack and on the dock connector if you have an iPhone 3G/3Gs. All of the other iPods and iPhones they simply put the white dot inside the headphone jack.

You need to know this before you go into get your iPhone fixed, for any reason. Still, if your dot isn't pristine white, it's always worth a try to get an Apple Genius to help.

Follow this link to check Apple's official Liquid damage guidelines.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3302

iPhone OS 4.0 Live Event Summary

iPhone OS 4 is coming. It's hard to believe it's been almost three years since the iPhone was introduced. In that time we have seen several versions of the iPhone, iPod Touch, and now the iPad. All of them can run the 150,000 + apps in the iTunes App store. Even with that, it's been a bit annoying that we can't do things like run background tasks, like Pandora or Google Latitude.  

iPhone OS 4 is set to be launched this summer, and we can't wait to get our hands on it. You will love it if you have a 3rd Gen iPod Touch or an iPhone 3GS.  Looks like that's the demarcation point of multitasking compatibility.  iPad users will get the new OS in the Fall.

 

Here are the 7 key updates:

 

Update #1

Multi-Tasking. Steve said it's easy to implement a version that drains your battery and makes your phone sluggish.  Apple's version implements 'services' that apps can access to run in the background. For example, if you want to run Pandora and listen to the music in the background, there is a service Pandora can access to continue to provide that streaming audio. 

Apple is providing developers 7 different APIs to enable multi-tasking.  

• Background Audo - audio can continue to play in the background. 
• VOIP (yes, Skype!) 
• Background location (like GPS & social networking apps such as Google Latitude) 

Click to read more ...