AirPlay review: flawed feature

AirPlay, the amazing feature released by Apple in iOS4.2, allows you to stream audio and video to AirPlay enabled devices.
While such devices are severely limited right now (only for iDevices and not even Macs) the feature works like magic and is a revolution we’ve been waiting for in sharing media in the real world.

So why flawed? Coming home today I switched my podcast over to my stereo as I entered my apartment. While making dinner I was smirking at some droll statement when I received a text. The sound was played on my stereo. Not my iPhone.

If AirPlay simply tranfers all audio (or video) from the system to another system the practicality evaporates quickly. With the decrepid notification system still on iOS will we be doomed to listen to beeps and pings until iOS5?!

Steve, please, don’t let this continue.

AirPlay review – the future is upon us

Today it looks like iOS 4.2, the new version of Apples operating system for the iPhone and the iPad, is being pushed back another week.
I’ve been trying out AirPlay on my iPad (the developer preview) and I have to say this is the future. In http://www.apple.com/itunes/airplay/iOS has a killer app beyond anything else in the mobile space today. I’m not kidding.

AirPlay let’s you stream music and videos to and from any iOS enabled devices. Whole there aren’t many such devices yet this is the future of media we’ve been waiting for.

Coming home, sitting down with my iPad and than choosing what I want to listen to on my wifi stereo system is a form of media disintermediation that really takes the leap from 50s hifi systems to the visions of the future represented in movies such as Total Recall or Minority Report.

AirPlay really does change everything. Lets just hope Apple opened it up to third parties. This is the way we’ll want to consume media in the coming years. Let’s hope it get wide adoption on all platforms.

Apple Airplay

With the upcoming release of iOS 4.2 Apple has revealed a new feature, or an upgrade to the old Airtunes feature, called Airplay. Airplay will let us stream media content between our iOS devices.

Just think about it, coming home from a shopping spree just aching to tell your spouse about the hideous dress/jacket/guy you saw. Whipping out your iPhone and displaying the picture on your Apple TV or iPad. Sounds like the future to me!

There are only two questions that come to mind I’m really interested in:

Will Airplay allow us to send content to a Mac as well as from one?
We know third party devices will be able to receive media but can third party apps also send media through Airplay? Since it’s a part of iOS it should be an open API… right?

Check out the CNET write up for more thoughts on Airplay.