Adding AirPlay to your app could make it that much more useful and give it an edge against similar apps. It can help to clear up clutter around a home, can give presentations some flare, and can even aid in important planning processes.

Around the house, users will find that having just one device for all of their media will help to clear up clutter. Entertainment becomes simple and costs drop as the need for extraneous devices such as DVD players dissipates. As a result of fewer devices, the number of wires needed drops. All these advantages can also be useful if a user wished to throw any sort of party. Music and videos become easy to maintain and accidents caused by wires lying around no longer are a problem. Having so many benefits and few restrictions means that any app that included AirPlay support would appeal more to users interested in convenience around the house.

Many schools and businesses like to have support for apple devices as they help to simplify many processes. Presentations are made easier with AirPlay since users can simply stream whatever media is necessary whenever they wish and with a high degree of control. In a school for example, students or teachers can whip out their ipod or ipad, begin streaming media and have a smooth, seamless presentation, improving quality of learning, classroom atmosphere, and student grades. Another possible situation where an AirPlay feature would be useful in a presentation is in a business setting. Presenting products to potential customers can be made more effective by including some form of visual aid; this is where AirPlay comes in. AirPlay can make it simple for the presenter by giving him or her more control directly from an iPod Touch or iPad and can make it more pleasing and interesting for potential customers. Clearly, any app with AirPlay support can be an asset to large businesses and schools.

Diagrams are used in many cases in industry; architects use them to represent plans, manufacturers decipher them to get specifications for products, and even doctors use them in the form of X-rays and the like. In many cases, the diagrams are quite voluminous and clutter workspace. What if all of the jumble could be removed? If one could get all of the diagrams into digital format, then users could use AirPlay to display diagrams on large screens or even on projector screens. Disorder would be minimized and more power would be given to the user(s); the power to expand diagrams or focus on specific parts. This would improve productivity and so make the app more appealing to large corporations and other industrial work settings.

Urban Apps is the owner of an app known as Ambiance. Ambiance is a highly rated and popular app even to the extent that Apple included it in every demo iPhone in the Apple Store and also in the app store. It has been set on several lists such as the “Staff Favorites” list and the “What’s Hot” list. Urban Apps has announced that their newest release (v 3.1) of Ambiance will have AirPlay support.

The Frontier Design Group is the proud owner of the iShred app. iShred has been given high ratings by several different groups such as MacWorld, TouchMyApps, and Sizzilla. In a review MacWorld says, “Of all the guitar apps available on the App Store, Frontier Design’s iShred is my favorite.” Included in the release of iShred 1.3 is AirPlay functionality.

Having AirPlay functionality in an app means that more users will find convenience and simplicity in using it. This will help to increase sales as convenience and simplicity greatly increase the appeal of marketed items to the general public. People will find that the app tremendously simplifies their lives and will spread the news, increasing the attractiveness of the app.

DrewCrawfordApps is in a great position to help you out with integrating AirPlay into your app. Our specialized developers have the technical savvy and ingenuity to do this. Being on the cutting edge of iOS development, we have helped countless others and are willing to help you improve your app by adding AirPlay functionality to it. Get in touch today so that we can help to make your app a booming success.

However, an important feature is missing.  It’s been widely reported that the 10.6.5 beta builds allowed a Mac to share any printer over the network as an AirPrint printer to be used with an iPad or iPhone, but it looks like this feature may have been removed from the production build of OS X 10.6.5 released today, meaning the feature may be delayed.

In practice, this may mean AirPrint will be limited (at least initially) to only five HP ePrint printers.

Obviously this would be a pretty big blow to AirPrint’s usability right out of the gate, and would also affect many apps that we have either added AirPrint support to, or are in the process of adding AirPrint support to.  While obviously we can’t discuss Apple Confidential information, we’re doing the best we can to make sure Apple understands that this is a very important feature to us and to our clients, and one that will significantly contribute to AirPrint’s viability as a platform.