Q: OS X Mountain Lion AirPlay Mirroring

Good luck with that Winbrick.  I give it 2-3 years until you buy your 2nd, because it died.

I speak from experience because this is my first Mac after going through 3 Winbricks of my own in the 9 years my wife has owned her late 2002 PowerBook (she upgraded to a MB in 2007, but still has the PB for her PPC programs that still work - she upgraded the MB to Lion recently).

Technology advances, and sometimes old machines simply can't use new features.  200+ new features were added in ML and older Macs can't use 2 or 3 of them.  Stuff happens.

Hehe yep I know, I don't really like windows and I've had mac ever since the Macintosh Lisa days, and continued to upgrade and have a house full of macs, it is a recent thing though that support seems to have ended for products that are still fairly new, and I know that things change quickly in technology terms, but this issue of AirPlay is simply Apple not bothering, in my view it just gone a little far this time. But each to their own, I still like my mac, just disappointed!

This isn't just 1 out of 200 new features. Look at the full list and you'll see Airplay is actually 9 of the 200.

Add to that the 16 which are 'Features for China'. 4 that are 'Power nap', 6 that are 'facebook' (so we don't have yet). Most of the rest are specifict to apple applications (Mail, Safari etc) or only work with apple applications (icloud & Autosave)

Which basically leaves you with iMessage, Gatekeeper and Game centre from what I can see. Not really a compelling reason to upgrade unless you have a new macbook air.

Even Worse, if you own a Mac Pro, who cares what version you don't get Airplay at all.  If you are like the 100,000+ Mac Pro owners who have a 1,1 or 1,2 (2006-2007) machine that was over $3000 it cannot get Mountain Lion at all.  For me that counts out my Server machine, it is a Mac Pro (2006).  It meets all the requirements, except for one, the EFI in 64bit mode, which Apple could fix, but wont.

These issues that are coming up between iPhone and Mountain Lion that I am having are making me want to just go to a Hackintosh and maybe android or WinMo.  Locking out features that could be done fairly easy, especially when there has been a developer selling an app that does a few of the features already.  What makes me even more mad, is I sold my Hackintosh when I got my 2006 Mac Pro and the Hackintosh could be enjoying Mountain Lion.

Yes, Apple could throw software bandaids all over ML, so that it continues running on older machines.  In the process it would probably prevent ML from taking advantage of newer hardware.

If you want an OS that caters to the lowest common denominator hardware-wise, maybe you should stick with Windows.

     It would not be a bandaid, it is actually a feature.  They could detect which CPU you have and apply the right AirPlay code, thats what real programmers do, not say too hard, just cut off those people.  Of coarse that means less people would buy a new machine since theirs still works perfectly.  The OS already increased in size, so a little more is not going to hurt.  My Mac Pro will slaughter any sub $2500 Mac out there they are currently selling at normal tasks, editing movies, music, etc.

Lord Of The Weirdos wrote:

 

     It would not be a bandaid, it is actually a feature.

If they patch it to work with processors that don't have QuickSync video, it is a bandaid.  Nothing more.

Yes, there are apps out there that allow non-QuickSync capable processors to do what AirPlay Mirroring does, but have you done any research into why that particular SOFTWARE solution has a 2.5 (out of 5) star rating?

Perhaps the reason that Apple hasn't (and likely won't) patch it to work with older Macs is the fact that they simply can't get it to work satisfactorily with older processors.  It could be like trying to patch a Chevy Volt to run in the Indianapolis 500.  Apple probably won't patch it, because probably less than 1% of older Macs have the hardware to compensate for the lack of the chipset it is designed for.

It's ok Apple isn't willing to do it.  airParrot works fine.  Point is if other people can make an app to do it why cannot apple?  Baindaid in your opinion or not.

ML has soo many problems most people are switching back.

Really? How many? And where di you find this information that most people are switching back?

Read the community, people asking how to switch back are all over.  There are at least several 100 threads with multiple people asking how.

Too many bugs, from installing, battery drain, features not working, removal of key features they use,etc.

According to your logic most people switched back from Lion, Snow Leopard, Leopard, Tiger, Jaguar....

There were many posts on each release with people having problems and wanting to switch back.

I didn't have a problem installing, haven't had a battery drain, all the features that are available for my machine are working, no "key" features removed that I would lose sleep over.

For $19.99 it's hard to knock Mountain Lion. I can understand the people who can't run AirPlay being upset. The most annoying part of this process to 64-bit is the small percentage of people who have a mac with a 64-bit CPU but no 64-bit EFI. If I remember rightly, there is a way around installing a 64-bit OS. I did it with a 2009 Unibody MacBook.

What I have to ask the people who are slating Apple here, do you really pay hundred+ dollars for Windows and feel happy with it? Or do you torrent it and settle for whatever features it gives you, because it's 'free"?

Getting a refund from Apple because the features don't work is a bit OTT. Try looking into it before rushing in to upgrade.

     The price is awesome and I wish MS would follow that pricing model.  Of coarse now whether Apple realized it or not that have added fragmentation into their market.  Now they have 3 OSes that need to be supported when making Apps.  Developers have to make a choice, do I want it to work on all or just the new one.  If they make it on the new one they cut off old users and potential users.  The main reason Android has problems, too many OSes still being used, but also way too many hardware differences to take into account (which Apps on the Mac don't have to worry too much about).

     As I have said before, iBooks Author made that choice and cut out anyone using 10.6.  What apps are next and if you have been a user of them before and it gets updated in the app store and it no longer works on your older OS, how do you download the older version.  That has happened to me already with an App I had purchased, luckily the App developer got complaints and updated the App to support my Mac again.  So you see the developers have to walk a fine line between making them work on 10.6, 10.7, and 10.8.

     Apple needs to add the ability to ignore updates and roll back to previous version if something goes wrong on the App store.  There have been a few times on my iOS and Mac that I wish I wouldn't have updated an app, either because update was bad, buggy, or removed features.

I would like to add my weight to the coments regarding Airplay on recent but not recent enough MBPs. I have an iMac, an iPhone and an iPad that can all airplay but my MBP can't unless I buy 3rd party software. This is a ridiculous situation, If a 3rd party can get airplay functionality onto my MBP I would have thought that Apple with all their systems engineering might could have managed it. Excuses about graphics hardware simply do noyt wash. This was a managerial decision which is unacceptable to (I guess) the majority of MBP owners who have Apple TV.

I find it very frustrating and had thought that Apple was better than this. Should I continue to recommend Apple to anyone else? Perhaps not.

Have you read through any of these threads before you posted?

I suggest your first step would be to go out and read the reviews, both by professionals and users, of Airparrot. There are a lot of side effects if you are using this software, including your computer getting VERY, VERY HOT, as well as others. It will also pretty much use all of your CPU. And this is just to start. Apple would never be satisfied with the quality level of this software.

Apple IS using a new chipset/firmware feature developed by Intel, i.e. on GPU H.264. By using this NEW hardware feature (that other NEW computers from Dell, HP, Toshiba, etc. also use. Even the new Xbox 360) you can use the GPU for all processing and not overrun the CPU. Results in better quality (although this is VERY dependent on the network you are using), lower temps, almost no CPU load, etc. All Apple's engineers had to do was write a few lines of code to activate this Intel feature. Other manufacturers did the same thing and their recent computers can use it but their older models cannot.

So be sure not to recommend pretty much any computer company to anyone else as they all use the new features available to them in new hardware. Or would you propose that no new innovations in hardware be allowed? The same hardware "excuses" apply to AirDrop, Power Nap, and even to Mountain Lion itself (I can't run it on my MacPro 1,1 as it doesn't have a 64bit EFI).

Would you have been happier if Apple would have ignored the new hardware feature and now allowed any Mac users to have Airport mirroring? And we aren't talking about AirPlay, we are talking about AirPlay mirroring. If you have and iPad 1 you cannot do AirPlay mirroring. Were you as upset for the iPad 1 users about this? Did you add a lot of posts agreeing with them? Was it a hardware excuse? How about the iPhone 3G? It couldn't Airplay mirror? Can I go back and find your posts on that?

You weight adds nothing to the discussion. And it was obviously a managerial decision to use the features of newer hardware. Happens all the time. Will happen again as new hardware is released. Will you be upset when future Macs can do 3D video? I'm sure it is coming.