Apple has made even more improvements to AirPlay within iOS 8 as it now allows devices to be compatible can make direct connections to each other (peer-to-peer) for the transmission of content. This eliminates the dependence that the AirPlay protocol had previously to depend on a Wi-Fi or fixed network, this having been one of its greatest limitations.
In previous versions of iOS including the previous 7.1.2, all devices had to be connected to the same Wi-Fi network to participate in the AirPlay streaming, that is, you could not stream music from your iPad to your iPhone while you go by public transport for example or transmit video in a hotel that does not have Wi-Fi connection.
But this is over in iOS 8, now AirPlay catches up with other technologies from streaming as DLNA by allowing direct connections from different devices. This way your Mac, iPhone, Apple TV or other devices with AirPlay can communicate with each other without intermediaries. In turn, this has an impact on AirPlay becoming a more agile and more reliable protocol, being great news for those who use it to play different games on iOS by showing them on their television.
However, not everything is as beautiful as you might think at first and is that to be able to use this "new" version of AirPlay without Wi-Fi or fixed network in between, we will have to have a Mac from 2012 onwards, a device iOS with A6 chip onwards and Apple TV must be third generation but this being the last model that went on sale with slight changes compared to the first batch, that is, the A1469 model.
From my point of view, these limitations do not seem logical or justifiable, since devices much less powerful on other platforms can make use of DLNA without any problem and this movement by Apple responds to a marketing strategy rather than a actual need due to hardware limitations. According to Apple's support document, we can read:
AirPlay under Peer-to-peer requires a Mac device (2012 or later) with OS X 10.10 or an iOS device (2012 or later) with iOS 8 and a 1469rd generation Apple TV rev A (model A7.0) running Apple software TV XNUMX.
Hello Thanks for the article, but it is not entirely clear to me where it is in benefit….
Before, all the devices (Mac, Apple TV ...) had to be within the same Wi-Fi network and now there is no need for any fixed or Wi-Fi network in between since the connection is made "directly" between them for that matter say it.
Hello everyone. I just updated ios 8 on my ipad 2 and I cannot access by any means with my apple tv, the mirror mode option is no longer there ... What do the apple ones mean that if you don't have an A6 chip, I won't be able to connect to my apple tv of 2 generation ever again?
Marcos, restart the Apple TV and voila.
Interesting for Apple TV but isn't it for AirPort Express? Both work basically the same, but nobody talks about it.