You may or may not know that iOS 4.2 lacks the ability to print to a shared printer connected to your Mac. Apple had the original intention to include this ability but decided to strip it from the final release of iOS 4.2. So we can now only print from our iPhone’s, iPod touch’s and iPad’s to selected printers which have wireless (walk up technology) printing onboard.

Luckily Printopia solves this problem. The Application installs itself on your Mac within the System Preference panel and allows you to select which printers connected to your Mac (also lets you use network printers) to be usable from an iOS device. The interface to set all this up is literally just ticking the boxes of the printers you want to be shared, very very easy to use.

Once you’ve ticked a printer you can start printing web pages, emails, notes, iWork documents ect. Information is sent from your iPhone and iPad very quickly through the Mac and to the printer of choice. I have used a huge variety of printers and they all print out what I have told them to identically, so it is consistent one of my original worries. 

Overall Printopia is one of the most useful Applications you can download currently and it works brilliantly well with your iPad and iPhone. The application is hidden away on your Mac due to it being in the System Preference panel which I also really like. This means you don’t need to think about opening an Application on your Mac for it to work, instead you just know you can print if your Mac is turned on. Great stuff! You can download a free demo of the software here.