It’s not very often that I come across an iPhone app that I think is worth blogging about. It’s even less often that I’m impressed by what is basically a printer driver but, a few days back, my manager told me about HP iPrint Photo for the iPhone and iPod Touch.
This application locates HP printers (like the OfficeJet 6310 that the company supplied me with) on a WiFi network (using Apple’s Bonjour technology) and allows me to print images directly from my iPhone. Unfortunately, when iTunes copies images from my computer to the iPhone it “optimises” them to such a low quality that they are pretty poor when printed (even at 10cm x 15cm); however the prints from the iPhone’s camera (from my 3G model – I haven’t tried the new camera in the 3G S) are perfectly acceptable. A demonstration video and screenshots are available on the HP website.
It’s a pity that HP can’t provide a driver to give my 64-bit copy of Windows 7 more than just basic printing features on the same device…
Other people who have problems with HP have found them very helpful :
I’m sure that if I was @stephenfry and I had half a gazillion followers on Twitter then I could get HP to fix my printer too ;-)