Brother Printers leaving Apple?

TidBITS Talk
37

The page you linked to doesn’t have that comment. You probably meant this page from the user’s guide (combined manual for the 2400, 2405, 2420, 2460 and 2865):

But that’s a combined manual for 6 models. If I go to each model’s support page and click the “Supported OS” link on the left-side, I find:

So I’m not sure that that footnote is applicable. The other five models in that manual have networking and macOS support, while the 2400D does not.

And if I look at the product pages, the situation actually looks worse, and I may have been wrong in my first post. If you go to the product pages, and expand the “Print” tab, to the emulations of each model in that manual:

  • HL-L2400D: GDI
  • HL-L2405W: GDI (but claims macOS compatibility via AirPrint on the “Connectivity & Compatibility” tab).
  • HL-L2420DW: GDI (but claims macOS compatibility via AirPrint on the “Connectivity & Compatibility” tab).
  • HL-L2460DW and HL-L2460DWXL: PCL6 (PCL XL Class 3.0)
  • HL-L2865DW: PCL6 (PCL XL Class 3.0)

“GDI” is a reference to the Microsoft Windows Graphics Device Interface API, which is used for basic drawing (the functional equivalent of Mac OS’s QuickDraw library. The fact that there are no other emulations, means that it is very much a “WinPrinter”, designed for Windows and will require a driver that can generate GDI calls.

I am surprised that the 2405 and 2420 claim AirPrint capability even though they also only support GDI. But they’re on Apple’s list of AirPrint devices. So maybe those printers include additional firmware to translate PostScript or PCL to GDI? Or maybe Apple has a generic GDI driver (although I don’t see one anywhere on my system). I just don’t know.

But this starts to explain the OP’s original problem. Without a built-in GDI driver and no AirPort support from Apple or Brother, there may not be a viable option. I’m not surprised that CUPS has a driver - the open source CUPS project supports everything, but sometimes their support isn’t very good (e.g. the duplexer, in this case), and I have no clue what CUPS drivers Apple includes or supports beyond what they officially list on their support pages.

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