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Apple to Upgrade AirPlay to Allow Wireless Streaming Without Wi-Fi?
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This will be great for vacations. A lot of hotels now have HDTV in the room and often the hdmi port(s) is/are accessible. No more paying $10 to see a year old movie. Stream from your phone to the tv instead. The apple tv is certainly small enough to travel along with you.
what everyone is missing is that this essentially is like bluetooth, except you don't have to go through your settings to pair a device. if the speakers and your phone are both on and near each other, boom, wireless streaming with the tap of an icon.
No need to enter another market. It's just a small feature they could easily add. I wouldn't even want one number for both. It's like having two accounts in iChat or Mail.
Not really. I'm not that dumb.
Keep in mind that while all Macs have WiFi, only the newer models support AirDrop, so you do the thinking, then do the math.
What I meant was that Bluetooth would be used to find devices and initiate the connection communication between the two so that an ad-hoc connection can be established without having to use wifi manually to do that. All of the traffic would of course go over wifi like it does with Airdrop but Bluetooth is used to establish the connection (easily).
It would be nice if in Mountain Line AirPlay was more than just AirPlay mirroring.
It's different with iOS. An app can display one thing on the iPad and another via AirPlay, such Real Racing 2.
Even without AirPlay there are apps that let you use an iPad (or iPhone) as an extra display. If the ATV gets apps there would likely be an app for that too.
Michael
Device to device connections in order to transfer/share/stream content is the way forward.
Unless I'm getting this wrong (please correct me); using an iPhone to stream content to your TV involves the data going via a wifi router. So it's a connection to the Apple TV -> Router -> iPhone -> Router -> Apple TV.
To me that seems insane. If you could get one device (such as your laptop or iOS device) to act as the receiver and bridge....
Unless I'm getting this wrong (please correct me); using an iPhone to stream content to your TV involves the data going via a wifi router. So it's a connection to the Apple TV -> Router -> iPhone -> Router -> Apple TV.
To me that seems insane. If you could get one device (such as your laptop or iOS device) to act as the receiver and bridge....
Good point. But I believe airdrop's older mac limitations are software and not hardware. There's a way to get older Macs to share files through airdrop.
Since all iPads can use airdrop, I'm sure any peer to peer connection through wifi apple will allow would work. I might be wrong though.
Nope, the limitation for full Airdrop functionality lies in the hardware.
There is a way to enable it on an incompatible Mac, but it will not function 100% as it should. It's a partial solution that in the end makes no sense enabling on an old Mac.
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I suspect Apple will use a different protocol than Bluetooth. Most probably based on 802.11 protocols, which supports much higher data transmission speeds than BlueTooth does.
Bluetooth has a maximum data throughput of about 2.5 mb/sec - compared to a (again, theoretical) 600 mb/sec capacity for 802.11. In real world use, I've found Bluetooth-only speakers to suffer from audible distortion and significant lag that was far more noticeable than using Airplay over a wifi network.
There are a few other downsides to Bluetooth - such as the need to "pair"each device, and the ability to pair an iOS device with only a single receiving device at a time. I suspect Apple's wifi-less AirPlay will allow you to broadcast to multiple compatible receivers simultaneously.
You are correct: enabling it on incompatible Macs merely uses the existing network--Ethernet or wifi--for the connection. It will not work if the macs are on different networks. AirDrop doesn't need the two macs to be on the same wifi network. In fact it works while each mac is simultaneously connected to different wifi networks (without dropping any of those connections). Existing network connection is separate from the AirDrop connection.
Michael
I think you are very wrong on this. Do this little experiment that I just did:
Start playing music on Airplay speakers/ATV from your iPhone on the same WiFi network. Based on your theory, the speakers/ATV and your iPhone used the WiFi network to establish the initial connection, but are now connected AdHoc via their WiFi radios. So now unplug your wireless router. As you will see, the music stops. That is because your iPhone is connected via the router to your speakers/ATV.
What you are suggesting would be possible if AirPLay Direct existed. Bluetooth works like this, but is not an AirPlay technology even though it looks seamless to a iOS user.
Welcome to this site.
Two things:
1.) This thread is very old, and it was a discussion of a news story (more like rumor in this case). So it is not likely anyone even remembers this discussion now, nor cares about it.
2.) The subject of this story does not appear to have happened. There was no announcement by Apple, which the story--and others like it at the time--said could be forthcoming. It still might be, but as if yet no. Also, the name Airplay Direct is already in use for the radio industry (http://airplaydirect.com/). It is unlikely Apple even has the rights to it.
Again, welcome!
Michael
I use bluetooth speakers, and have for quite awhile now. OSX has a terrible default quality setting for A2DP connections and any distortion you experienced was likely a result of that. Open up a terminal window and type:
defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Apple Bitpool Min (editable)" 40
This will make things sound much, much better.