HP Disables Printer Functionality Until You Install the HP Smart App
1–10 of 63 posts
Re: HP Disables Printer Functionality Until You Install the HP Smart App
#2I particularly enjoyed the immediate attempt by HP customer services to take the discussion about their grubby practices into private messages.
Re: HP Disables Printer Functionality Until You Install the HP Smart App
#3I got an HP printer a few years ago. I tried setting it up using my laptop, even installing their app. I spent an hour or two and made 0 progress.
I was about ready to give up and return it when I begrudgingly installed their iOS app… the thing was setup in 2 minutes and once on the network my laptop could see and print to it.
This mobile-first nonsense has really gone too far. There is no reason a printer needs an app like that, and I have to believe a majority of printing is still done from desktops and laptops. Either way, a printer should not require a cell phone to set up.
Re: HP Disables Printer Functionality Until You Install the HP Smart App
#4A waste of a perfectly good PostScript rasterizer.
Re: HP Disables Printer Functionality Until You Install the HP Smart App
#5At this point Brother seems to be one of the few printer manufacturers who still produce printers that just work out of the box with a cable or WiFi connection using an OS-supplied driver (at least that's my experience on macOS)
Re: HP Disables Printer Functionality Until You Install the HP Smart App
#6"HP TouchPoint Assistant" and the printer-stories around is totally enough for me to never ever buy any HP product. At work, I accidentally got a laptop with bloat-ware, last time. Practices like these have eroded (default) trust I had in them.
Re: HP Disables Printer Functionality Until You Install the HP Smart App
#7At this point Brother seems to be one of the few printer manufacturers who still produce printers that just work out of the box with a cable or WiFi connection using an OS-supplied driver (at least that's my experience on macOS)
The Canon professional line is one of those too.
Re: HP Disables Printer Functionality Until You Install the HP Smart App
#8>visit hp.com/plus-support for additional setup help
My guess is that the person in question bought a model/sku that operates not as a typical printer (ie. you pay for the machine and its consumables), but as a printer as a service model[1] (ie. you pay per pages printed). In that case it does make sense that you need to install the app (presumably to connect the printer to the internet and to connect to your account) for the service model to work. I don't see the issue with this as long as this was clearly disclosed on the box when the printer was purchased.
Re: HP Disables Printer Functionality Until You Install the HP Smart App
#9A member of our warehouse team contacted me.
Here's how the conversation unfolded at work:
Warehouse Team Member: "Could you log into the App Store and download an app for the printer to work?"
Me: "That doesn't sound right." I remotely accessed the warehouse computer, opened a random PDF document, and hit 'Print'. The printer queue looked normal to me.
Me: "It seems to be printing just fine."
Warehouse Team Member: "No, it actually prints a message that says you need to install the app."
Me: "What really? Can you send me a photo of it?"
Warehouse Team Member: Sends the photo in Slack.
Me: "This is something I have to Tweet..."
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Edit: Imagine being the product manager who made this decision...
Re: HP Disables Printer Functionality Until You Install the HP Smart App
#10What's a "Printer Claim Code"?