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

I tried the trial for airparrot with my apple tv 3 and the quality was just terrible on my HD TV. Is the paid version better quality?

I COMPLETELY bought this Mountain Lion upgrade for the AirPlay ability. I was waiting months for it. They didn't make that clear *anywhere* that it would only work with Mac's from 2011 onward. They could have easily either:

     1. provided software-based H.264 encoding for those machines without it, or

     2. provided an installation check that would warn you *before* purchasing, about what functions your hardware would NOT support, or

     3. ensure that hardware-specific function was *clearly* identified in their advertising!

Funny (not in a ha-ha way) that my old 2009 iPhone 3GS supports AirPlay, but my much younger Mac w/OS X Mountain Lion cannot?!?

This behavior isn't completely new for Apple. Similarly, it was interesting that the iPhone 3GS would not support WiFi HotSpot functionality when iOS 4 was released with it. Only the iPhone 4 would.

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Outrageous. Incredible. 18month young machine. I pray that apple sort this one out ASAP. Its a travesty that it wasn't included in the first place. Only logged on for the first time ever in a forum to write this... if they don't fix it i will be extremely malcontent...

Jdcamuso, that is the point... they told everyone that Siri would only be on 4s... not put it only on the site!! They made sure that, on the presentation of 5 and the release of the 4s, that siri will only be on 4s!!! That was fine... didn't get me upset! My wife had the 4 and I was about to get it but wondering if iphone 5 was coming out and was waiting... when I heard that, I waited and got the 4s. No big deal!

They pushed mirroring as the main ML thing!! I just went back and watched the whole presentation and not once did they mention limitations!!!!

I think all of us here said it.... This isn't how Apple rolls!!!

dude, it was not written in any review that i read that the iMac needed to be much newer than the smaller macs. If anything, the iMac should be the first to get updates. Don't go trolling with comments like "you should have read it". With this many people feeling screwed its NOT in any way obvious or readily availible info.

Yea mid 2010 i7 here and it doesnt work bet airparrot is racking in the money now. Silly apple how lame.

I wouldnt be so nice , thats a MAJOR omission. I migrated from windows a year and a half ago, bought an  imac 27" and now can't use this feature that i've been waiting so long for. very very dissapointed in apple..  very dissapointed ! i'm sure it can be done. This is why the windows lovers laugh at apple, at least you can easily upgrade a windows machine to handle this feature(if its truly a hardware issue as they claim)  if you wish, but you're handcuffed with a mac. This one hurts. 

Once a silent happy customer, joined this community just to say one word "****"!

WHY DID AIR PARROT A 10.00 APP WORK ...... JUST FINE??????? I DONT GET IT?

Imac 2010 with i7 and 16 gb ram and still does not support airplay mirroing? So much for future proofing.

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Well... like many of you, did't realised that mirroring my Mac screen to my TV using my Apple TV was not going to be possible with my machine..
I don't want my money back, of course not!!!... I just found my self in a strange situation holding my Apple TV remote controler in one hand, with the TV on, sittd in the couch looking to my 2009 17'MacBook Pro trying to find how the **** I would put this mirror thing working on, when I decided search it on Google... and just got here and realised that it's not going to possible. Sad but true...

Wow....I am genuinely very surprised at this. Dreadul from Apple. I am a long time user and this is a shocking omission for pre Mid-2011 iMac users for one. Nowhere on the Mountain Lion info page on the Apple website does it have an asterisk or note to tell people the restrictions in the Airplay section.

This is very shoddy of Apple and if this is a sign of things to come under Tom Cook, then I am not impressed at all.

Poor form Apple, I am really disappointed.

This is ridiculous. I can stream video just fine from AirPlay in iTunes. I can understand limiting the functionality on older laptops since it creates extra heat/battery usage doing a software h264 conversion, but I'm on a late 2010 27" i7 iMac with 8gb. It's pure BS.

SO i called apple and sure enough something about imacs before 2011 dont have the secret sauce to run airplay mirroring. They were nice enough to offer me a refund or a magic track pad (which I all ready have). Im upset about this but I will just have to use airparrot for now. At least apple was willing to refund me or offer me a trackpad better those options than nothing at all. Still dissapointed as I was looking forward to this more than any other feature!

I really hope they come up with a fix for the rest of us or the people who have above an i5 machine.

Follow up post to my previous message. I received my call back from the Sr. Tech a few minutes ago, and he stated that the engineers are standing behind only supporting the 2011 models; however, he did say they were experiencing a lot of backlash over this feature from customers.  He said that if the backlash continues then it may prompt the engineers to make a workaround for the feature to work on older generation macs. He like many of us and other apple employees thought they would be able to use air mirroring with their macs; however, he did point me to air parrot which has been discussed on this discussion as a perfect workaround.

Several people have stated I cant believe you all are upset over $20.  I'm not upset about spending the $20 because I do like the other features of ML; however, my main feature that I was expecting to use on a regular basis was not delivered with ML, and the information wasn't made available until after everyone had started downloading ML. If the information was made available, I would have had the opportunity to decide whether I still wanted to purchase ML because the air mirroring wasnt available or just purchase air parrot. I don't think it's in any business practice to leave their customers in the dark esp when we're talking about software running on $1,000+ equipment some being only a year old. You just don't treat any of your customers the way ML was delivered to the customers.

A tarnished apple will not keep customers including loyal customers coming back to purchase new products. People forget that the main object of a company is to develop a product that will develop customers and relationships among customers so that they can make purchases now and in the feature which in return makes the company money. A company can't make money if there are no customers in the market willing to buy your product. If someone knows how to legally make money without any customers please drop me a reply with details.