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Apple TV hacker discovers how to add custom sites on older firmware
David Schuetz, an Apple TV hobbyist, has been exploring some interesting behavior on pre-iOS 7 Apple TVs. After a bit of hacking, he discovered a way to enable an Add Site feature. This feature opens the possibility of adding custom sites to the Apple TV menu, letting him hook up a Raspberry Pi media server to his ATV. [The iOS 7-equivalent build of the Apple TV OS, released in September, is version number 6, as the ATV is a version number behind the iPhone and iPad. This hack works on v5.x and earlier-build Apple TVs. -Ed.] He wrote up the details of his discovery on his company website and posted a Github repository containing a talk he recently gave on the subject. Although Schuetz points out the hack does not require a jailbreak, this approach is not suitable for either the weak of heart or (currently) those who have upgraded to the latest Apple TV firmware. Although I suspect the Add Site button is meant for Apple's internal development team and not planned for eventual public use, it's pretty cool stuff. A video demo follows.
Timed command-line screenshots
A TUAW staffer recently asked if there were a way to snapshot the exact same region of the screen over and over at timed intervals without buying third-party software. There is, but it depends on your comfort with the command line. If you're experienced in Unix scripting, read on. If not, you may want to investigate standalone screen-capture apps instead. I pointed him to /usr/sbin/screencapture. This built-in OS X utility allows you to specify a screen region to capture. For example, to capture a 50x200 rectangle starting at the point 200, 200, you'd say: % /usr/sbin/screencapture -R"200,200,50,200" ~/Desktop/foo.png You can easily apply a Unix shell script to create numbered output files. Unix commands will also enable you to sleep and repeat the capture requests over time. The utility is Retina-ready. Since it captures in points (and not pixels), the results are twice as big in each dimension when run on Retina systems.
Maniacally cuckoo for Mountain Lion: App Store checker shell script
In the spirit of Tim Cook's maniacal excitement about upcoming Apple products, I bring to you the shell script you can run repeatedly from the command line to check the App Store to see if Mountain Lion is ready for purchase. This is what I used last year to check for Lion; it worked. This year, I update the search string to "Mountain Lion" instead. As presented, it employs a 10-minute time-out, so you can run a repeat command with it. #! /bin/csh curl -silent -A "iMacAppStore/1.0.1 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6.7; en) AppleWebKit/533.20.25" 'http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewMultiRoom?fcId=489264329&mt=12' | grep -i "mountain lion" > /dev/null if ($? == 0) then echo "Available" say "MOUNTAIN LION MAY BE AVAILABLE" else echo "Nada" endif sleep 600 Ready to improve the script? Have at it, campers! Update: Looks like the URL changed from last year. Updated via Mark (mcackay).
iPhoto Beaming: Under the hood
Earlier today, Steve Sande showed you how to beam photos using the new iPhoto app. Now it's my turn, and I'll briefly discuss what's actually happening when you use this new feature. Beaming relies on two devices sharing the same Wi-Fi network. That's because the communication channel seems to be built on Zero Configuration (Bonjour) networking. Bonjour, Apple's branding for zeroconf/mDNS device discovery, allows computers and mobile devices to advertise services on a shared network. This lets Macs, PCs and iOS devices easily connect to printers, AirPlay servers, and so forth. iPhoto Beaming uses a UDP service called _mobileiphoto._udp. Devices that are ready to receive beams announce themselves in an easily discoverable way. A service appears on-network as soon as you enable Wireless Beaming. To beam, a source device searches for possible recipients. Once detected, iPhoto offers to connect to them. It negotiates a handshake, asks for permission at the far end to send data, and then transfers photos. The Bonjour device name seems to be made up of a hash filed by a local file name. This is quite similar to what goes on with GameKit peer-to-peer connectivity. Only properly hashed identifiers are recognized as valid destinations. To spoof iPhoto, a Mac client would need to provide a valid hash in this way. And, no, I was unable to get my GameKit hashing to match the iPhoto beaming hash in my initial attempts. Possibly operator error on my part, possibly they just used a different approach. What's more, the executable seems to be built using GKSession objects, so there's apparently some common genetic background between the two approaches. I didn't find other GameKit classes, so not all that much commonality. Before jumping into iPhoto, I had been hoping this would be some kind of AirDrop implementation that might later open up to other apps -- but from what my quick dive indicates, it looks like this is proprietary to iPhoto and not going to become a general solution yet. To summarize, the iPhoto beaming looks, at least from my initial scans, to be a jury-rigged solution proprietary to this one title rather than a general iOS file-sharing solution. The app-specific Bonjour name (mobileiphoto) and lack of custom framework classes suggest this isn't the future, it's just iPhoto. Pity.
Hacksugar: Live AirPlay mirroring to Mac from iOS
iOS developer David Stanfill of Napkin Studio has been looking for a better way to demo his iOS apps during online meetings, as well as to record live videos of the UI as the apps run. (We've rigged up various hardware approaches to do this, although none of them reach the highest quality standards.) Well versed in video compression, protocols, and so forth, Stanfill decided to roll his own AirPlay mirroring client for the Mac. This would allow mirroring-capable iOS devices to push their screen display over to a Mac window (just as they can now to an Apple TV). It wasn't an easy journey. He had to put in a huge effort getting the technology working, to build his first mirroring prototype. I got a chance to play with this prototype, and the video that follows demonstrates it in action. It's still early days but the mirroring quality is phenomenal. So what comes next? Stanfill has to try to convince Apple to approve his Mac app based on its value to the iOS community in general and the developer community in particular. If that turns out to be a no-go, he'll be looking at distributing it outside the Mac App Store. If you're interested in following the development of this app, keep watching the Napkin Studio website, or drop him a note at his email. FAQs: What platforms are supported in the prototype? iPhone 4S and iPad at the current time. How far away is this app from public release? That's up to Apple. Do you have to jailbreak your device to use this utility? Nope. All you need is a Mac and an iOS unit. Will Apple approve this app? Possibly not. Is audio transmitted as well as video like on Apple TV? Yes, but you don't hear it yet. David writes, "Audio is transmitted using the regular Airtunes protocol. I'm actually listening for it, but I'm not doing anything with the FairPlay negotiation or stream processing on that end because I didn't want to mess with the PTS/DTS (presentation time/decoding time) synchronization with the video."
Hacksugar: Send URLs from your PC to your iPhone
This morning, Beloved Leader Victor introduced me to my new favoritest hack for the iPhone ever -- if "ever" means "earlier this morning." It's a really good hack though. What you do is this. In Safari or Firefox or whatever your favorite browser is, create a new bookmark, which I include here for your copying pleasure. This bookmark comes courtesy of Coldbeans software and what it does is converts the URL for your current page to a QRCode and displays it in a floating window. Being basic Javascript, it runs across platforms and browsers. Essentially, you should be able to use it any modern browser. Create a new bookmark, set the destination as the javascript I linked above, and name it something like QRCode. Then, when you come across a web page you want to share, select the bookmark and let it generate a QRCode. From the iPhone side, use any of the millions of free QRCode clients to scan your computer. Instantly, the URL transfers, allowing you to copy it, view it, send it in email, etc. Victor tells me he uses this to load up his iPhone with amusing YouTube Videos, but you probably have far more respectable reasons for transferring URLs.
Blogging with your voice: Siri, Blogger, and post-by-SMS
As I mentioned on my earlier post, Steve Sande and I have been hard at work collaborating on "Talking to Siri," an ebook that will soon hit the Kindle store. One of the topics we're exploring is how to push Siri beyond its advertised limits. Take blogging, for example. Did you know that you could create blog posts entirely by voice? I'm not talking about basic dictation either. That's because Siri supports SMS messaging, and a little known feature of Google Blogger allows you to create blog posts directly from SMS text messages. [You can also use SMS to post to Tumblr and Posterous, although it's a bit more finicky. Services like ping.fm or HelloTXT may help if you plan to update several social networks right from Siri. –Ed.] Interested in giving it a spin? Send REGISTER to 256447. Blogger replies to your registration text by texting you a URL for your new blog and an optional claim code. This code can be used to associate your new access with an existing blog. It just as easy, however, to work with the automatically generated blog that is sent to you. To create a new post, just reply to the 256447 conversation. Dictate your new blog post to Siri and send it. Once you do, the text contents are instantly posted to the blog. If you want to start posts from scratch, just give that SMS number a memorable contact name in your address book (I used 'Geronimo Blogger' in the screenshot). You can visit the mobile blog I created this way over at Blogger and see the two posts I created using Siri. If you're on a limited SMS diet, posting by text message may prove too rich for your blood. There's still a Siri-capable workaround for that, but you must use an existing blogger account to create a Mail-to-Blogger address. You'll find a complete set of instructions at the Blogger help article on this subject. That write-up shows you how to use your account settings to establish your blogging email address, which consists of your user name and a secret word. You can then use Siri to send an email to that address whenever you want to post-by-voice. If you'd prefer not to use Blogger, there are plenty of other services that work with post-via-email. Tumblr, Posterous and Wordpress.com all support creating a custom address that you can use to post directly. Simply add the email to your address book with a distinctive yet pronounceable contact name ("Erica Tumblr" will work, but you might want to include a phonetic last name to help Siri suss out that it's pronounced 'tumbler'), then tell Siri "Send an email to Erica Tumblr." You can dictate your post and share it with the world.
Siri hackage proceeds apace
I love Siri. You love Siri. We all love Siri -- and we want it on our iPhones 4 and 3GS, not just on the 4S. Numerous iOS hobbyists including limneos, Gojohnnyboi, and iH8sn0w have been hard at work trying to bring Siri over from the 4S to other platforms. After weeks of work -- this effort predates the iOS 5 release and the 4S debut -- they have made substantial progress. What you're looking at here represents some preliminary results, enabling the assistant in the device settings. The Siri-porting team is still working on launching the background daemon, providing the interactive magic dialog "pocket" and other system features. Can you expect Siri on your jailbroken iOS device any time soon? I'd say you're probably looking at weeks rather than months or days at this point, and that is contingent on the team's ability to pull together many working parts including frameworks, daemons, Mobile Substrate overrides, and more. Stay tuned.
Lion: Diving into your Recovery partition
I spent a good deal of the afternoon diving in where no sane person really wants to spend a lot of time -- in my Lion recovery partition. It's not hard to get there, and it's quite a curious place when you do. [For those commenters wondering about the use of photos rather than screenshots to illustrate this post, it's hard to take screenshots on a system where the boot volume is read-only. –Ed.] The Recovery volume is a small slice of your hard drive that gets partitioned off during your Lion install; it's not optional, because that's actually where the OS gets installed from. You can view the contents of the Recovery volume by mounting it with the command-line diskutil tool, as John Siracusa points out; the regular Disk Utility app is thoughtful enough to keep it hidden. To restart in recovery, reboot your computer and hold down Command-R after the chime (you can also use the traditional Option-key holddown, which will show all your bootable volumes including Recovery). Before long, the gray linen background appears and the Mac OS X Utilities window pops up. The OS X Recovery partition includes a number of built-in utilities to handle system recovery tasks. The Utilities window allows you to Restore from a Time Machine Backup Reinstall OS X Use Disk Utility to repair or erase your hard drives Browse with Safari to get online help. Choosing the Safari option opens a web browser that immediately takes you to a basic help page. This help page is stored locally on your recovery partition at the following link: file:///System/Installation/CDIS/Mac%20OS%20X%20Utilities.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/RecoveryInformation.html You are not limited to Apple pages, however. The reason I was able to get that link up there isn't because I wrote it down. I copied it to memory, and pointed Safari to Earthlink's web mail page and simply e-mailed it to myself. I had no problems accessing any of the (admittedly limited) pages I tested. From there, I explored the Mac OS X Utilities > Utilities menu. Located off the main help screen and in a windows sub-menu, you can manage your firmware password, test and fix connectivity issues or access the Terminal for command-line management. Of course, I had see what Terminal had to offer. Turns out that your entire file system mounts, if it can. You can navigate to your user folders and access any material located there. I did not try it out myself, but I imagine you could attach a USB drive of some kind and copy files over if you needed to. There is no authentication here, so it's also possibly a bit of a security hole for anyone with physical access to the system. (For those who are concerned about physical access, don't forget about FileVault and/or an Open Firmware password to keep things secure.) The Recovery boot volume is read-only, and has a very limited set of files and features. You're actually running from the system image stored in BaseSystem.dmg, which gets mounted by the startup executables inside the com.apple.recovery.boot directory. That doesn't mean you can't run Nethack from your recovery partition. Just make sure your install is set up to run completely on another drive -- which mine is. (Also, don't forget to re-compile it from scratch. The PPC version no longer works on Lion.) Once you're done exploring, boot your way back to your primary partition and let your Recovery partition rest -- hopefully for a long, long, long time.
Open the Mac App Store in your browser
I was up late last night building a Mac App Store scraper. In the process I discovered how to browse the store in Safari. Without further ado, let me share the geek. It turns out you can spoof curl with the Mac App Store user agent to access its data. You'll need to use Terminal for this trick, so if you're uncomfortable with the command line, it's sort of time to skip to the next post. Still here? Good, let's go. First, grab and open New & Noteworthy page with the following commands: curl -silent -A "iMacAppStore/1.0.1 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6.7; en) AppleWebKit/533.20.25" 'http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewGrouping?id=29526&mt=12' > ~/Desktop/foo.html; open ~/Desktop/foo.html Conversely, just open the front page: curl -silent -A "iMacAppStore/1.0.1 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6.7; en) AppleWebKit/533.20.25" 'http://itunes.apple.com/us/genre/mac/id39?mt=12' > ~/Desktop/foo.html; open ~/Desktop/foo.html The front page doesn't always want to open properly, but if you load another primary page like New & Noteworthy first, it usually loads the way you're looking for. Some will want to ignore the HTTP status that appears at the top of the webpage -- but they'll probably be using the App itself, so it shouldn't be a problem for everyone else. Have fun!
Waiting for Lion: On your mark, get set, geek out
Waiting for Lion to show up in App Store? We are too. Here's how we are checking. When you want to pull a URL from Mac App Store, you need to emulate its user agent. curl -silent -A "iMacAppStore/1.0.1 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6.7; en) AppleWebKit/533.20.25" will do that for you. Want to search the store? Same idea, but give it a query like this: curl -A "iMacAppStore/1.0.1 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6.7; en) AppleWebKit/533.20.25" -H "X-Apple-Store-Front: 143441-1,13" 'http://ax.search.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/search?q=SEARCH_PHRASE_HERE' The search phrase must be URL-escaped, e.g. "OS X Lion" is "OS%20X%20Lion". Then do a little grep-fu, namely grep -iv 'killer' | grep 'mt=12' | grep 'class=.name' These steps search for app listings only whose name does not include "killer", as in "Killer Guide for OS X Lion". Who knew? I threw together a few utilities to help with this. Lionscanner is a command line app that performs this search (or, if you give it an argument searches for that instead of "OS X Lion") and then processes the results to kill everything but in-line text, i.e. no XML tags, following the greps I mentioned above. If you run it without arguments it hunts for "OS X Lion". If it finds nothing, there's no "OS X Lion" product in App Store. Presumably. That's why I've also included the basic how-to. So you can create your own tools that are a little more flexible in case Apple doesn't name it quite "OS X Lion". Second, I have my handy-dandy-age-of-the-dinosaurs-csh-script as always, the one you readers always mock me for. Still works, still csh, you still need to run it with something like repeat 5000 ./doLionCheck: #! /bin/csh ./lionscanner | grep -i "lion" > /dev/null if ($? == 0) then echo "Available" say "LION MAY BE AVAILABLE" else echo "Nada" endif sleep 600 Okay, that's everything you need. Don't forget to make stuff executable (chmod 755). Now go forth and build some better tools for us.
Dear Aunt TUAW: Help me disable in-line tool tips and advertising
Dear Aunt TUAW, There are works [sic] that are highlighted and linked to pop-ups when I go to webpages and pass my mouse pointer over them and I would like that to stop. Your loving nephew, Sabon Dear Sabon, Auntie isn't entirely sure whether you're talking about tool tips or in-line advertising. So she's going to answer both of these possible questions. Tool tips are those yellow pop-ups that appear when you hover your mouse on top of URL. They look something like this. It's a feature that helps expose the link you're looking at. It gives you more information about where you'll go if you click that URL. To get rid of these pop-ups open a Terminal window and type in the following. (If you don't know what Terminal is, or how to use the command line, this write-up probably isn't for you.) defaults remove com.apple.Safari WebKitShowsURLsInToolTips Quit and restart Safari and your tool tips will be disabled. To restore the feature, use this command, entering it into a Terminal window. defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitShowsURLsInToolTips 1 And, again, quit and restart Safari for your changes to take effect. Here's the other question Auntie thought you might be asking. If you've ever seen those underlined (typically green) links, you know how utterly annoying they can be. Here's what happens when your mouse goes near that link. Irritating, isn't it? So what can you do? Auntie turned to Uncle TJ for the answer. And she warns you that it too involves a bit of command-line ability -- in fact slightly more than "a bit". You will need your administrator credentials here. Head on over to someonewhocares.org and copy their hosts file to your Mac as hosts.withlove. This file contains a gadzillion host rules that block out a lot of really irritating Internet hosts, protecting you from some (but not all) spyware, pop-ups, and so forth. Or, as they put it "Using a Hosts File to make the Internet not suck (as much)". In Terminal, make sure the saved file is created without an txt extension, i.e. hosts.withlove, not hosts.withlove.txt. Move the file into the /etc folder, e.g. sudo mv ~/Desktop/hosts.withlove /etc/hosts.withlove In /etc, copy hosts to hosts.original. This creates a backup of your original hosts file that you can revert to if needed. sudo cp hosts hosts.original Use your favorite text editor to match up the start of the withlove version to match the original version, just so you're working more or less from the same starting point. Then move it into place. sudo cp hosts.withlove hosts To test this, you don't have to restart Safari but you should re-load whatever page you had seen the in-line advertising. For example, the Business Insider page that Auntie captured above now looks like this after enabling the withlove version of the hosts file. Yay! Hugs, Auntie T.
iPad 2 mirroring: Capturing video in higher definition
Co-blogger Steve Sande and I have been collaborating on our attempts to find a solid solution that allows iPad 2 owners to use the screen mirroring feature in tandem with a computer video capture tool; this would simplify screencasting, training, recording and scores of other things. Steve was looking for a way to integrate his iPad's screen into his TUAW TV Live shows. I need to create videos for demonstrations, reviews and tutorials. While this would be relatively straightforward if Apple's mirroring support included the older Composite AV and Component AV adapters for the iPad, sadly it does not. Only the HDMI-sporting Digital AV adapter and the VGA adapter are permitted to work with the mirroring option, which helps close the analog hole for purchased/rented digital video, but it doesn't make the job of DIY iPad recording any easier. Steve recently blogged about our first solution, a quick and dirty approach that offered a "barely enough" 480p standard-definition video feed. As Steve pointed out, this basic setup is not a high resolution answer to our video capture needs. Text is barely readable, screens fuzzy -- not ideal for either product demonstrations or how-to-videos. We were determined to nudge quality up. To do that, I turned to Elgato, who graciously provided an EyeTV HD unit (normally retails for $199), which allows Macintoshes to capture HD video from component sources. (Our original solution was built around composite video.) Sewell Direct, manufacturers of the $40 PC to TV converter Steve bought, provided a SW-4280 unit (retails for $79.95) that offers plug-and-play VGA-to-Component conversion at 720p (60fps) and 720i (30fps) as well as 480p.
Video extender powers iPad 2 wireless HDMI hack: The streaming adds 2 pounds
If you don't mind spending a bit of money and adding a couple of pounds of weight (and a two hour time limit) to your iPad, this video demonstrates that a simple HDMI wireless extender will allow you to transmit audio and video to a remote presentation system. After watching the clip, we hopped on Amazon to see what it might take to duplicate this hack; we found the HP Wireless TV Connect (the same product that appears to be in use) for US$150, and a similar Brite-View product for $160. Although you can choose a VGA extender over an HDMI one, you will not be able to transmit audio the way this solution does -- and you'll end up spending more. So how much should you expect to spend, beyond the iPad and receiving screen? The HP transmitter should work fine, although you can scale up to more professional HDMI transmitters for more dough if you need the quality. The Digital AV Adapter is $39, and the battery pack will add another $24 -- then you'll need a case to hold it all together and stronger arms to carry the iPad around. Still, for mobile presenters and trainers who absolutely have to roam around with iPad in hand, it's an intriguing and (relatively) economical hack.
Video: Replicate Smart Cover sleep mode with a simple magnet
If you're looking for that awesome Smart Cover functionality but don't want to spend forty bucks on a case for your new iPad, it's really simple to add a low-power magnet that will trigger the Smart Cover functionality. All you need is a small strip of flexible craft magnet, available at any local hobby shop, placed at the right position on your iPad. Although the actual trigger point is only about a half inch across, using a strip about two inches long helps guarantee the lock/unlock functionality without having to worry about making precise contact. Of course, it's up to you to add the magnet to an actual case, but that's nothing that a little mailing envelope and duct tape ingenuity can't mock up in a few minutes. You can watch a video demonstration after the break. TUAW reminds you that magnets plus electronic equipment normally do not mix. Use this how-to at your own risk.
How to inspect iOS's HTTP traffic without spending a dime
image credit: Matrix Rain by docmiller on deviant art, CC BY-SA 3.0 I recently had a problem. I was seeing intermittent issues with an iPhone app, Tapatalk, not working properly with a web forum hosted by a friend of mine. I knew there was a much better chance of getting the bug fixed if I could a) prove it was a bug and b) show the devs exactly where the problem was, but I was hampered by the usual problem: iOS apps are a bit of a black box, and I couldn't see what it was doing internally. However, like almost all network-aware iOS apps, this one was clearly using a web service to get data from the backend. So, all I needed to do was figure out a way to see the traffic on the web service. This is the sort of thing I used to do all the time when my day job was writing load testing scripts for big ecommerce sites, but the first time I'd had to do it on the Mac or from an iOS client. I managed to get it working after doing a little research. If you find yourself in need of a similar solution -- perhaps for iOS app development, reporting a bug or some other reason (or just plain hacker interest!) -- then click through for step-by-step instructions on how to intercept and view your iOS web traffic from any Mac running on the same network.
Bruce: Moving Mac computing to Apple TV output
What's Bruce? Aside from being a punchline to a rather silly Monty Python video, it's also an amusing little testbed that I've been putting together to see how far I can push the Apple TV's utility, whether for creating information kiosk installations or bringing rich information out from the office and into the living room. Bruce is basically an image server. The images served are generated on the Mac side of the world and pushed through to a vanilla, unjailbroken Apple TV. Bruce currently offers two modes: a date/time/weather display that updates in real time and a screenshot mode that pushes updates to the Apple TV every few seconds. The engine under Bruce's covers is essentially the same one that powers my AirFlick application, which allows you to push videos and photographs to Apple TV. Bruce plays a different role in that the focus isn't just on relaying pre-existing content but generating new content live. It's not just about creating smarter screen savers (which is, basically, what the weather report option is all about) -- it's also about thinking how to publish compelling information snippets to what is, otherwise, a passive public display. It's all about pushing information to the Apple TV from the computer, rather than pulling requests by the Apple TV user. This is not an unexplored arena by any means, but for just US$99 for the Apple TV, it's a newly affordable and hackable one. If you want to give Bruce a try, I threw a build up on my website for you to play with. I'm particularly interested in hearing from readers as to how you think the Macintosh/Apple TV relationship can grow and what kinds of rich information the Apple TV would benefit from receiving passively.
Dear Aunt TUAW: Will my jailbroken iPhone back up?
Dear Aunt TUAW, I want to jailbreak my 4th gen iPod touch, but there is something I'm unsure about. If I want to unjailbreak it (because of performance issues, etc.), is there any possible way for me to do that without losing all of my data? I have scoured the internet, and I haven't been able to come up with a concrete answer. Thanks for your help. Love & kissies, Your nephew, Luke
AirMedia Player for Windows: Stream from iOS to your Windows PC
We've been chronicling the fast evolution of AirPlay media players that allow owners of iOS 4.2 devices to stream media to their Macs and Linux machines. Now, from developer Apostolos Georgiadis comes word of AirMedia Player for Windows. The player requires Windows XP, Vista or 7, the Microsoft .NET framework 3.5 SP1 (available here), Bonjour for Windows (included with iTunes or the Bonjour Services for Windows) and QuickTime (available here). Once installed, users can stream video or music from their iPad, iPhone or iPod touch straight to a Windows PC. A short video showing the AirMedia Player for Windows in action is available on the next page. Looks like Apostolos has pulled his video; however, the app page is still up and it's been revised to version 1.0.6.
Screencast your Mac to Apple TV over AirPlay
That screen you're looking at there? It's not my Mac. It's my Apple TV. TUAW reader James Low wondered if you could stream your OS X screen using the screen:// feature of VLC along the lines of the instructions found on this blog post. I decided to test it out using the same method I described in my earlier DVD-to-Apple TV post. Instead of streaming from my DVD (namely via dvdread:///dev/rdisk5@1:3-), I substituted screen://, as follows. /Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC -vv screen:// --intf=rc '--sout=#transcode{vcodec=h264,vb=2048,acodec=mp4a,ab=192}:standard{mux=ts,dst=-,access=file}' | mediastreamsegmenter -f /Library/WebServer/Documents/stream -D It worked. All other instructions remain the same as from the DVD post. So what are the downsides? First, the image was a bit blurry due to the H.264 transcoding and the limited bit rate, but it wasn't too bad. It remained reasonably readable at all times. Second, there was a distinct lag between what was going on at the Mac and what was being shown on the Apple TV. Pausing the stream, like I did to take this screen shot, slightly increased that lag. On the bright side? Screencasting. From your Mac. To your Apple TV. I think that's pretty cool.
