Q: Mountain Lion AirPlay Mirroring (iMac to AppleTV) Not Working

my complaint to apple:

Apple,

I am appalled at your advertising of your AirPlay Mirroring with Mountain Lion OSX. From all of the advertisements, it was not made clear to users that this feature would not be compatible for earlier Macbook's (for example my late 2010 macbook pro core 2 duo).

I am now using AirParrot to mimic Air play capabilities similar to what i was expecting with the new software update.

In my opinion, this is misleading advertising, similar to that of the advertised 4G capabilities of the iPad3 release in Australia.

If a third party application such as AirParrot is capable of streaming my Macbook core2duo video and audio to my TV, then i cant see why you cant make it accessible for earlier macbook users.

What an absolute joke Apple, I'm not the only Apple user infuriated by this misleading advertising conduct.

Fix this issue immediately!

I suggest you all to start comenting this issue in the Mac App Store reviews about Mountain Lion, to all the people see what is happening and to force Apple to think about their policy regarding this feature.

Just as many others the only reason I wanted to upgrade it was for the "AirPlay" feature and now this... It's very disappointing; perhaps they'll fix this issue like the did with "Siri" when it was supposedly just to be compatible with the 4S and now lunching even for the 3GS. Anyway in the mean time it simply feels like I've got jacked!.

I can't add anything new that hasn't already been said before.  But like everyone before me I wanted to vent my frustration and join the growing chorus of angry voices in the hope that Apple may do something about this.

Of the various features of Mountain Lion, Airplay Mirroring was the one thing I was waiting on.  It offered a really nice feature that was going to benefit my household well.

I appreciate that companies can't support legacy hardware for ever.  However a Mid 2010 iMac is hardly legacy, particularly given it runs an i7 processor which is only now becoming standard.  One of Apple's major selling points and what differentiate it from a PC is the longer lifecycle of Apple hardware.  Apple's move to only allow some of the most desired features of its new OSX on the latest machines suggests they are trying to shorten the lifecycle and force people to replace hardware sooner.

So yes, as it turns out it is in the fine print tucked away way down at the bottom of the page.  If that fine print was immediately below the section promoting Airplay Mirroring and easy to see prior to release, I would have been disappointed.  But I would have probably dealt with it and moved on.  Finding out by trying to use the one key feature I wanted, only to discover its not available to me.  Like everyone else here I feel quite decevied.

I'm sure there are a lot of great features in Mountain Lion, however this has left a sour tast in my mouth.

meh - bit of a shame but if its because of a hardware feature I don't have on my mid 2010 mac I guess I can't complain.

Yes there are other ways to make it work and other apps that can be bought but I bet the official way is allows for more content to be streamed without crippling the machine as much.

So I will look at the parrot one, and to all the people complaining about a $20 os upgrade.. bore off. its 20 bucks.

Another appalled MacBook Air late 2010 user. I can AirPlay using my iPad 2 but not my Air? Give me a break Apple. This selective switching off of features is stupid. It seems like a way of forcing our hand into buying a newer model. Don't advertise features if they can't be used on models from at least the last 5 years.

as has been said, airplay needs a feature which is on the iPad 2 CPU and on the mind 2011 desktop/laptop cpus but not on the earlier ones. Its not switched off, it doesn't work.

come on DB2K we are not complainig about 20 bucks, we are complaining about the fact that we are being geared towards getting new hardware when its not even 2 years old (like in my case and yours). We bought ML just for the Airplay feature and we feel let down by whom we were loyal to.

Look at it like this, you buy an app on the App store and it doesnt work at all, do you say "meh, its only 20 bucks"?

Shameful dishonest advertising.  Was a huge fan of Apple but will now have to be strongly cynical about all future claims and announcements.  Major drop in credibility.  For sure will not touch the Iphone 5.

Off to purchase AirParrot at least this app does "what it says on the tin".

DB2k wrote:

 

as has been said, airplay needs a feature which is on the iPad 2 CPU and on the mind 2011 desktop/laptop cpus but not on the earlier ones. Its not switched off, it doesn't work.

How comes the Apps Airparrot or Hubtube found a workaround for older macs then?

Appears it's a hardware issue.....so we're going to have to live with it.

Note to self, always read the small print especially now that we're dealing with Applesoft. Knowing you can't get it (with an explanation) is better than believing you can and then being disappointed. Thanks Applesoft....another lesson in trust, reading the small print and marketing practice well learnt. Well done you.  

I can understand that the real AirPlay will have high res and other things... and that is what the cpu thing is.... but not to have a lower version to support back models is just stupid!!!

Well it's quite clear from the system requirements page,

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

However it's obviously disappointing.

The reason is detailed here:

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/12/07/14/inside_os_x_108_mountain_lion_gm_a irplay_mirroring.html

I guess the quality of image/computer speed you have when airplaying wasn't fast enought by apple standard...

I'm not too worried, I'm sure there will soon be a little hack to enable the feature...

BTW, they never enabled Siri for anything else than the 4S...

Tried Airparrot already and it didn't load in ML  !!!!

Add me to the list of incredibly disappointed customers I specifically bought an apple tv 3 a month ago anticipating this feature. I have a late 2010 iMac with an i7 processor and 16gb of ram. I honestly thought I would have no problems using this feature. Yes if you went specificially looking for it you could find out what was compatible in a small line in the requirements. Still very annoyed over it though. Airparrot is going to make a killing and apple it seems like apple is trying to drive people to buy the new hardware. I know its supposedly a hardware limitation but I am sure the geniuses at apple could have come up with some work around, software etc.