Apple has made a number of changes in Leopard when it comes to printing. Some of these changes are nice, but others make me wonder if Apple has completely broken things.

One of the nice changes concerns a complete redesign of the print panel. The original print panel included a pop-up menu where you could choose between the default copies & pages view, and a number of other printer-specific and application-specific settings. However, the Copies & Pages section is now permanently displayed in the print panel, and in addition, the Page Setup options are now built in as well. No longer do you have to go into Page Setup to tell the printer what page orientation, size, or scale you want–you can do it right in the print panel. Then, below all of that is the pop-up menu–this time defaulting to showing any application specific print options if there are any, and from there you can show any of the printer-specific options panels. In addition, on the left size of the print panel is a new print preview that lets you get a glance of what your print will look like, and you can cycle through the pages. This replaces the old Preview button that loaded up a preview of your print in the Preview application. The benefits of this is that as you change your print settings, you can instantly see how it affects your document, and you don’t have to have another application open or go back to the print panel again if you want to change something. The downside is that you don’t get to see your document in a very big size, but the new print preview is still pretty nice.

Leopard of course comes with all the latest drivers, so our newer printer, which Tiger wasn’t fully aware of (although Tiger packed a slightly different print driver that still worked fine), now can be used by a fully native print driver in Leopard. Apple claims that Software Update now also checks for updated versions of your print drivers, but considering that Leopard’s only been out for a few weeks (meaning that most if not all of the print drivers are already up-to-date), I haven’t seen this in action yet. The ability of Leopard to sport true plug-n-play with printers and other third-party accessories is really nice and is one of my biggest Mac, um, “selling points”.

Some people have said that in Leopard, the Printer Setup Utility has vanished from the earth. This actually isn’t exactly true, however printer setup has become one of those “floating” applications. Similar to Help Viewer, it’s an application that you can call open from within any other “real” application, and its window will pop-up above the app’s own windows. In most cases, you would call up the printer setup to add a new printer from within the Print & Fax panel of System Preferences, although you can also add a new printer from within the print panel.

However, one thing that I’ve noticed is that printer sharing has become much more, shall I say, clunkier, in Leopard. We have two printers. One of them is the new one which is hooked up to our AirPort Express and is therefore available to all computers within our network. The other is an older (but still fairly recent) printer that’s hooked up directly to my parents’ computer, but is utilizing printer sharing, which means that any other computer should be able to print to it so long as that printer and its host computer is turned on. In Tiger, this has worked great–if my parent’s computer and printer are on, then any other computer on our network could print right to that printer too. This has been useful for whenever the newer printer has run out of ink, per say.

Right around the time that I got Leopard, the newer printer DID run out of ink (and I’m still waiting for my father to find time to refill it), and so I have been using my parents’ shared printer via the network but I have had so much more trouble trying to use it. Tiger instantly recognized any shared printers on the network that were available; Leopard requires you to add the printer yourself (via the Add Printer window, which takes about two minutes to find the printer on the network and get the printer’s settings). If you disconnect from the network and come back later, you have to add the printer again–I must have added my parents’ printer 25 times in the last less than 3 weeks! Then once the printer’s added, you can go ahead and print your document, but you have to wait like three or four more minutes for Leopard to “connect” to the printer before it will start printing, and it has to restart this “connection” for every individual document in your print queue! Tiger was able to start the printing right away, just as if the printer had been directly connected! Why is it that Tiger works great here, but Leopard doesn’t? Has Apple broken something?

TUAW also recently noticed a new quirk: when you print something, the print queue doesn’t automatically quit as it did before until you right-click on the Dock icon and select the Auto Quit menu item. Call me crazy, but shouldn’t something like this be able to take care of itself?

The new organization of the print panel is nice and is more intuitive, but the reliability of Leopard’s printer management has really gone down the ink cartridge, and I can only hope that a future OS X Update will relieve me of my printing woes.

Feature Satisfaction Rating:

Be sure to check out the other articles in the Leopard Feature Presentation, occurring throughout the month of November here on Webmacster87.info.

Tags: connecting, Leopard Feature Presentation, Mac OS X Leopard, network, organization, panel, printing, problems, review, sharing