Warehouse Team Member: "Could you log into the App Store and download an app for the printer to work?"
Me: "That doesn't sound right." I remotely accessed the warehouse computer, opened a random PDF document, and hit 'Print'. The printer queue looked normal to me.
Me: "It seems to be printing just fine."
Warehouse Team Member: "No, it actually prints a message that says you need to install the app."
Me: "What really? Can you send me a photo of it?"
Warehouse Team Member: Sends the photo in Slack.
Me: "This is something I have to Tweet..."
---
Edit: Imagine being the product manager who made this decision...
My guess is that once the app is installed it's easier to convince the user to sign up for an ink subscription. And then once that's done it's easy for the user to forget they've done that. They won't even see the charge, it'll just be lost among the tons of other "Apple.com" charges that come across each month.
At this point Brother seems to be one of the few printer manufacturers who still produce printers that just work out of the box with a cable or WiFi connection using an OS-supplied driver (at least that's my experience on macOS)
I haven't confirmed myself, but apparently there are costco specific models of these kinds of printers which don't demand apps, internet connections, or a linked credit card. Presumedly demanded by costco to reduce the returns that would result.
I have a Brother laser printer that is now almost 20 years old. I had to buy a dozen toners and the only fault was due to the rubber pads deteriorating (20y near a window in an office).
Even now, I connect it to the wired network and it's automatically recognised by all the devices without any configuration.
They bought Samsung's printer business and Samsung made wonderful laser printers that worked flawlessly, without any printer industry shenanigans. Maybe you bought one of their printers right after the acquisition, when HP had only enough time to change the branding.
Unfortunately they do not market to the US anymore.
"OKI Data Americas has discontinued the sales of all OKI-branded printer hardware in the United States, Canada, and Latin America." (https://www.oki.com/us/printing/index.html)
from osmosifying printer recommendations on HN the last few years, aren't brother printers becoming enshittened too? Nowadays they might try to lock out third party ink and toner cartridges, for example? See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131
I recently picked up an old dot matrix printer for $1 at the Electronics Flea Market, and the manual for it has fucking control flowcharts and timing diagrams for the signalling. It's so fucking depressing to read it in comparison to anything modern. It's so nice and it feels like it was made for me by people who actually cared about me as a human experiencing their product. It's like a warm fucking hug.
I've written a driver for it and have it hooked up to my router with a little web interface and my partner and I have been using it to print out todo lists and cute little notes. I even wrote some dithering tools to get it printing images, gameboy printer style.
>the manual for it has fucking control flowcharts and timing diagrams for the signalling. It's so fucking depressing to read it in comparison to anything modern. It's so nice and it feels like it was made for me by people who actually cared about me as a human experiencing their product.
I don't know about you but the typical user just wants their printer to work, not spend hours figuring out "control flowcharts and timing diagrams". Even for a technical users I doubt you'll find many that want to geek out on how their printers and writing their own drivers. Also, despite how shitty it is to have to install an app and connect to the internet for a printer to work, if I have a report due tomorrow or a government form that needs to be filled in ASAP, I'd rather contend with the app than "control flowcharts and timing diagrams".
Except in reality the alternative to the app isn't timing diagrams, but a printer working as is without any apps
The fact that you ignored - having such info means it's more likely you'll be able to get help cheaper and faster (helpful in ASAP situations) - doesn't even need to be considered for the first point to work
Sure I get that, but like, I didn't need to write a driver for it to print text, that worked out of the box on windows, and this printer is 30 years old. Having the one thing doesn't preclude the other. There's a zero percent chance that modern printers aren't going to be e-waste in a couple years. That's the problem, we could make good printers that can render postscript in 2024 and 2054 too, but greed prevents that.
There are good products and bad products in every era. Sure, there are trends as well, which change over the years, but the matrix printer times also had a lot of shitty matrix printers, as well as other products that had things we have outright banned since then.
Is this not literally a federal crime? It sounds like HP installed a backdoor on its printers to download malware that disables the printer.
If it's not a crime, I think it should become one, and I don't think a terms & conditions document should be able to protect against it (in the same way you can't, e.g., enforce a contract with illegal clauses).
>visit hp.com/plus-support for additional setup help
My guess is that the person in question bought a model/sku that operates not as a typical printer (ie. you pay for the machine and its consumables), but as a printer as a service model[1] (ie. you pay per pages printed). In that case it does make sense that you need to install the app (presumably to connect the printer to the internet and to connect to your account) for the service model to work. I don't see the issue with this as long as this was clearly disclosed on the box when the printer was purchased.
> This printer is intended to work only with cartridges that have a new or reused HP chip, and it uses dynamic security measures to block cartridges using a non-HP chip. Periodic firmware updates will maintain the effectiveness of these measures and block cartridges that previously worked. A reused HP chip enables the use of reused, remanufactured, and refilled cartridges.
I've recently successfully talked someone out of buying a HP printer precisely because of shady practices like this. I believe more people should do the same
The picture shows model number M110w, which has an optional "instant ink" (toner) add-on service. According to HP, only model numbers ending in "e" are Printing As A Service and have ink/toner subscriptions required.
How has this company managed to survived wall gardening their printers?
Apple got away with it because they started from that position creating a niche for themselves and a "reality distortion field' that sets their products apart (for some people) based on perceived quality.
HP has no such brand recognition, if anything it's products' quality is worse than its competitors' products.
I suspect it's trying to do a Samsung who did the same, but without any advertising or headlining products (which started with Samsung's S3/S4 phones years ago), so their marketing is completely balls-ing up the company's position.
"HP TouchPoint Assistant" and the printer-stories around is totally enough for me to never ever buy any HP product. At work, I accidentally got a laptop with bloat-ware, last time. Practices like these have eroded (default) trust I had in them.
I have an Epson ink tank printer which keeps telling me that new firmware is available. I won't let it download, though. It would probably make the device worse.
I never had a problem with updates on my Epson, but having bad experinces with other products, I can understand your concern. I don't remember now if there was an option to disable updates or not, but when I last reorganized my home network, I put all untrusted devices including this printer in a no-gateway subnet. It can't call home, check or download anything. The only problem is that scanning to computer from the printer panel is based on multicast, and I couldn't figure out how to route that yet.
This is why I buy old enterprise LaserJet printers. Also, the toner cartridges are more generous and recycled* ones are relatively cheap. I currently have 4 spares which is probably enough for its entire lifecycle of me printing a return to page to flEaBay or as required by some antique government bureaucratic bullshit that demands the killing of trees.
LJ4 (the plain base model) (2005-2012) -> 4000 (2012-2020) -> M402dw (2020-present).
* Modern HP LJ printer cartridges include goddamn DRM hostile to repeated refilling, but thankfully it's not a show-stopper as overseas hackers found low-cost workarounds with (fake?) chips. Fuck the DMCA and goddamn corporate lobbyists.
I worked with an old LJ 5siMX. It was a pain to set the static IP configuration but other than that, amazing. Printed a buttload of insurance policies for years, plus simple text reports improved with a few PCL commands. And a proper PS renderer, not a Win driver in sight. Bliss.
So I think a lot of people say that they’d rather print photos at a drugstore (or some other online service), which totally makes sense. But if you completely ditch printers at home, which kind of makes sense; where do you feel safe printing contracts & medical docs? Kinkos & the library don’t feel like good alternatives … Is there some place that is good / safe to do this??
Also, what if HP is actually intentionally getting all of use to hate printing on paper altogether? Maybe this is the biggest corporate tree-hugger event in the history of mankind. Nah, no way … it’s definitely money grab.
I got an HP printer a few years ago. I tried setting it up using my laptop, even installing their app. I spent an hour or two and made 0 progress.
I was about ready to give up and return it when I begrudgingly installed their iOS app… the thing was setup in 2 minutes and once on the network my laptop could see and print to it.
This mobile-first nonsense has really gone too far. There is no reason a printer needs an app like that, and I have to believe a majority of printing is still done from desktops and laptops. Either way, a printer should not require a cell phone to set up.
"There's an app for that!" has become "there's an app for that??"
It's the same thing with things like thermometers, scales, and other bluetooth accessories that really absolutely deserve no app. Similarly, the requirement to sign into cloud services to use 'smart' devices, as is the case with Philips Hue bulbs. Wish the EU would focus their efforts on this kind of nonsense.
I run a Pi that runs CUPS under Raspbian and exposes the wireless Samsung printer on the same network as a network shared printer. This works from my Android phone, my wife's Windows PC, my wife's iPad, my work MacBook and my Linux laptop. The Samsung printer itself is a dumb ML-2160 series that doesn't support AirPrint.
No need for these idiotic printers.
I think it was as simple as installing CUPS, going to http://localhost:631/admin and enabling "Share printers connected to this system".
Why would anyone want to buy from such a disgusting business? I thought there antics were well known enough by now that their brand was completely tarnished.
Does HP do anything that could be considered quality? I'd be ashamed to work for them.
Here's how the conversation unfolded at work:
Warehouse Team Member: "Could you log into the App Store and download an app for the printer to work?"
Me: "That doesn't sound right." I remotely accessed the warehouse computer, opened a random PDF document, and hit 'Print'. The printer queue looked normal to me.
Me: "It seems to be printing just fine."
Warehouse Team Member: "No, it actually prints a message that says you need to install the app."
Me: "What really? Can you send me a photo of it?"
Warehouse Team Member: Sends the photo in Slack.
Me: "This is something I have to Tweet..."
---
Edit: Imagine being the product manager who made this decision...