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How-To: Stream Video From iOS to Mac Using AirPlay
Thanks to the excellent Erica Sadun, you can now quite easily set up your Mac to receive AirPlay streaming from an iOS device. She goes into the how and why behind her utility, dubbed AirPlayer, over at TUAW, but we’ve got the quick-and-dirty on how to get it up and running right now on your favorite Apple computer.

Be warned that this software is still a very early alpha build, so things might not go exactly as planned. That’s the only caveat, though, since you won’t need a jailbroken device to do this. Legit iOS 4.2 devices should work just fine. Just follow these simple steps to get AirPlayer working on your Mac:
1. Download AirPlayer-0.01.zip (version number will change with updates) from Erica’s website.
2. Unzip the file, then drag AirPlayer to your Applications folder.
3. Double-click AirPlayer to start the utility.
4. Click the large “Start AirPlay Service” button.
5. On your iOS device, start playing a video in the native YouTube app, or in the Videos app.
6. Click the AirPlay icon (white rectangle with arrow, shown below) and select the receiver with your Mac’s network name.
Your video should start playing on your Mac. During testing, it worked fine for me right after installation, but later required a computer restart to work again. That’s to be expected with such an early build. Another limitation is that music and photo sharing don’t seem to work with the current build.

Though as I mentioned you don’t need to have a jailbroken device for this to work, AirPlayer used in tandem with utilities like AirVideoEnabler will let you stream much more content from many more apps than Apple currently officially allows. Whether or not your device is jailbroken, AirPlayer is a nice addition to any Mac/iOS setup, and yet another example of a user-created solution to a shortcoming Apple should have addressed to begin with.

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A Request: Make Notes First Official Mac App Store Offering
Apple is gearing up to launch its Mac App Store sometime between now and the end of January. Preview screenshots suggest that Apple’s iWork apps will be among the first available for purchase in the new software marketplace. iWork is great, but I’d like to see a more modest offering: Notes.app.

Notes has come a long way since its introduction, due entirely to only two feature changes. The first was the introduction of the ability to choose from two other font options: Chalkboard and Helvetica. It’s a small change, but it does make the app easier on the eyes. The second, and more important, feature addition was the addition of over-the-air Notes syncing via MobileMe.

The new syncing feature means the notes you see on your iPad will be the same as you see on your iPhone or iPod touch, so long as you have a MobileMe account and Notes syncing enabled. It also means that notes you create will get pushed out automatically to Mail.app in OS X. It’s this last part of the equation that needs work.

Pushing Notes content to Mail is a lovely stop-gap solution, and it even lets you edit your notes on your Mac fairly easily. (Just type in a selected note in Mail’s message viewing pane, or double-click to pop out the message.) As the many Dropbox-connected plain text editors in the App Store demonstrate, users seem to want to be able to create simple documents that are automatically shared and instantly editable across all their connected devices. Apple’s current method of syncing notes accomplishes this, but just barely, and with considerable problems.

Notes in Mail are editable, as mentioned, but if you change font or start playing with formatting you can get some very screwed up results on your iOS device. And editing in Mail’s message viewer or a modified email compose window isn’t the most enjoyable of user experiences. Here’s what I suggest as an alternative: a standalone Notes.app for OS X, and a few changes in how it works on iOS hardware.

On the desktop, I’d like to see something more like the iPad/iPhone app, a standalone program that can be full-screened and provides a few more editing options. I’m fine with keeping the font choices to three, especially if it alleviates the formatting oddities that currently affect Notes. I’d love a way to change the color of the background “paper,” though, and in the iOS versions, too.

Finally, as Charles recently suggested, either turn on free MobileMe for all users, or just make Notes syncing one of the features available to all users. It’s a small thing, but it could vastly improve the experience of users with both Mac and iOS devices. You could actually use it as a remote whiteboard for communicating with family members while away from home. It would act as yet another buying incentive, and one that encourages multiple device ownership.

Apple might worry that a more powerful Notes would impact sales of Pages and other iOS apps, but I’m not asking for a feature-rich document editor. I just want an ever-so slightly more flexible plain text editor that automatically syncs between my Macs and iPhone/iPad. Apple’s already 98 percent of the way there, I’d just like to see Cupertino go all the way on this one.

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Report: Mobile Applications Revenue Set to Skyrocket
Research firm International Data Corporation (IDC) predicts in a new report that based on current trends, sales of mobile apps will be a $35 billion industry by 2014. That massive boost, which represents a compound annual growth rate of 60 percent, will see app downloads climb from the 10.9 billion that took place this year to 76.9 billion in 2014.

IDC’s report, the short title of which is The “Appification” of Everything, predicts that apps will be the means by which the connected home operates in 2011 and beyond. That means smartphones, media players and tablets, as well as emerging app device categories like connected TVs and home theater streaming media boxes, and even further, into connected appliances and beyond. As mobile devices become more and more able to connect to a range of other devices, the mobile app will become more and more central to our daily lives. As IDC VP of Mobile and Wireless Research Scott Ellison puts it:

Mobile app developers will ‘appify’ just about every interaction you can think of in your physical and digital worlds. The extension of mobile apps to every aspect of our personal and business lives will be one of the hallmarks of the new decade with enormous opportunities for virtually every business sector.

Apple won’t be the only company to benefit from this growing wave of app development, but it will be at the forefront. While its competitors have managed to gain a foothold in the mobile app arena, the iTunes App Store created by Apple is still far and away the market leader in terms of reach, library, revenue and downloads. iOS is still killing Android in worldwide OS market share based on web usage, despite Android closing the gap at home. The App Store boasts well over 300,000 apps, while the Google marketplace reportedly has just over 100,000 at last count. The gap has narrowed significantly, but that’s still three times as many apps.

Recent evidence suggests that Android’s meteoric rise may be slowing. In terms of ad impression, Google’s mobile OS hit a lull recently as it ran up against Apple’s revamped iOS line up, bolstered by the release of version 4.x software across all devices. Most importantly, developer interest still seems to be strongest in iOS devices.

If apps are the future, then so is Apple. When the Mac App Store is introduced sometime in the next two months, it’ll provide cross-platform software sales opportunities that will have still more developers lining up to fill Apple’s library. With $35 billion in revenue potentially on the line, there’s little doubt in my mind that we’ll see them unlock the Apple TV’s hidden app potential next.

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CNN Comes to the iPad, iPhone Version Goes Free
It’s a little late getting here, but today, CNN introduced its iPad app. The app is free, and features a unique user interface custom-designed for the iPad’s larger screen. Simultaneous with the iPad app’s release, CNN is making its existing iPhone app free, and introducing live breaking news video to the international version.

CNN seems to have been watching and learning prior to this iPad release, judging from the UI design the news organization came up with. It looks a little like Pulse, the popular iPad newsreader, and a bit like Flipboard, too. The emphasis, at least in the default photo-collage view, is on the visual, with headlines acting as captions to bright, high-res photos. You can also switch to the much less flashy list view, or see all the stories as a slideshow, with a single high-res photo taking up the whole iPad screen at a time with a headline and full story link at the bottom.

The interface is nice, and a pleasure to navigate, though advertisements that seem awkwardly thrown in as an afterthought do draw the eye a bit too much. There are some spacing issues with text in the inline comment display on the main screen in photo-collage view, but it’s likely a problem that will only bother design-focused users.

The CNN app does pack a ton of great features, and puts a strong emphasis on social networking and interaction, something that sets it apart from many of its competitors. As mentioned, there’s a box on the home screen featuring user comments on the most discussed article of the day, and you can easily share stories by Facebook, Twitter or email. You can also expand comments on a story in a column that takes up half the screen, while the story remains visible on the left, which strikes me as a much better way to encourage engagement than the traditional “comments follow the post” way of doing things on the web.

Live video and hourly CNN radio updates are accessible via buttons at the top of the app’s interface, as is access to your CNN.com profile, which is required for commenting. Both video and audio quality during my testing were fantastic for those features, though I did experience some sync issues when viewing pre-recorded video associated with some of the articles. Also, video forces a full-screen viewer, while I’d prefer it to just play in place above the article, with the option to switch to full screen if desired.

CNN may be late to the party, but the fact that it brought a unique spin on the standard iPad newsreader app makes it worth waiting for. Check it out (or just watch CNN’s official promotional video below if you don’t have access to your iPad) and let us know what you think.

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