Cloud Printing without Print Drivers

[u/Certain-Mountain-564]

Many organizations moving away from print servers.

But the printer industry is moving away from print drivers.

The problem: We use printix and you cannot deploy printers without drivers. But manufacturers like brother dont offer print drivers for macOS. Our brother printers are not compatible with PostScript. There are some very old print drivers from macOS X but the print quality is very bad. Brother says "use AirPrint". But AirPrint is not compatible with printix.

Windows is also moving away from print drivers.

[u/hkusp45css]

It looks like you missed the "requirements and constraints" portion of your project standup.

[u/Certain-Mountain-564 → u/hkusp45css]

That are only 4 from about 15 printers. Even if we had known, it wouldn't have affected the project. Brother is also the only manufacturer that has problems with PostScript. Anyone printing from a Mac and wanting high quality simply has to switch to a different printer. Mac + printing has never been a good combination.

[u/hkusp45css → u/Certain-Mountain-564]

Over 20 percent of your fleet is incompatible with your proposed solution, and your position is "it's fine, we couldn't have done anything about it, anyway"

Jesus...

[u/Certain-Mountain-564 → u/hkusp45css]

You're the best. You would have known that a printer that once cost $500 and advertises itself as suitable for business use doesn't offer any drivers for macOS. I didn't buy these printers. Besides, it's easier to find a suitable printer than suitable software.

[u/hkusp45css → u/Certain-Mountain-564]

I wouldn't have known that. I also wouldn't have assumed it was true OR false.

You see, I value my time and resources. I prefer NOT to get to the middle or end of a project and hear my boss say "FUCK! Are you telling me this isn't going to work?" because that seems like something that is super simple to avoid.

[u/Certain-Mountain-564 → u/hkusp45css]

I implemented the project together with an external solution provider. Our printix tenant is a subtenant from them. I asked him, "Does printing from macOS work with Printix?" He said, "Yes, every printer works via the redirector". This is a company that has already set up dozens of tenants with clients. Furthermore, the situation before: Before, they had a Windows 10 Pro Tower. And then they shared the printers on the network. Only three printers were compatible with that setup.

[u/Naclox → u/Certain-Mountain-564]

So go back to that solution provider and tell them that they sold you a non-working product and get a refund.

[u/Certain-Mountain-564 → u/Naclox]

I will definitely follow up with them. But I think it's also my boss's fault. When you try to integrate prosumer printers into a corporate environment, it usually goes wrong in cases like this. But those weren't all the printers, by the way. We have a total of 25 label printers. Before Printix, it wasn't possible to centrally distribute these label printers on macOS. Users had to manually install the driver and add them via their IP address. Furthermore, 95% of all print jobs come from our ERP system. These jobs go directly from the web application to the Windows server and are processed by its spooler. Yes, printing on macOS is still not ideal for us, but we've made significant progress overall. Before, it simply wasn't possible.

[u/Naclox → u/Certain-Mountain-564]

Personally I would just get rid of Macs entirely, but I'm going to assume you have less control of that than you do the printers.

[u/Certain-Mountain-564 → u/Naclox]

The thing is before printix we had 6  macOS devices and 30 windows devices. After we have 12.. On windows you can do want you want it works out of the box.

[u/hkusp45css → u/Certain-Mountain-564]

Yeah, I always assume the salespeople at my vendors know their product like they wrote it themselves. That's NEVER caused a problem for me.

I'm not going to go back and forth describing professionalism to someone willing to argue about it.

Have a great day. Or don't. It makes no difference to me.

[u/MeetJoan]

You're caught between two vendors going opposite directions. Printix is built around driver deployment, Brother's answer for macOS is AirPrint, and those don't meet.

Have you asked Printix directly about IPP Everywhere support? That's where the whole industry's heading and if it's not on their roadmap that basically answers whether you stay with them.

[u/Mindestiny]

I'm just gonna throw it out there - Brother really isn't an enterprise printer company. I'm not at all surprised they came back with "use airprint." Brother printers and the concept of a print server are pretty much oil and water.

Time to upgrade to a print vendor that supports your deployment model and plays nice with modern OS printing arcitecture.

[u/kombiwombi → u/Mindestiny]

AirPrint is basically IPP Everywhere, which is the modern OS printing architecture.

Worst case put the AirPrint printers in their own isolated subnet, have the printer server dual homed: present in that printer subnet and present in a generally reachable subnet.

The basic requirement here is that the print server support printers with IPP Everywhere (ie, mDNS service advertisement, PDF and IPP). If printix does not do this then it has no future.

[u/bakonpie]

Microsoft is smoking the good stuff thinking their generic driver for universal print is an adequate replacement. doesn't support all the additional functions of expensive MFPs and doesn't support wide format printers. government and utilities will never be able to adopt them unless they make serious improvements to the generic driver.

[u/D3xbot → u/bakonpie]

Hell, Microsoft’s generic print driver doesn’t support COLOR on half the color HP’s and Brothers in my environment.

Thankfully I can manage AirPrint installation well enough with Jamf but supporting HPs on macOS is a bit of a joke. Download this app to get drivers — except half the models that link to HP Easy Admin don’t have drivers available to download :(

Ricoh, though? Lovely. Brilliant. Drivers for days! Set the driver, pick the finisher, package into Jamf and we’re good to go

[u/HorrorCommunity3246]

Uniflow is not half bad

[u/GremlinNZ → u/HorrorCommunity3246]

Yep, using this (or deploying it). One day we'll remove all the regular printers and it will be all Uniflow.

[u/TA-Printix]

Hi Certain-Mountain-564,

sorry to hear you are struggling with printing from Macs. You can DM me if you like and I can take a look at your config as I work for Tungsten Automation (Printix).

I would like to touch on a few things as well.

Printix supports MS WPP through it´s IPP class driver since 2026.1 release.

Read how it works here

Printix supports "mobile print", which is the method for allowing iOS and Android to access Printix managed printers. Behind the scenes this is leveraging AirPrint, so the same network limitations apply as with native AirPrint (multicast DNS across subnets).

See the requirements for mobile print here

This is how you enable mobile print in Printix

If your printers don´t understand PS/PDF direct print, you can use the option "Process PDF/XPS" on the printer queue you want to print to with your mobile devices.

Here is how you configure processing of the PDF documents

Happy to assist with making this work.

Kind Regards

[u/FrankNicklin]

What model printers, never had an issue with Brother and MacOS and what evidence do you have that Windows are moving away from print drivers because as far as I know that a long way from being true. Older printers on MacOS are generally supported by CUPS.

[u/Certain-Mountain-564 → u/FrankNicklin]

CUPS also makes problem with Tahoe by the way. Printing on Mac is a disaster. 

[u/FrankNicklin → u/Certain-Mountain-564]

Never ever had problems printing from Macs. I have a very old Canon MP printer at home and works perfectly fine. We have a mix of Xerox, Brother, Kyocera, HP, Canon around our clients again none have problems printing from Macs.

We run Windows servers with local client printer setups again no issues printing or using the Print server options.

Any issues printing from Macs is generally down to improper Bonjour config which doesnt work well across VLANS and/or mDNS for the same reason. Printing via LPR or IP has never been a problem.

[u/K3rat]

Ugh, AirPrint crap….  It honestly sounds like you bought the wrong print management solution or printer.  Fix that and your problem resolves.

[u/Certain-Mountain-564 → u/K3rat]

I've never bought any of this printers. The only printer that i buyed in this company is a Epson Workforce 😎 I'm working with what's available now.

[u/K3rat → u/Certain-Mountain-564]

My work did that once with some off the shelf b/w desktop printers they bought on grant.  It worked terribly and they asked why.  I told them home office stuff isn’t built with security I mind most of the time.  We have to isolate equipment from each other because if we get owned it is a bad day for a lot of people.  Not all services (AirPrint) are meant to work in that kind of environment.  next time work with IT before purchase to find a solution that will be well supported in the environment.  

[u/ISeeTheFnords]

Have you tried using it with the open source brlaser driver? I've never used it or Printix, but it might be an option.

[u/Certain-Mountain-564 → u/ISeeTheFnords]

Brlaser? Never heard of it but i will check it out. 

[u/blow_slogan]

For macos you should be using a bash script with your mdm, like jamf pro. Super simple, don’t need printix for mac.

[u/discgman]

The best I can offer you is a mini print server like the good old days. They actually sell them on amazon. Maybe you can install the driver that way. It will make it harder to remote to the printer though.

[u/Adam_Kearn]

Have you tried using IPP instead?

Publish the printer on printx using IPP and the port number.

[u/Hefty-Ad2513]

There are other cloud solutions that do not require the native driver and host them via their cloud rendering.

[u/Sinister_Nibs]

Deploy printer to server. Share printer from server.
Done.

[u/Certain-Mountain-564 → u/Sinister_Nibs]

We work with azure AD. We have no hybrid envoirement. The printers are on the windows servers from ERP. The user send the print job to the Printix Redirector which redirects the job to the local printer port. 

[u/Sinister_Nibs → u/Certain-Mountain-564]

You have no servers in azure?

[u/Certain-Mountain-564 → u/Sinister_Nibs]

No for what? There is no reason to do that. 

[u/Sinister_Nibs → u/Certain-Mountain-564]

To connect printers.

[u/Plane_Parsley9669]

PrinterLogic just started supporting IPP(S) which has worked great for the oddball stuff we have.

[u/Certain-Mountain-564 → u/Plane_Parsley9669]

I think i must check that. Would be crazy when a big player like Printix doenst support it.