AirPlay Mirroring, in my opinion, has been one of the biggest features missing from Mac. Fortunately, OS X Mountain Lion now finally includes this feature for the first time – something which holds a lot of potential in both the living room and the board room.
Apple describes the feature as follows:
Your Mac is on TV. This new feature in Mountain Lion is made for an audience. With AirPlay Mirroring, you can stream what’s on your Mac to your HDTV via Apple TV. Show web pages and videos to friends on the couch. Share lessons with a classroom. Present to a conference room. It’s a big deal for your Mac. And for everyone around it.
The Apple TV is portable enough to carry with you and plug into any HDMI-capable television or projector you may need to display content on, and at $99, it’s a fairly affordable solution as well. From presentations, to gaming, to home theater, the applications for AirPlay mirroring on the Mac seem almost limitless, and I’m extremely excited to see Apple finally jumping on this. This feature alone will make Mountain Lion worth the upgrade fee to me.
Even more interesting is that the Mac, unlike the iPhone or iPad, can create its own ad hoc wireless connection, so you can wirelessly stream presentations or other content whether or not a WiFi signal already exists in the place you’ll be broadcasting content.
Apple has created an extremely affordable solution for presenters or educators, for streaming movies to your friend’s television while visiting, or any number of other scenarios. The only thing remaining is to see how well Apple actually implements the feature. Here’s to hoping!