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

So I found this story searching for why Airplay Mirroring is not allowed on older Macs.

http://www.cultofmac.com/178460/the-real-reason-why-macs-before-2011-cant-use-ai rplay-mirroring-in-mountain-lion-feature/

At least this is an intelligent article and explains why.

While I don't agree with Apple's decision, probably due to amount of CPU usage to enable on older Macs (which means mostly on MBP/MB/MBA significantly reduced battery life and heat issues), there ought to be an option that the consumer can elect and decide if they want to live with its short comings.

As for iMacs, well, I have no idea why they wouldn't allow it other than its consistency across certain generations of Macs.....

Btw, I am one of those people who upgraded thinking Airplay Mirroring is in the ML, and own 3 Macs (MBP, MB and iMac) that are "too old" for this feature....

I love my Apple products, but going to war with your customers is the begining of the end of a great Dynasty.  So, because you decided out of shere excitement that you were going to upgrade, through false advertisement you're going to have to endure all glitches that may or may not hinder you from having a fully functioning/less capable product?  WOW! 

What a PR nightmare.  It's only a matter of time before this makes the new.... 

I know I'm not a genius but why limit airplay to any device?  I understand that because innovations are slow it may be profitable to trickle them out but this just aint right.  It doesn't pass the smell test.  No security updates, no nothing?  C'mon..... seriously?  Talk about strong arming...

Dont believe that mess.  My computer runs without a hitch.... plus I have airplay on my itunes... it works in the same way.  They've just decided to limit the airplay, for financial and marketing reasons.

I agree have an old Macbook Pro with 8 GB of ram and SSD-Drive I can even run large files in the adobe suit at the same time. It´s just silly not to ad the Airplay feature. But I bought AirParrot and it works great.

I was told at the Apple Store by my "Genius" salesperson that if my computer would support Mountain Lion then Airplay Mirroring would work.  It was the only reason that I purchased the ATV.  I already had Roku so only wanted the mirroring option when Mountain Lion came out.  I asked several times, I was ASSURED that it would work.

That said, I installed Airparrot yesterday on my 2008 iMac and it works fine.  The only thing that makes me worried is that the computer gets really HOT while I'm using Airparrot.  Hot enough to make me use it sparingly.  Perhaps this is the problem that Apple was worried about.  I'm not really defending them since I was duped too but if Airplay Mirroring is going to burn up my iMac, then I have to be careful.  Obviously, I am not that knowledgeable but I don't want to ruin my perfectly good iMac.  What I don't understand is why playing movies or whatever from Itunes to my ATV doesnt' make the computer heat up in this way.  Like I said, I'm still mad but think that there is more to it than what we all think.

I also think that there is a huge lobbying group from cable etc. who don't want it to be easy to watch our computer screen on the TV.  To me, the computer and the TV should be one, unified device.  Duh...

Yes I read this article too. It gave me a better understanding of why they did it, but like you said, it was mainly for MacBooks, so why didn't they allow older iMacs this function? The person from AirParrot told me the same thing and that iMacs shouldn't really be affected. They even told me that really, it shouldn't affect ANY of the macs, whether it be Macbook or iMacs, it's just that Apple doesn't want their products to be pushed, performance-wise, to a certain extent, which is way less than what the machines are actually capable of doing. They just don't want to take that chance. I understand that, but again, if this was an issue with mainly Macbooks, why give the same retriction to iMacs?

What's disturbing is that they didn't announce this at the WWDC. They usually tell you what hardware certain things will work for, but they didn't when they talked about AirPlay. Granted, it was posted on the tech specs the day of the release, but many of us get our information from sites that are in the know and webcast things like the WWDC, and then buy the product with the trust that we got all the information we needed. Lesson learned.

AirParrot works really well. Can be jumpy a bit, but that may be my network or internet connection, but for the most part works fine. To help with CPU usage, so that it doesn't "heat up" your computer, here is what AirParrot's rep suggested how to use it when I contacted them about this issue:

"AirParrot actually needs the OS to render the content to your screen in order to capture it and forward it on to your AppleTV.  If you use AirParrot's extend desktop feature (which allows your Apple TV as a virtual second monitor) it will actually use much less CPU because the virtual screen is exactly the size of the TV output resolution, so we do not have to do any work scaling.  The virtual screen also uses "virtual" graphics memory that is a direct part of AirParrot, so no extra energy is needed to access the image."

Now, even with that advice, I think AirParrot will still work fine with it's Mirroring option, if you need both screens to have the same content on them.

Shame on you apple.

I bought my iMac in early 2011. Plus a new iPad and a iphone 4s. I was also looking forward to purchasing apple tv and an upgrade to mountain lion.

Not now. I will not be spending another penny towards your company. Yet another underhand tactic to force people to upgrade. Will purchase airparrot instead. You can shove mountain lion where the sun don't shine.

R.I.P STEVE.

31371 Views 561 Replies

31371 views and 561 Replies later, still no official response from Apple.

From Mel,  Brooks Hisory of the World: Part II

Count De Monet - I have come on the most urgent of business. It is said that the people are revolting!

King Louis - You said it; they stink on ice.

I agree. Bought ML for the same reason. Limitation is soooooo wrong!

Tell Apple your not happy with the missing support of "Older" Macs for Air Play Mirroring.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/appletv.html

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

Very disappointed!  A "buy me" feature of ML with no obvious disclaimer and it doesn't work on a 2 year old i7 MBP.  Very misleading IMO.

Same here I bouth my MacBook Pro Jan 2010. I only upgraded my software for the AirPlay Mirroring I am very disappointed at Apple .........shame on you Apple

This is GARBAGE!!  This is why I bought the new OS.  I am not happy Apple.  calling several iMac friends and telling them not to upgrade.

I have iMac mid 2010 and Mac book 13" Aluminum Late 2008, checked whether Mountain Lion can be installed, obviously thought air mirroring will work. purchased apple TV. Now after breaking my head found that air mirroring does not work on my systems. I use Keynote for training people. All my excitement and dream about using air mirroring for my classes got shattered. Will be very grateful if some solution  / update for solving this problem could be brought. I believe the apple team can.

Any other solution or 3^rd party software which can help please let me know

I don't really know what Apple is doing anymore.  They've alienated so many mac users.  I guess they just don't care anymore or think they don't need to care anymore.  I guess it happens to all companies when they get too big.  But Apple certainly have it's fortunes turned around just like companies that get too big for their britches.

It comes from putting an IOS guy in charge of OS X.  Macs are not devices!