reflection

Reflection + Keynote = iOS demoing awsm sauce /  by Paulo Fierro

I just bought Reflection about 20 minutes ago and its awesome. It allows you to AirPlay mirror your iPhone 4S or iPad 2 to any Mac running Snow Leopard or later over WiFi. This is fantastic because in the past we had three options:

  1. Use the Simulator, but there are certain features (gestures, accelerometer, etc) that are hard or impossible to demo. Yes there may be tools to help us with some of them, but its a pain
  2. Set up some sort of camera rig to film what it is we're demoing. The nicest one I've seen is Heiko Behrens' CamHolder. I saw one of his earlier prototypes at Beyond Tellerand last year and its a great idea, but it means extra stuff to carry.
  3. Bring an Apple TV with you, hope the projector supports HDMI or buy an HDMI to DVI/VGA converter and AirPlay mirror to that. But then there's the issue of swapping displays, the time lag while swapping and hoping the projector is up to task. And you have to bring it with you.

Those days are long gone! This is what I will be doing in the future:

Step 1: Set up Reflection

Download the app, install and run it. Now ensure your Mac and iOS device are on the same WiFi network. If there is no WiFi available, create a wireless network on your Mac or share the wired connection. Now connect your device to this newly created network.

airplay-1.jpg
airplay-2.jpg

On your iOS device, double tap the home button, scroll all the way to the left and tap the AirPlay button. Select your Mac from the list of available options and select the Mirroring option.

You should now see a mirror image of the iOS device on your Mac. Finally enter full screen mode (Device > Enter Full Screen) or press CMD+F. Reflection will go into its own full screen space thing.

Step 2: Set up Keynote

Open up Keynote and any presentation. Go to Preferences > Slideshow and enable "Allow Expose, Dashboard and others to use screen".

Step 3: Awesome

Now for the fun part. Enter full screen mode in Keynote and then hit Play to start the presentation. Three finger horizontal swipe on your trackpad to swap to the Reflection app, showing your iOS device in full screen. Three finger swipe back to go back to your presentation.

How freaking cool is that? No swapping displays, no lag, no lugging extra kit with you, just ultra-smooth swipy goodness.

Yeah, I like this a lot.

PS: I have only tested this on Mountain Lion. I assume it works on Lion, no idea about Snow Leopard.

Update: Mike confirms it works on Snow Leopard in the comments. Wicked!