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I am usually slow to upgrade but I jumped on this and iOS 18 immediately because of "iPhone Mirroring". I've only had it for a few minutes, but it's really nic

by trvr 2y ago

I am usually slow to upgrade but I jumped on this and iOS 18 immediately because of "iPhone Mirroring". I've only had it for a few minutes, but it's really nice!

sccxy 2y ago
> iPhone Mirroring is not available in your country or region.
- trvr 2y ago
  I'm not taking the bait on that one. ;-)
hollow-moe 2y ago
is it just what scrcpy has been doing for some years already ?
- jwells89 2y ago
  It forwards notifications to your Mac too, even when a mirroring session isn't active.
  - isodev 2y ago
    But that was already part of continuity or was it previously limited to user activities? It’s hilarious that Apple made such a big deal out of it and then failed to release it for everyone.
    - jwells89 2y ago
      NSUserActivity didn't forward notifications, it just provided a way to move whatever you were doing on your other Apple devices to the one you're currently using and only covered things that the dev specifically implemented. This works for all notifications from all apps.
      - isodev 2y ago
        Oh interesting! Does it mean that the content of these forwarded notifications goest through Apple servers then? With no way for the source app to prevent it?
        jwells89 2y ago
        I haven't picked it apart, but if it's like the other Continuity features it all takes place locally over bluetooth and ad-hoc wifi. There's a possibility that their servers are just sending the notifications to the user's Macs in the same push that sends them to the phone though.
  - pohuing 2y ago
    So what phone link has been doing for years. But I suppose with the integration Apple can do you can just open the notification on your mac? Phone link very unhelpfully bings the notifying app name...
    - mintplant 2y ago
      On supported devices (Samsung and OnePlus, off the top of my head), Phone Link can mirror apps to your PC and will open them up in this mode when you click a notification. There are some rough edges, like needing to manually unlock your phone—unless you do what I did and rig up a complicated Tasker flow to automate the process. This update makes jumping over to the Apple ecosystem surprisingly tempting, since Continuity with mirroring sounds like a more polished version of Phone Link. I can't imagine giving up my ThinkPad, though.
- paradox460 2y ago
  Yes but this time it was "invented" by Apple
cyberpunk 2y ago
Ah I really wanted this too but it seems like it's not available in the EU. Does anyone understand why? Is it apple having a flap about recent DMA/Whatever regulations they don't like or is there an actual technical reason why what's probably a fancy version of VNC can't work without breaching European regulations?
- jwells89 2y ago
  Only speculation, but it might be to try to avoid having to support mirroring for Android devices too.
- bri3d 2y ago
  It's DMA. Certainly part of it is punitive, but it makes sense, too - building and especially supporting interoperability for these protocols is a burden that they can avoid by not shipping features to the EU. They're free to change the key exchange, APIs, wire format, etc. without having to deal with documentation, key issuance, etc. outside of their walls. And, being forced to open up Screen Mirroring would reduce its value as a moat, since someone would presumably be able to build an Android client quickly and with no reverse engineering work.
  - threeseed 2y ago
    > supporting interoperability for these protocols is a burden Also an unprecedented and unacceptable privacy and security risk. You would be allowing third parties the ability to continuously record your iPhone's screen. Which includes websites you browse, apps you open, health information, text messages etc. And the Mac is so much open that you could do this, have a local model to transcribe it and ship it to a remote server without the user noticing. There isn't a government or advertising company on this planet that wouldn't want to get at this information.
    - amluto 2y ago
      > Also an unprecedented and unacceptable privacy and security risk. > You would be allowing third parties the ability to continuously record your iPhone's screen. Which includes websites you browse, apps you open, health information, text messages etc. > And the Mac is so much open that you could do this, have a local model to transcribe it and ship it to a remote server without the user noticing. MacOS is not secure in the way you would like to think it's secure. This is already risk. And Apple really could do this right: make screen mirroring use the DRM playback paths, and open up the API to trigger it to competitors (who would get precisely the same DRM-playback-pathed result of a screen mirror showing up in a window from which they cannot read). I don't really know why a competitor would want to compete here, but they could.
MBCook 2y ago
I’d love to be able to use that at work but since I’m still on an Intel Mac (waiting for upgrade cycle) I’m SOL.
kccqzy 2y ago
Can you elaborate on why it's nice? How do I do multi-touch gestures with a single cursor? Is the main benefit be able to use iPhone apps on a bigger screen? Can iPhone apps display more content (maybe let the app pretend it's being displayed on an iPad or at least a larger screen than the physical screen size)?
- dbbk 2y ago
  > How do I do multi-touch gestures with a single cursor? The same way you do them on Mac. With a trackpad.
  - kccqzy 2y ago
    But with a trackpad you cannot see what you are touching. You see a single cursor on the screen. If you touch two things on your iPhone you know exactly which two things you are manipulating. With a single cursor on the Mac, no matter how many fingers you use you only manipulate one thing. This seems to me a difficult challenge in mashing up the wildly different interaction paradigms. I'd love to see how Apple solves it in their new feature.
    - pohl 2y ago
      I'll give you an example, having used it: if you want to zoom something, it will take effect where the mouse pointer on the screen is.
    - dbbk 2y ago
      Okay? In what scenario is that an issue
      - kccqzy 2y ago
        Imagine a game that's supposed to played with a landscape orientation. Your left hand control (up/down/left/right) is located on the lower left corner. Your right hand control (A/B/X/Y) is located on the lower right corner. You are expected to touch two controls simultaneously.
andrewmcwatters 2y ago
It is surprisingly slow, though. Like, awfully slow. There's a very noticeable latency that's unacceptable for a local device sitting right next to the computer.
- rgovostes 2y ago
  Apple has been doing low latency screen mirroring for, I don’t know, a decade. If you find the latency unacceptable, consider looking into your network performance.
  - 627467 2y ago
    Ahhh "you're holding it wrong" argument
    - latexr 2y ago
      As someone who dislikes the “you’re holding it wrong” argument, I don’t think that’s what’s happening here. Your network latency is outside of Apple’s control.
  - seec 2y ago
    Great way to tell you have low standard and can't detect latency. The same thing has been said about the iPad Mirroring, expect it's effectively unusable for anyone half serious if you don't use the wired mode. For a quick tech demo, it's all fun and games, but when there is real shit to do, nobody wants to fight their tools.
    - pseudosaid 2y ago
      fix your network. i send a display to my ipad to run audio mixing in realtime for work. 30fps, but more importantly consistent pen input for control. been doing this for 3+ years regularly
      - seec 2y ago
Eric_WVGG 2y ago
It's kind of wild that it took Apple to make this feature before we could get a decent Instagram client on a laptop.
- nsonha 2y ago
  is that Apple's job, to make client app for X?
  - latexr 2y ago
    That’s not what your parent comment is saying. They’re commenting on how there’s no official Instagram app for Desktop, except now there kind of is: you use the mobile app on a mirror of the iPhone on the Desktop. That is “kind of wild” because it’s so roundabout. The comment criticises Instagram (and their lack of a Desktop app), not Apple.
newZWhoDis 2y ago
I was excited to use this, and confusingly it requires the attached phone to use the same Apple ID/iCloud account as the Mac! This makes it practically useless for developers.
dbmnt 2y ago
Let us know if you're actually using it in a week or so. (I tried it a couple of times in the beta. It is slow. It is clunky. It is an impractical way to interact with your iPhone.)
- seec 2y ago
  Well, it's basically VNC over Wifi with a custom layer for touch events and other special iOS cases, so yeah. VNC over wifi is worse than RDP'ing a server across a country if you have good wired fiber connection. But I guess in a pinch if you don't want to look for your iPhone and need a quick interaction. But I agree that in any case it's largely a gimmick and mainly something for marketing reasons around the ecosystem and all that jazz. It's just like the failed attempt at porting iOS/iPadOS apps to the Mac: makes for a great release announcement/keynote, in practice barely worth using.

by trvr 2y ago

I am usually slow to upgrade but I jumped on this and iOS 18 immediately because of "iPhone Mirroring". I've only had it for a few minutes, but it's really nice!

sccxy 2y ago

> iPhone Mirroring is not available in your country or region.

trvr 2y ago
I'm not taking the bait on that one. ;-)

hollow-moe 2y ago

is it just what scrcpy has been doing for some years already ?

jwells89 2y ago
It forwards notifications to your Mac too, even when a mirroring session isn't active.
- isodev 2y ago
  But that was already part of continuity or was it previously limited to user activities? It’s hilarious that Apple made such a big deal out of it and then failed to release it for everyone.
  - jwells89 2y ago
    NSUserActivity didn't forward notifications, it just provided a way to move whatever you were doing on your other Apple devices to the one you're currently using and only covered things that the dev specifically implemented. This works for all notifications from all apps.
    - isodev 2y ago
      Oh interesting! Does it mean that the content of these forwarded notifications goest through Apple servers then? With no way for the source app to prevent it?
      - jwells89 2y ago
        I haven't picked it apart, but if it's like the other Continuity features it all takes place locally over bluetooth and ad-hoc wifi. There's a possibility that their servers are just sending the notifications to the user's Macs in the same push that sends them to the phone though.
- pohuing 2y ago
  So what phone link has been doing for years. But I suppose with the integration Apple can do you can just open the notification on your mac? Phone link very unhelpfully bings the notifying app name...
  - mintplant 2y ago
    On supported devices (Samsung and OnePlus, off the top of my head), Phone Link can mirror apps to your PC and will open them up in this mode when you click a notification. There are some rough edges, like needing to manually unlock your phone—unless you do what I did and rig up a complicated Tasker flow to automate the process. This update makes jumping over to the Apple ecosystem surprisingly tempting, since Continuity with mirroring sounds like a more polished version of Phone Link. I can't imagine giving up my ThinkPad, though.
paradox460 2y ago
Yes but this time it was "invented" by Apple

cyberpunk 2y ago

Ah I really wanted this too but it seems like it's not available in the EU. Does anyone understand why? Is it apple having a flap about recent DMA/Whatever regulations they don't like or is there an actual technical reason why what's probably a fancy version of VNC can't work without breaching European regulations?

jwells89 2y ago
Only speculation, but it might be to try to avoid having to support mirroring for Android devices too.
bri3d 2y ago
It's DMA. Certainly part of it is punitive, but it makes sense, too - building and especially supporting interoperability for these protocols is a burden that they can avoid by not shipping features to the EU. They're free to change the key exchange, APIs, wire format, etc. without having to deal with documentation, key issuance, etc. outside of their walls. And, being forced to open up Screen Mirroring would reduce its value as a moat, since someone would presumably be able to build an Android client quickly and with no reverse engineering work.
- threeseed 2y ago
  > supporting interoperability for these protocols is a burden Also an unprecedented and unacceptable privacy and security risk. You would be allowing third parties the ability to continuously record your iPhone's screen. Which includes websites you browse, apps you open, health information, text messages etc. And the Mac is so much open that you could do this, have a local model to transcribe it and ship it to a remote server without the user noticing. There isn't a government or advertising company on this planet that wouldn't want to get at this information.
  - amluto 2y ago
    > Also an unprecedented and unacceptable privacy and security risk. > You would be allowing third parties the ability to continuously record your iPhone's screen. Which includes websites you browse, apps you open, health information, text messages etc. > And the Mac is so much open that you could do this, have a local model to transcribe it and ship it to a remote server without the user noticing. MacOS is not secure in the way you would like to think it's secure. This is already risk. And Apple really could do this right: make screen mirroring use the DRM playback paths, and open up the API to trigger it to competitors (who would get precisely the same DRM-playback-pathed result of a screen mirror showing up in a window from which they cannot read). I don't really know why a competitor would want to compete here, but they could.

MBCook 2y ago

I’d love to be able to use that at work but since I’m still on an Intel Mac (waiting for upgrade cycle) I’m SOL.

kccqzy 2y ago

Can you elaborate on why it's nice? How do I do multi-touch gestures with a single cursor? Is the main benefit be able to use iPhone apps on a bigger screen? Can iPhone apps display more content (maybe let the app pretend it's being displayed on an iPad or at least a larger screen than the physical screen size)?

dbbk 2y ago
> How do I do multi-touch gestures with a single cursor? The same way you do them on Mac. With a trackpad.
- kccqzy 2y ago
  But with a trackpad you cannot see what you are touching. You see a single cursor on the screen. If you touch two things on your iPhone you know exactly which two things you are manipulating. With a single cursor on the Mac, no matter how many fingers you use you only manipulate one thing. This seems to me a difficult challenge in mashing up the wildly different interaction paradigms. I'd love to see how Apple solves it in their new feature.
  - pohl 2y ago
    I'll give you an example, having used it: if you want to zoom something, it will take effect where the mouse pointer on the screen is.
  - dbbk 2y ago
    Okay? In what scenario is that an issue
    - kccqzy 2y ago
      Imagine a game that's supposed to played with a landscape orientation. Your left hand control (up/down/left/right) is located on the lower left corner. Your right hand control (A/B/X/Y) is located on the lower right corner. You are expected to touch two controls simultaneously.

andrewmcwatters 2y ago

It is surprisingly slow, though. Like, awfully slow. There's a very noticeable latency that's unacceptable for a local device sitting right next to the computer.

rgovostes 2y ago
Apple has been doing low latency screen mirroring for, I don’t know, a decade. If you find the latency unacceptable, consider looking into your network performance.
- 627467 2y ago
  Ahhh "you're holding it wrong" argument
  - latexr 2y ago
    As someone who dislikes the “you’re holding it wrong” argument, I don’t think that’s what’s happening here. Your network latency is outside of Apple’s control.
- seec 2y ago
  Great way to tell you have low standard and can't detect latency. The same thing has been said about the iPad Mirroring, expect it's effectively unusable for anyone half serious if you don't use the wired mode. For a quick tech demo, it's all fun and games, but when there is real shit to do, nobody wants to fight their tools.
  - pseudosaid 2y ago
    fix your network. i send a display to my ipad to run audio mixing in realtime for work. 30fps, but more importantly consistent pen input for control. been doing this for 3+ years regularly
    - seec 2y ago

Eric_WVGG 2y ago

It's kind of wild that it took Apple to make this feature before we could get a decent Instagram client on a laptop.

nsonha 2y ago
is that Apple's job, to make client app for X?
- latexr 2y ago
  That’s not what your parent comment is saying. They’re commenting on how there’s no official Instagram app for Desktop, except now there kind of is: you use the mobile app on a mirror of the iPhone on the Desktop. That is “kind of wild” because it’s so roundabout. The comment criticises Instagram (and their lack of a Desktop app), not Apple.

newZWhoDis 2y ago

I was excited to use this, and confusingly it requires the attached phone to use the same Apple ID/iCloud account as the Mac! This makes it practically useless for developers.

dbmnt 2y ago

Let us know if you're actually using it in a week or so. (I tried it a couple of times in the beta. It is slow. It is clunky. It is an impractical way to interact with your iPhone.)

seec 2y ago
Well, it's basically VNC over Wifi with a custom layer for touch events and other special iOS cases, so yeah. VNC over wifi is worse than RDP'ing a server across a country if you have good wired fiber connection. But I guess in a pinch if you don't want to look for your iPhone and need a quick interaction. But I agree that in any case it's largely a gimmick and mainly something for marketing reasons around the ecosystem and all that jazz. It's just like the failed attempt at porting iOS/iPadOS apps to the Mac: makes for a great release announcement/keynote, in practice barely worth using.