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ARCHIVED FORUM -- March 2012 to February 2022
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This is the second Archived Forum which was active between 1st March 2012 and 23rd February 2022

 

Much ado ... about nothing ?

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This post has 12 Replies | 3 Followers

elephant
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elephant Posted: Mon, Jul 30 2012 11:32 AM

This past weekend I upgraded to Mountain Lion - like a few others.

I can verify that LinkPlayer 2 worked just fine (except quitting has resulted in a spinning beach ball); that my charity (World Community Grid) required a new, beta, version; and that GIMP (which I use for shrinking pictures for Beoworld Smile) requires a download of X11 software Sad.

But the main reason for being excited about Mountain Lion has turned out to be a flop on one or one & a half fronts.

Firstly it turned out that most of our laptops can't Airplay to the ATVs !!!!  Seems Airplay on the Mac requires a specific, more recent/modern INTEL graphics chip set *sigh* 

So my son simply spent $10 to buy himself Air Parrot and is not even bother (so far) with upgrading to ML.  Meanwhile I paid $20 and did not get what I wanted.

The "half worked" is that audio AirPlay does work at the system level.  Yes, iTunes on the Mac had supported Airplay for some time, but now I could do it at a system level.

BUT, my first tests were inconclusively inferior.  Now at the time our WiFi network was quite busy so that may be the reason why the audio signal was choppy and clearly needing buffering.  However 5 seconds later I reverted to iTunes AIrplay and it worked like a dream !

And using iTunes Airplay results in nice cover art displays - where as Airplay at the system level "of course" does not work at the track level.

Then overnight I remembered Philippe & Vienna's tutorials on Airplay and now I wonder whether the quality of the signal processing varies significantly between iTunes direct versus iTunes via the system's layer.

Any thoughts people ?

 

BeoNut since '75

moxxey
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moxxey replied on Mon, Jul 30 2012 12:03 PM

Personally, I cannot see how it's possible to see be angry/disappointed over a years worth of development....for $20. Just can't fathom that.

Sure, some older Mac's can't use the Airplay streaming feature, but that was mentioned and warned multiple times over the Apple website and various Apple-related news sites.

You bought much more than just Airplay functionality for $20.

I'm happy, for the money. You could spend a lot more on previous Windows "upgrades". If I go out now and buy Windows 7, you can easily spend £100 on the upgrade alone. Ok, Windows 8 will be cheaper, but traditionally an operating system upgrade isn't $20.

Hell, $20 barely covers 3 pints of beer these days.

joeyboygolf
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I've just read these posts twice.......................and you think we should all bin our windows laptops!!!!

Regards Graham

elephant
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elephant replied on Mon, Jul 30 2012 12:33 PM

moxxey:

Personally, I cannot see how it's possible to see be angry/disappointed over a years worth of development....for $20. Just can't fathom that.

Sure, some older Mac's can't use the Airplay streaming feature, but that was mentioned and warned multiple times over the Apple website and various Apple-related news sites.

You bought much more than just Airplay functionality for $20.

I'm happy, for the money. You could spend a lot more on previous Windows "upgrades". If I go out now and buy Windows 7, you can easily spend £100 on the upgrade alone. Ok, Windows 8 will be cheaper, but traditionally an operating system upgrade isn't $20.

Hell, $20 barely covers 3 pints of beer these days.

Hi, I agree that compared to Windows it's a bargain.

But for whatever reason I had not seen the commentary until I found it did not work.

Since this was the only feature that I wanted in the list of 200 that have been added I am a little disappointed.

The main reason for the post though was to try to dig deeper into whether there are audio quality differences between the two paths.

And to add that LinkPlayer 2's preferences now recognise the existence of the ATVs Big Smile

BeoNut since '75

elephant
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elephant replied on Mon, Jul 30 2012 12:37 PM

joeyboygolf:

I've just read these posts twice.......................and you think we should all bin our windows laptops!!!!

To each his own Smile I am not sure I have ever been so bold as to say anyone should bin their windows laptop, I have only remarked that I find my Mac more pleasurable and less stressful - but hey, what do I use it for ?

- Beoworld

- emails

- itunes

- Surfing

So clearly not a heavy duty power user - not anymore ... my days of running a windows server that hosted scans of B&O magazines and catalogues are long gone 

BeoNut since '75

beojeff
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beojeff replied on Mon, Jul 30 2012 12:42 PM

Also, the updated Safari removed the option to view an "Activity" window, which was an easy way to safe flash videos to one's computer. There's a work-around turning on the "Develop" menu tab via "Preferences," but that method is more cumbersome. 

Flappo
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Flappo replied on Mon, Jul 30 2012 3:05 PM

I've got a mac pro and can't run mountain lion for some bizarre reason.

Apparently it's not powerful enough. Lol. Whatever.

Paul W
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Paul W replied on Mon, Jul 30 2012 4:04 PM

Oh i'm definitely bold enough to advise everyone who owns a Windows computer to bin it! :)

 

elephant
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elephant replied on Mon, Jul 30 2012 6:30 PM

beojeff:

Also, the updated Safari removed the option to view an "Activity" window, which was an easy way to safe flash videos to one's computer. There's a work-around turning on the "Develop" menu tab via "Preferences," but that method is more cumbersome. 

Since I did not know about it I shall not miss it Big Smile

But I do miss hitting the [ <= ] button to go back to the Beoworld list of posts ... now I have to do a quick flick of two fingers Big Smile

And for some reason "all" (e.g. from mail) new open windows resulted in tabbed panels rather than separate windows - whuch I keep forgetting so when I close what I think is a separate window I loose the lot ... and the "you are closing multiple tabs| warning is now silent

BeoNut since '75

PhilLondon
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elephant:
Then overnight I remembered Philippe & Vienna's tutorials on Airplay and now I wonder whether the quality of the signal processing varies significantly between iTunes direct versus iTunes via the system's layer.

I read that for Video Airplay, when you play a video in iTunes, it takes over the "system" video mirroring over airplay, to only send the video.

So I suspect Apple may be doing the same with audio. Which would mean that there is no real difference.

Beoworld app with direct photo upload and emoticons.

PhilLondon
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elephant:
But I do miss hitting the [ <= ] button to go back to the Beoworld list of posts ... now I have to do a quick flick of two fingers

You can recreate this shortcut in System Preference > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Application Shortcuts > + 

Beoworld app with direct photo upload and emoticons.

PhilLondon
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I miss the RSS feature of Safari. Gone completely. And I can't find the perfect RSS reader... Might have to write one ;-)

Beoworld app with direct photo upload and emoticons.

moxxey
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moxxey replied on Mon, Jul 30 2012 9:56 PM

Phil, Reeder (for Mac) is decent. Shareware, but worth a purchase. I use it most days to track tech news feeds.

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