[trvr]

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!

[cyberpunk]

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?

[quitit]

They haven't given a detailed reason, but pundits who have paid more attention to the DMA suggest that it's because the feature does not allow 3rd parties to offer the same integration.

While the DMA's changes to the app store received the most publicity, the DMA mandates for modularity for any feature where a home-advantage could be granted by the gate keeper. Since features like AI and screen mirroring are already established markets with competitors, Apple offering these as built in functions could be interpreted as actions against the DMA unless they offer a way for others to tap into it via APIs.

However this is just a guess. There is a cynical rhetoric that it's to punish the EU but this is a pretty flimsy idea since it's clear that Apple is relying on these new features to propel upgrades to M series macs and new iPhones. Currently there exists no tentpole feature for people in the EU to upgrade. The other reason is that it's pretty tenuous to think that the EU masses will rise up against the EC because they don't have screen mirroring or image playground.

[bri3d]

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.

[isodev]

Apple doesn’t say. I also think a Remote Desktop with fancy branding shouldn’t be hard to release safely and even allow 3rd party integrations.

[jwells89]

Only speculation, but it might be to try to avoid having to support mirroring for Android devices too.

[samatman]

Pretty simple really. The EU can't fine Apple for not doing business in EU countries, including not rolling out a feature. But if they do roll out a feature, EU has decided it can fine them 20% of global revenue if it isn't just how the EU wants it to be.

Not doing so only costs Apple whatever marginal business they expect to lose in EU for not offering this or that feature. So I'd expect more of this going forward.

[andrewmcwatters]

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]

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.

[hollow-moe]

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

[jwells89]

It forwards notifications to your Mac too, even when a mirroring session isn't active.

[paradox460]

Yes but this time it was "invented" by Apple

[newZWhoDis]

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.

[kccqzy]

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)?

[argsnd]

95% of my phone usage doesn’t require multi touch gestures and now I can do that from my laptop when I’m already working in it

[jonhohle]

At least in Sonoma, Screen Time requests crash Messages, fail to work properly on iPadOS, but work fine on iPhone. Now I can approve requests without having to dig my phone out my pocket. A small convenience, but I can’t expect them to fix Screen Time on macOS any time soon.

[dbbk]

> How do I do multi-touch gestures with a single cursor?

The same way you do them on Mac. With a trackpad.

[glitch003]

same way you do it in the iphone simulator - you hold the option key and the mouse button, and move the mouse up or down to simulate pinch to zoom.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1696762?sortBy=rank

[dbmnt]

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]

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.

[sccxy]

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

[trvr]

I'm not taking the bait on that one. ;-)

[Eric_WVGG]

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]

is that Apple's job, to make client app for X?

[MBCook]

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.