Airplay is a simple way to send sound to speakers or mirror or extend your display to your big screen tv. Want to share those family photos during a party without going through all the complications of burning a DVD? Simply start the slideshow on your compatible Mac or iPad and mirror your display. It’s a great way to get people to look up from their screens, as well — instead of playing their racing game or trivia game on their iPad or iPhone, have it up on the TV for everyone to see. (If your family is like mine, this will lead to lots of mocking and trash talking, of course).

Airplay is easy to use, but we get a couple of common questions that we thought we’d mention here.

Q) My computer is running 10.8 but is from 2010; what do I do?

A) You can still mirror or extend your display, but it’s going to require a third party program. We’ve had good luck with AirParrot (linked), and I’ve used it on my own older computers with no problem. It even lets you download a trial to make sure it will work with your setup.

Q) I don’t want to mirror my entire computer’s display, but my home theatre sound is AMAZING. How can I send just music?

A) No problem. iTunes has Airplay built in — just look for the symbol on the upper right hand side of the iTunes window and choose your Airplay device.

Q) But I’m listening to Pandora/Spotify/Rdio, not iTunes!

A) Ok, still no problem, but a bit more work — you’ll once again need a third party program to enable this. I recommend Airfoil, which lets you choose your source (if you were listening to Pandora on the web, for example, you’d choose Safari) and your speakers. If you have more than one Airplay enabled device in the house, you can play to multiple here as well.

Have more questions or are a bit confused about how all this works? Well, we’ve got you covered. Come in today to see how it works!