[Macworld]

Post your comments for An alternative for AirPlay Mirroring here

[HMAUS]

Chris,
I was looking forward to mirroring from my Macbook aluminum unibody (late 2008) to a projector for use in court without having to have cables get in the way. Do you know if AirParrot will work with an XGA projector through Apple TV. For that matter, do you know if AirPlay Mirroring will work with a projector even if you have a newer Mac?
Thanks,
Ron

[yomacdaddy]

So, a 3rd party app can provide AirPlay on a MBP...but Apple can't. Sounds like over-zealous planned obsolescence to me. A two year old computer will not run the latest operating system?!? Ya, I have read the comments before "your computer will run the OS and any app that existed when your computer came out." Are you kidding me? When a computer is CAPABLE of running the OS but the OS developer deliberately blocks the computer from running all of the features, that is simply not right. One buys a computer with the anticipation that it will operate with the latest OS for several years. While I am not affected, this pisses me off and makes me very uneasy about a company so smug they would turn their backs on customers with products purchased a mere 2 years before.

[gk_brown]

yomacdaddy, on 16 July 2012 - 10:40 AM, said:

So, a 3rd party app can provide AirPlay on a MBP...but Apple can't. Sounds like over-zealous planned obsolescence to me.

Yeah, this reminds me of the old iMacs whose video hardware was capable of running multiple displays, but it was disabled by Apple in the OS.

OTOH, as the author says, display mirroring is generally pretty clunky. I don't think I'll miss this feature all that much. What I really want to see is an Apple TV SDK so I can write apps that run directly on the device, not via mirroring.

[Chris Breen]

HMAUS, on 16 July 2012 - 10:28 AM, said:

Chris,
I was looking forward to mirroring from my Macbook aluminum unibody (late 2008) to a projector for use in court without having to have cables get in the way. Do you know if AirParrot will work with an XGA projector through Apple TV. For that matter, do you know if AirPlay Mirroring will work with a projector even if you have a newer Mac?
Thanks,
Ron

If the projector has an HDMI input I don't see why it wouldn't work.

[monospaced]

yomacdaddy, on 16 July 2012 - 10:40 AM, said:

So, a 3rd party app can provide AirPlay on a MBP...but Apple can't. Sounds like over-zealous planned obsolescence to me. A two year old computer will not run the latest operating system?!? Ya, I have read the comments before "your computer will run the OS and any app that existed when your computer came out." Are you kidding me? When a computer is CAPABLE of running the OS but the OS developer deliberately blocks the computer from running all of the features, that is simply not right. One buys a computer with the anticipation that it will operate with the latest OS for several years. While I am not affected, this pisses me off and makes me very uneasy about a company so smug they would turn their backs on customers with products purchased a mere 2 years before.

It's not that Apple can't provide AirPlay on the MBP you speak of, it's that they don't feel it would provide the quality experience that the newer models would.

[vaughner]

Its all about the experience will Apple. If they feel that the performance will be sub par, they don't allow it. I get bummed to, like no Siri on the iPhone 4, but it is what it is.

[yomacdaddy]

vaughner, on 16 July 2012 - 10:54 AM, said:

Its all about the experience will Apple. If they feel that the performance will be sub par, they don't allow it. I get bummed to, like no Siri on the iPhone 4, but it is what it is.

Sounds very fishy to me. I hear you. But, the alternative is worse than sub par...no performance. Remember, a 3rd party app will provide the ability to handle AirPlay on the 2010 MBP. Is the graphics capability and/or CPU processing power that much weaker in the 2010 MBP that it will not handle all of the functionality of ML? I really do not buy into this theory. The difference in power seems like a lame excuse to me. Do any of the techies on this thread know why the 2010 MBP is not capable of running AirPlay?

Honestly, I do not buy into the Siri issue either. The processing is done remotely. The rationale for the lack of Siri was originally suspected to be related to a potential server overload which plays into the Apple policy of non-availability on older models. Do you really buy that?

[RickSheaffer]

yomacdaddy, on 16 July 2012 - 11:14 AM, said:

vaughner, on 16 July 2012 - 10:54 AM, said:

Its all about the experience will Apple. If they feel that the performance will be sub par, they don't allow it. I get bummed to, like no Siri on the iPhone 4, but it is what it is.

Sounds very fishy to me. I hear you. But, the alternative is worse than sub par...no performance. Remember, a 3rd party app will provide the ability to handle AirPlay on the 2010 MBP. Is the graphics capability and/or CPU processing power that much weaker in the 2010 MBP that it will not handle all of the functionality of ML? I really do not buy into this theory. The difference in power seems like a lame excuse to me. Do any of the techies on this thread know why the 2010 MBP is not capable of running AirPlay?

Honestly, I do not buy into the Siri issue either. The processing is done remotely. The rationale for the lack of Siri was originally suspected to be related to a potential server overload which plays into the Apple policy of non-availability on older models. Do you really buy that?

From what I understand, the sandy bridge and ivy bridge Macbook Pros support Intel's Quick Sync technology. This is a specialized capability of the processor to quickly encode and decode video. Encoding a MBP's display on the fly take a lot of processing power. Quick Sync can quickly and efficiently encode the display and send it to the Apple TV using H.264.

[yomacdaddy]

vaughner, on 16 July 2012 - 10:54 AM, said:

From what I understand, the sandy bridge and ivy bridge Macbook Pros support Intel's Quick Sync technology. This is a specialized capability of the processor to quickly encode and decode video. Encoding a MBP's display on the fly take a lot of processing power. Quick Sync can quickly and efficiently encode the display and send it to the Apple TV using H.264.

That makes sense to me. Based on what you know, do you think it should be a go/no go kind of situation where the capability is completely removed from the older model?

[BearsFan34]

Just an FYI from my personal experience with AirParrot just this past week:

It did *NOT* work with my 2010 15" MacBook Pro (8GB RAM, hybrid SSD, high-res screen) with the nVidia 320M video chip.

My quick story:

I had been reading about AirParrot on Twitter & a friend there recommended it, said it worked great on his 2010 MacBook Air; glowing reviews, actually. So I just went ahead and bought it outright; that was my first mistake, I should've tried the demo first before shelling out the $10 bucks.

Thing is, I bought AirParrot on my MacBook Pro at work, hoping to try it out that night. I never got that far. What happened? After installation, I rebooted. As soon as the Lion login screen appeared (I don't have auto login set up), the screen went IMMEDIATELY to a screen saver, and not the floating-in pictures one I'd sent. Perplexed, I logged in. All was well in the screen saver/energy saver arena, so I carried on. Randomly, seemingly NOT according to how I had my screen saver set, the floating-picture I had set would activate. Out of nowhere. I didn't activate a "Hot Corner" or do any keystroke to invoke the screen saver, it just...happened.

I narrowed it down to AirParrot. I contacted support, they were nice & responded relatively quickly. Their support tech asked me for info on my MacBook Pro, I sent it off; he then responded by telling me to click a link he sent me to an uninstaller; but instead of uninstalling, instead just "remove the AirParrot driver, restart, and all is well." When I asked why, the AirParrot tech said that Apple hasn't updated/altered their own driver so that it can work properly with AirParrot, so I needed to uninstall AirParrot's driver and just use Apple's. (?...! Ok then)

Problem is, doing this several times, neither Apple's own driver or AirParrot's worked with my machine. Again, this is all before even trying it with the Apple TV (newest generation) I have at home. I can't have my main machine that I use for work & home randomly starting up a screen saver no matter what I was doing, so I uninstalled AirParrot. I asked for a refund, and though it took a day to get a response, I got my refund.

I was disappointed in both myself for not just trying the demo first before buying & having to wade through MINIMUM 10 reboots in a row trying to solve the issue of the randomly-starting-screen-saver, and disappointed that I couldn't get AirParrot to work with my particular machine. Re-install AirParrot, uninstall AirParrot driver, uninstall AirParrot, reinstall AirParrot, install audio driver, uninstall audio driver, complete uninstall, complete re-install, all with reboots in the middle...nothing worked.

Long story short: if you have a machine like mine, AirParrot won't work. Or at the very least, try the 10-minute/20-minute trial before buying. I'm bummed my MacBook Pro won't support Mountain Lion Mirroring, but I do have the mini display to HDMI dongle that I use regularly now to fall back on. It just would've been nice to go wireless. Oh well!

[stimarco]

yomacdaddy, on 16 July 2012 - 11:14 AM, said:

vaughner, on 16 July 2012 - 10:54 AM, said:

Its all about the experience will Apple. If they feel that the performance will be sub par, they don't allow it. I get bummed to, like no Siri on the iPhone 4, but it is what it is.

Sounds very fishy to me. I hear you. But, the alternative is worse than sub par...no performance. Remember, a 3rd party app will provide the ability to handle AirPlay on the 2010 MBP. Is the graphics capability and/or CPU processing power that much weaker in the 2010 MBP that it will not handle all of the functionality of ML? I really do not buy into this theory. The difference in power seems like a lame excuse to me. Do any of the techies on this thread know why the 2010 MBP is not capable of running AirPlay?

Honestly, I do not buy into the Siri issue either. The processing is done remotely. The rationale for the lack of Siri was originally suspected to be related to a potential server overload which plays into the Apple policy of non-availability on older models. Do you really buy that?

AirPlay Mirroring involves compression of the display that must be both high quality and high speed. You can't sacrifice too much image quality in the name of compression speed or the results will be nasty and blurred. Nor do you want to take too long compressing each frame, or your system will be slowed to a crawl. (If you're using AirPlay Mirroring, you don't want to see those fluid Keynote presentation animations to stutter!)

You don't get to have both high speed and high quality unless you use hardware acceleration, which is what AirPlay Mirroring relies on. Yes, you can do it on older hardware, but it won't work as well, and will likely affect overall system performance as well as degrading the image quality. While some hardware may support the necessary compression, it's up to AMD (née ATI) and NVidia to provide the necessary driver support as Apple don't get to write those itself. Furthermore, older Intel graphics GPUs are found in those older MacBook Pros, iMacs, etc., and those just plain sucked. They could handle the basic Quartz stuff, but throw anything even a little complex at them and they'll choke. (Great for battery life, but if they were any good at performance, there wouldn't be any need for a second GPU, would there?)

Siri similarly relies on two crucial factors: voice compression, and noise cancellation. For best results, the speech needs to be as clean and clear as is physically possible. Newer iDevice models have more microphones to improve noise cancellation. Similarly, the speech compression for Siri is handled in hardware before squirting it over the internet to Apple's servers for processing. Apple could have gone with a software-only implementation, but hardware compression and remote processing is much, much easier on the battery. Apple clearly believe good battery life is the crucial factor here and, given the notoriously short battery life of smartphones in general, I believe they've made the right call.

Technology is like those conveyor belts in sushi bars: it moves relentlessly and remorselessly onwards and there's always something even more tempting coming down the line. It's the nature of the beast. However, demanding that Apple give you additional features that were never promised for your device in the first place is just taking an unwarranted sense of entitlement too far. Did the advertising for the iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4 ever claim that they would support anything like Siri? No! It still does exactly what it did when you bought it. It even does a little bit more now given the iOS updates it's had since 2010. Same goes for the original iPad, or older Macs. Nobody promised you these features, so you don't have some inalienable human right to them. I have a 17" 2010 MacBook Pro myself. It still does exactly what it said it would on the box. I added an SSD last year in lieu of a full upgrade. Next year, I'll sell it on eBay and replace it with the v2 Retina MacBook Pro. (The current model, like the very first MacBook Air, is very much a v1.0 release, with all the rough edges you'd expect. I'll pass, thanks.)

If Siri and AirPlay Mirroring are a requirement for your job, you can always upgrade. (And offset the cost against taxes.) But most people don't need such features. They're nice to have, sure, but that's no reason to upgrade every single year. I prefer to skip at least one generation, and I never buy v1.0s. (My original iPad is the sole exception to that "v1.0" rule: it more than repaid its price as a replacement for all my dictionaries and reference books. Very handy for a technical author / translator.)

[redgeminipa]

I just tried the demo version. I have to say I'm quite impressed with it. Since Mountain Lion won't support AirPlay Mirroring on my iMac, it looks like I'll be getting this instead.

2010 iMac 21.5" Core i3 (base model) w/ 12GB RAM

[yomacdaddy]

redgeminipa, on 16 July 2012 - 12:31 PM, said:

I just tried the demo version. I have to say I'm quite impressed with it. Since Mountain Lion won't support AirPlay Mirroring on my iMac, it looks like I'll be getting this instead.

2010 iMac 21.5" Core i3 (base model) w/ 12GB RAM

Hmmm.... given the responses (thanks vaughner), I wonder if the results you are getting has anything to do with your internet speed, given that all of these functions depend on the quality of the local network's wireless speed?