Alas, that's where my problems started. When I changed jobs last fall I chose - no doubt in a fit of curiosity or whimsey - a Mac instead of a Windows laptop. And while the Mac sees the printer over the WiFi, and while the print queue says that everything is happy happy, it won't actually print.
It appears that the print jobs are being sent to the queue as PDF, and from there are going to /dev/null (they sure as heck aren't going to the printer). The little pull down that says "PDF" below has all sorts of PDF options, but nothing else - and there doesn't seem to be any option along the lines of "Screw PDF, just print the dang thing".
Any thoughts, Oh Mac gurus? I did have to pull down the newest driver from support.brother.com, but the laptop found the printer just fine via bonjour.
Of course, the Queen Of The World is printing up a storm from her Windows laptop. And reminding me that technology choices maybe shouldn't be made from whimsey. Oh bother.
UPDATE 10 June 2016 15:15: Success! It turns out that configuring the WiFi from the printer's front panel doesn't enable AirPrint, which is what the Mac was looking for. When I downloaded Brother's WiFi setup utility and ran it to set up the WiFi on the printer, it suddenly showed up in the Add Printer selections. It supposedly will let me print from the phones, too.
So the lesson is that Apple has "Insanely great" but pretty obscure ways of doing basic stuff (like wireless printing).
I think it is making it a PDF and not printing.
ReplyDeleteMaybe just print?
Not an expert, hence this dumb question:
ReplyDeleteWhat do you see when you click on "Show Details" on the example print job your pic shows? You should see more info about the printer you're trying to use, and its settings -- may be something to adjust there.
GD, it has number of copies, a view of the document to be printed, that sort of thing. Nothing obviously wrong, but nothing prints.
ReplyDeleteDon't click on the PDF dialog, that does simply make a pdf and does not send it to the printer.
ReplyDeleteHow is it connected to the Mac? Wireless or USB? For giggles try a direct cable connection and see if it prints, you may have inadvertently configured the printer driver for a cable connection rather than wireless. If so do the add printer again and add it from the list of wireless printers shown. Brother wireless printers are often kvetchy with Mac stuff.
Weird. If I hook the printer to the Mac via a USB cable, everything works great.
ReplyDeleteYep -- Aaron made some good points. My other quick thought is, while your printer is connected, go into "System Preferences" and then look at Printers and Scanners... might be a 'sharing' or network issue.
ReplyDeleteI used to be an aast (apple authorized service tech), when I get out of physics if you don't have a solution I will take a look see to troubleshoot. Obvious things to check are subnetting, what kind of sharing is it, etc. it is often better to hang the printer off the mac and share it via cups than it is to hang it off a windows machine and share via smb. It could be an authentication or driver mismatch, dunno I just skimmed and then replied, more in 3 hours when physics is done and before I start getting ready for the appleseed shoot this weekend.
ReplyDeleteEchoing Aaron's thought, spend some time looking through the config pages on the printer (especially if they're AirPrint related). I don't think Windows will be speaking AirPrint, but the Mac probably does.
ReplyDeleteDon't blame Apple, blame Brother for not enabling AirPrint out of the box...
ReplyDelete