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Demo: Check Out AirPlay 2 on a Mac in macOS Monterey

Thomas Apple said:
As a teacher who has a MacBook hooked up to the smart board, I can finally walk around class with my iPad and stream my screen to the board
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OT: You sure you want to... 🤔

Lots of teachers weren't happy about opening up/relaxing corona-related lockdown.



Neat feature, but as others have said, why not on older Macs.
 
I was thinking I wouldn’t have to use AirServer anymore but then it is quite useful to be able to show the view from an iPhone in a window or my Mac for example if I’m using my phone as a remote camera in class.
 
MEJHarrison said:
But what I'm not getting is the use case. Why would I AirPlay photos or videos when I could open Photos on my Mac and view the same content. Why would I AirPlay something like Netflix when I could go to Netflix in the browser. And so on.
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Who says you have the same content on?

That sketching application you‘re using with a Pencil on your iPad, for instance?
 
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SirAnthonyHopkins said:
Feels like this is Airfoil being fully Sherlocked.
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Yeah that was my second thought too.

My first was, meh. Been doing this for over a decade already for audio.

But um, yay? Apple for adding it to the OS I guess?

I only hope it works as well as Rogue Amoeba's solutions. Because almost inevitably I find Airfoil far more stable than native Airplay'ing from within an app that supports the latter.
 
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My big question: Is multiroom audio *from* a Mac supported systemwide now, or is it still restricted to a couple Apple apps?
 
If Mac A airplays to Mac B, and Mac B airplays to Mac C, then will Mac A's output be visible on Mac C?
 
My iMac (2017) is a no go but my MBP (2018) and my MBA (2020) are a go. Sometimes I think Apple doesn't make new features work across the board to encourage us to buy a newer model. My iMac is not old at all.
 
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MEJHarrison said:
It sounds like a cool feature. But what I'm not getting is the use case. Why would I AirPlay photos or videos when I could open Photos on my Mac and view the same content. Why would I AirPlay something like Netflix when I could go to Netflix in the browser. And so on.

I'm not saying it's not useful, just that I don't understand how. What am I missing?
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I guess one use would be airplaying your content to someone else's large screen Mac, assuming that's easy to do.
 
MEJHarrison said:
It sounds like a cool feature. But what I'm not getting is the use case. Why would I AirPlay photos or videos when I could open Photos on my Mac and view the same content. Why would I AirPlay something like Netflix when I could go to Netflix in the browser. And so on.

I'm not saying it's not useful, just that I don't understand how. What am I missing?
Click to expand...

Before this is implemented, you'd have to 1) be on the same iCloud account and 2) Have all the offline media synced. What if you are quickly showing something on your phone and want it to be on a larger screen. Would you want to launch the Mac app/website and go through all the steps to access it or quickly show it via Airplay? What if you want to show something local on your MacBook on an iMac?
 
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MEJHarrison said:
It sounds like a cool feature. But what I'm not getting is the use case. Why would I AirPlay photos or videos when I could open Photos on my Mac and view the same content. Why would I AirPlay something like Netflix when I could go to Netflix in the browser. And so on.

I'm not saying it's not useful, just that I don't understand how. What am I missing?
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It’s pretty nice to be scrolling around your phone, on macrumours for example, you come across a video you want to watch, to just airplay it to the bigger screen. I mean, it’s a luxury rather than a necessity- but it’s certainly nice to have. I do it regularly with my Apple TV.

It’s also good for content that someone wishes to show you rather than crowd round their phone. Again, hardly a necessity but pretty cool and ‘high tech’.
 
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MEJHarrison said:
It sounds like a cool feature. But what I'm not getting is the use case. Why would I AirPlay photos or videos when I could open Photos on my Mac and view the same content. Why would I AirPlay something like Netflix when I could go to Netflix in the browser. And so on.

I'm not saying it's not useful, just that I don't understand how. What am I missing?
Click to expand...
I think the idea is that if your office’s conference room has a Mac hooked up to the big screen, you can AirPlay from your device to the presentation screen, for example.
 
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citysnaps said:
How would it be pathetic if it relies technology that wasn't available in older 4K and 5K iMacs?
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What technology does it require? If T2, then why isn't the 2018 Mac mini supported? Seriously, this list is incredibly small and restrictive. And aside from this specific point, an end user is FAR more likely to have a combination of new and old Macs, than all new Macs. Thus, I would argue, that for most end users this is going to be of very limited use, and, to a large extent, confusing, when it works for some pairings and not others.
Apple should have made it dependent on macOS version. At least that way, a user could easily recognise *why* it does or doesnt work on a given computer. As it is, the list looks completely arbitrary.
 
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winglet69 said:
Yeah that was my second thought too.

My first was, meh. Been doing this for over a decade already for audio.

But um, yay? Apple for adding it to the OS I guess?

I only hope it works as well as Rogue Amoeba's solutions. Because almost inevitably I find Airfoil far more stable than native Airplay'ing from within an app that supports the latter.
Click to expand...

Yep, for some reason none of my Apple devices can natively find my Airport Express any more, while Airfoil plays to it fine with only a slight bit of added latency over what I'd expect from Airplay.
 
Spectrum said:
What technology does it require? If T2, then why isn't the 2018 Mac mini supported? Seriously, this list is incredibly small and restrictive. And aside from this specific point, an end user is FAR more likely to have a combination of new and old Macs, than all new Macs. Thus, I would argue, that for most end users this is going to be of very limited use, and, to a large extent, confusing, when it works for some pairings and not others.
Apple should have made it dependent on macOS version. At least that way, a user could easily recognise *why* it does or doesnt work on a given computer. As it is, the list looks completely arbitrary.
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From the website:

  1. Available on MacBook Pro (2018 and later), MacBook Air (2018 and later), iMac (2019 and later), iMac Pro (2017), Mac mini (2020 and later), Mac Pro (2019), iPhone 7 and later, iPad Pro (2nd generation and later), iPad Air (3rd generation and later), iPad (6th generation and later), and iPad mini (5th generation and later). Older iPhone, iPad, and Mac models may share content at a lower resolution to supported Mac models when “Allow AirPlay for” is set to “Everyone” or “Anyone on the same network” in Sharing preferences.
I’m not sure but it looks to be a non arbitrary technical limitation with the method they have chosen to implement it.
 
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Spectrum said:
What technology does it require? If T2, then why isn't the 2018 Mac mini supported? Seriously, this list is incredibly small and restrictive. And aside from this specific point, an end user is FAR more likely to have a combination of new and old Macs, than all new Macs. Thus, I would argue, that for most end users this is going to be of very limited use, and, to a large extent, confusing, when it works for some pairings and not others.
Apple should have made it dependent on macOS version. At least that way, a user could easily recognise *why* it does or doesnt work on a given computer. As it is, the list looks completely arbitrary.
Click to expand...

The T2 chip provides fast hardware one-the-fly encryption, which likely cannot be handled by the CPU along with its other normal processing chores. The T2 also provides hardware audio processing and image processing, further off-loading the CPU which I suspect (ie, a guess) is used to advantage in AirPlay 2 securely (ie, encrypted) transmitting processed audio and video data. That, secure boot, and hardware on-the-fly SSD encryption are the features the T2 provides in hardware, rather than slowing the CPU down to a snails pace.

"Apple should have made it dependent on macOS version. At least that way, a user could easily recognise *why* it does or doesnt work on a given computer. As it is, the list looks completely arbitrary."

Holy smokes... Imagine the whinefest and eye-rolls of epic proportions if Apple arbitrarily, ie for no technical reason, intentionally crippled AirPlay 2 support by the particular OS a customer chooses to use. The reason it doesn't work on a given computer is because older computers do not have the accelerated hardware processing that new computers have. That's progress. I suppose I could have a good whine that my older computers that run the latest OS can't handle AirPlay 2, but recognizing their hardware limitations would make that over the top.
 
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