As noted by MacRumors, HP issued a firmware update last night to extend AirPrint support (which as you may remember, used to work only on certain HP printers still listed on Apple’s website) to 6 more of its Officejet printers.
Thus, AirPrint is now compatible out of the box with the following models:
- Officejet 6500A e-AiO5
- Officejet 6500A Plus e-AiO5
- Officejet 7500A Wide Format e-AiO5
- Officejet Pro 8500A e-AiO5
- Officejet Pro 8500A Plus e-AiO5
- Officejet Pro 8500A Premium e-AiO5
AirPrint used to work on any printer shared through a Mac or PC in a local network in the first OS X 10.6.6 developer betas. As 10.6.6 went public, Apple pulled the feature and made AirPrint compatible only with selected HP printers.
A few hacks have surfaced to bring the functionality back, but Steve Jobs promised Apple’s working on making AirPrint better, although they need more time to achieve stable and fast driverless printing.