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ALERT: Mountain Lion Airplay Feature unavailable

D

dericks0n

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 29, 2012
8
0
Everyone please be aware that if you are planning on purchasing ML (Mountain Lion) for the Airplay feature like I did make sure your Mac supports it. To my amazement after purchasing the upgrade to ML today, the AirPlay feature I was looking forward to more than any other was unavailable. Apparently Apple is trying the same trick they did with mobile devices. AirPlay is unavailable for an Macbook purchased before 2011. What a joke!!!!

Maybe Apple should lower the price for those of us with order Mac since they want to sell us a stripped down version of ML.
 
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i thought this was common knowledge after the huge fuss that was made about it a few weeks ago. there is a technical reason for it at least, as annoying as it is to not have the feature.
 
Apple clearly states the requirements for Airplay on their site. If you failed to read it, there's nothing that can be done. Calling it a scam to cover you own mistakes won't do any good.
 
How is it a scam ? Apple lists what macs can run AirPlay mirroring

http://www.apple.com/osx/specs/

AirPlay Mirroring
Requires a second-generation Apple TV or later. Supports the following Mac models:

iMac (Mid 2011 or newer)
Mac mini (Mid 2011 or newer)
MacBook Air (Mid 2011 or newer)
MacBook Pro (Early 2011 or newer)
 
Worked just fine for me on my 2012 :)



We have a simple situation of lack of research before purchasing... Don't worry we all do it, myself included.
 
I feel violated that my 2010 MBP won't run Airplay! :eek:

Oh, never mind I read the requirements and new that already. You can't run one feature and the release is considered stripped down?? Cheaper for that one reason?

Educate yourself prior to the next $20 release and you should be OK.
 
does this mean that every topic about mirroring, you're going to chime in with the exact same thing?

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1411020/ - you've copied your post there almost word for word


it's a hardware limitation. There is a special chip included in the newer macs to accomplish the encoding needed so the processor doesn't get overloaded, if they let you do it on your mac, it would grind to a halt, guess you'd be calling it a scam then too.
 
touché....

Yes, you are all right it was in the fine print and I missed it. Scam... no, but I was very frustrated none the less. I am sure apple could have made it work. It is another way to sell hardware. If a third party like Airparrot can make it work, apple can certainly do it.

Anyway. I only created this second thread to try alert others like myself who somehow missed the details that the Airplay feature may not work on their machine.

Thanks,
David
 
dericks0n said:
touché....

Yes, you are all right it was in the fine print and I missed it. Scam... no, but I was very frustrated none the less. I am sure apple could have made it work. It is another way to sell hardware. If a third party like Airparrot can make it work, apple can certainly do it.

Anyway. I only created this second thread to try alert others like myself who somehow missed the details that the Airplay feature may not work on their machine.

Thanks,
David
Click to expand...

Did you read any of the links posted?

Did you try AirParrot? (Spoiler: it SUCKS and LAGS)

AirParrot made it "work". It doesn't work "well". Microsoft made tablet computers for many years. Obviously it didn't work "well" since the iPad came along and crowned itself king. Apple doesn't just make things "work". They make it work "well".

Many features in operating systems require some kind of compliment hardware. Windows and Linux and Mac OS X included. Your comparison with iOS is kind of flawed since everyone gets the same ML install whereas for iOS devices, some features are physically missing from the IPSW file.
 
waw74 said:
does this mean that every topic about mirroring, you're going to chime in with the exact same thing?

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1411020/ - you've copied your post there almost word for word


it's a hardware limitation. There is a special chip included in the newer macs to accomplish the encoding needed so the processor doesn't get overloaded, if they let you do it on your mac, it would grind to a halt, guess you'd be calling it a scam then too.
Click to expand...

On top of encoding the 2011 and newer macs support DRM which was probably required by Hollywood to allow AirPlay from Mac to atv
 
Try this for now: http://www.airserverapp.com

It works great, even supports PowerPC and Windows.

Mac running OS X Tiger / Leopard / Snow Leopard / Lion (Intel/PPC) or a PC running Windows 7 or Vista.
iPad, iPhone (3GS or later) or iPod touch (second generation or later) running the latest iOS software. Alternatively, you can use an Android device running doubleTwist+AirTwist. Note: Mirroring is only available for iPad 2, iPad 3 and iPhone 4S.
Wi-Fi connection for activation.
Wi-Fi or ad-hoc network for operation.
 
Hardware....really !?!

come on people think about it here, its not a hardware issue at all, if a mobile phone can "airplay" I'm pretty sure a 2010 MBP running a i5 and 4gb ram with wireless N can do it.

My HTC one X can mirror its screen over DLNA and play FULL HD files on the phone and to a tv at the same time, so really guys i doubt its a hardware issue.
 
Apple is getting nasty and hungry.... a sign of the beginning of the end for an empire.

----------

Several other third party software can do the mirroring and Apple cannot even include that little feature in its OS? That's beyond desperate, that's almost pathetic.
 
mastamark2020 said:
come on people think about it here, its not a hardware issue at all, if a mobile phone can "airplay" I'm pretty sure a 2010 MBP running a i5 and 4gb ram with wireless N can do it.
Click to expand...

Of course it is possible - the question is, would it work well enough for games and video?

The existing screen sharing feature can already mirror the display over the network to another Mac - but video and animation is choppy (you wouldn't want to play a game or watch a movie on it) and, in 'compressed' mode, any animation looks a bit crufty (I use uncompressed mode, but that's between two machines hooked up via gibabit ethernet which has a lot more bandwidth than any WiFi connection).

As others have stated ad nauseum the newer Macs have a gpu feature that can capture and compress the screen in hardware.

The same applies to iPads and iPhones - the Airplay Mirroring feature in iOS 5 requires an ipad 2 or an iPhone 4GS and doesn't work on older models.

My HTC one X can mirror its screen over DLNA and play FULL HD files on the phone and to a tv at the same time, so really guys i doubt its a hardware issue.
Click to expand...

...so what? Your this-year's-model smartphone obviously has the requisite hardware.

Edit: However, I see Apple still haven't learnt from their run-ins with the authorities in the EU and Australia and are relying on people reading the Tech Specs to find out which bits of the "Features" page won't work for them. They really don't seem to get the concept of misleading advertising as opposed to false advertising.
 
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Airparrot can do, Apple cannot do it?
Apple becomes a desperate liar and a sign of decline of an empire that was built on close borders and exclusivity. We had quite a few of those in human history
 
chris650 said:
Airparrot can do, Apple cannot do it?
Apple becomes a desperate liar and a sign of decline of an empire that was built on close borders and exclusivity. We had quite a few of those in human history
Click to expand...

AirParrot cannot do it, laggy, judder, pixelated and the CPU becomes incredibly hot with fan running on high all the time. Let's get real here!!
 
chris650 said:
Airparrot can do, Apple cannot do it?
Apple becomes a desperate liar and a sign of decline of an empire that was built on close borders and exclusivity. We had quite a few of those in human history
Click to expand...

You think this is something new for Apple? It's pretty much what differentiates Apple from all of their competitors, and has been for the longest time.
 
dericks0n said:
Everyone please be aware that if you are planning on purchasing ML (Mountain Lion) for the Airplay feature like I did make sure your Mac supports it. To my amazement after purchasing the upgrade to ML today, the AirPlay feature I was looking forward to more than any other was unavailable. Apparently Apple is trying the same trick they did with mobile devices. AirPlay is unavailable for an Macbook purchased before 2011. What a joke!!!!

Maybe Apple should lower the price for those of us with order Mac since they want to sell us a stripped down version of ML.
Click to expand...

So you are upset because you can't read? Requirements for Airplay Mirroring had been stated clearly since it was announced
 
I was using airpariot with lion on my 2011 iMac, now I am using Mountain Lion's built in AirPlay support.

Mountain Lion's native support simply blows AirParriot away. Zero lag at all vs the laggy mess that AirParriot performed on the exact same computer.

My understanding is that AirPlay mirroring on the Mac requires hardware that is only available in 2011 & 2012 intel processors, and based on my observations of the performance of hardware vs software only AirPlay, I believe it really was not possible without the 2011 and higher chips.

EDIT: Cult of Mac article says it is because 2011 and higher macs are the only one's that support on-chip video encoding.
http://www.cultofmac.com/178460/the...e-airplay-mirroring-in-mountain-lion-feature/
 
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Its not a Scam and it wasnt "fine print" it was big print and easy to know with some proper reading when ML features where announced.

too those arguing that its not a hardware issue and their 2009 or 2010 should be able to support it, even if your right its up to apple to pick the cut off for devices they build into the support structure for new features.

Eventually it will happen to the ealry 2011 MBPs and than the 2012 rMBPs.


Most of us will keep our Macs for 5+ years but apple make more on people that update every 2 years so its makes a business sense to cut off 2010's and older for some features.


I dont like that I cant mirror my iphone 4 on my ATV, and there has only been 1 iphone released sense it, atleast the MBP has had 3 releases that are all supported for Airplay, so maybe it is a Hardware issue
 
iisforiphone said:
Its not a Scam and it wasnt "fine print" it was big print and easy to know with some proper reading when ML features where announced.

too those arguing that its not a hardware issue and their 2009 or 2010 should be able to support it, even if your right its up to apple to pick the cut off for devices they build into the support structure for new features.

Eventually it will happen to the ealry 2011 MBPs and than the 2012 rMBPs.


Most of us will keep our Macs for 5+ years but apple make more on people that update every 2 years so its makes a business sense to cut off 2010's and older for some features.


I dont like that I cant mirror my iphone 4 on my ATV, and there has only been 1 iphone released sense it, atleast the MBP has had 3 releases that are all supported for Airplay, so maybe it is a Hardware issue
Click to expand...
It's a hardware issue. You have have the Sandy Bridge process that can do h.264 transcoding on the fly, thus it is very fast. That's why CPU transcoding (AirParrot) is so poor. CPU is slow for on the fly transcoding.

People love Apple for innovation but want everything to be backward compatible to the beginning of time. At some point, that just does't work. Would people be happier if the capability was there but Apple decided not to implement it because they did not want to piss-off their customer base?
 
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