Microspot X-RIP

After university, I worked for Robert Coulling and Roger Holmes at Microspot Limited, Maidstone, UK. Microspot is notable for producing MacDraft, one of the original Mac software products.

At Microspot I developed Microspot X-RIP, the first large format printer driver for Mac OS X. X-RIP was an amazing project that sparked my interest in large format printers and colour science.

X-RIP stood out as a great printer driver for large format printers because it brought the Apple experience to a market that had never seen anything like it. With X-RIP you could plug-in the printer’s USB cable and immediately the printer was ready to use. That may not sound impressive, but these printers are big, expensive, and demanding. Ease of use was not a feature they boasted.

At Microspot I had the pleasure of working with David Cranmer. David produced the fun X-RIP installer icon.