Apple has been gradually extending its AirPrint technology to a number of Canon, Brother, Epson, HP, and Lexmark printers, but it's still not available on every printer out there. Netgear aims to change that this week with the release of an updated Genie application. Netgear Genie lets users manage their home network and access the media on it from mobile devices, but an update for the PC and Mac versions introduces a new AirPrint option.
Providing that Netgear Genie is running on your home PC or Mac, the application will create a virtual bridge to your printer that allows iOS to print directly as if it was a fully supported AirPrint-enabled printer. We tested the app ourselves and can confirm it works on one of our own printers, but the application must be running at all times on a Mac or PC to let an iOS device print. It's not the perfect solution to enable AirPrint on any printer, but if you don't want to purchase a new printer to print from your iOS device then it's a great workaround.