Hacking: How not to print from an iPad | The Economist

A timely snapshot

So what can iPad owners do? There are a few apps that support printing, though none seems to be ideal. You can e-mail stuff (including a screen-grab) to a PC or Mac and print from that. Or you can simply try to do without printing.

This is all very silly, but it does raise a wider point. The iPad can't print directly (yet) and it doesn't work out of the box until it's been docked with a PC or Mac running iTunes. It is, despite all its cleverness, still a companion device for a "proper" computer. If Apple wants the iPad and its successors to be taken seriously as alternatives to existing desktops and laptops, rather than occasional adjuncts, then those things will have to change.

Hacking: How not to print from an iPad | The Economist