Why does Apple does this all the time? They remove key features and technologies from their hardware and software making it even more difficult to do normal, productive tasks. With the release of Snow Leopard, Apple has once again dropped the ball by removing Appletalk altogether.
You may say, “So what?” Well, there are plenty of people still using Appletalk in production environments to access shared volumes or to print to Appletalk printers. For me, the printers are the bigger issue. I have many, many people still using Appletalk printers. The beauty of Appletalk printers is that they are automatically discovered on the network, and, the big advantage, is they know what is installed and communicate that back to the Mac. Bonjour/Rendevouz printers don’t do that!
Apple’s solution is to print to these printers using IP Printing. What a joke! First of all, you must assign the printer a fixed IP address (how many non-techie users can do this?), then you must know all the options installed in the printer (RAM, extra trays, etc). You must then MANUALLY setup each printer on your network for IP printing. On some corporate networks, there may be hundreds of printers to setup.
Way to go Apple!
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