[com2kid]

> Who does?

The majority of my printing happens from my smartphone, so my printer needs to be on wifi, and needs to be able to reliably print from Android and iOS.

Accordingly, it needs firmware updates because phones break how they work all the time.

> things like wifi were added but that doesn't require cutting-edge technology - consumer devices could handle that 20 years ago

Not just wifi, multiple protocol for connecting to printers. Also that wifi needs to be 5ghz so I don't have to switch over to a 2.4ghz legacy network every time I want to print (which I had to do with my previous 2.4ghz only wifi printer!)

The onboard touch screen + embedded OS means I don't need to set anything up through a computer or smartphone app.

FWIW I have a black and white laser printer from Brother, I've never had to install a driver, I just plugged it in, typed my wifi PW on to the touch screen, and after a firmware update on first use it has happily been allowing anyone connected to my wifi to print w/o any hassle.

[Marsymars]

> The majority of my printing happens from my smartphone, so my printer needs to be on wifi

It needs to be on your home network, but it doesn't need to be connected to wifi per se. Ethernet works fine, including ethernet to a wireless mesh AP.

[com2kid]

My smartphone does not have an ethernet port. :)

My house came wired for cat5 (the original cat5!) but modern wifi is a lot faster than 100mbps, so I just use wifi for everything.

Latency is higher, but so is the speed.

Also I only own 1 desktop that has an ethernet port, and I haven't plugged the desktop in for 2 years.

I would actually like to have the TV hooked up to ethernet, since its wifi chip crashes every few days and I have to power cycle wifi in settings, but whoever wired the house for cat5 didn't install ports anywhere, although they did install a large patch panel in the basement, but I have better things to do than crimp a bunch of wires to fix one flaky connection.

[Marsymars]

That's the nifty thing about my second point, with a mesh network - if you put your mesh APs in spots where you have a bunch of wired-capable devices, you can plug everything into the mesh AP and then all the data runs over the mesh AP's high-end radios.

[spockz]

I fixed this by adding a printer server to my NAS and use that for AirPrint and the like. Smart power socket to prevent the printer from drawing power all the time. No need to have a smart printer.

[com2kid]

Most people don't have, or want to maintain, a NAS + print server, having the print server software built into the printer is perfectly reasonable for a consumer product!

[spockz]

In my experience everyone that has an old trusted printer that they don’t want to get rid of do have enough hardware running for a server and using it like that. Obviously it’s not for everyone.