By now we all know that with iOS 4.2 for iPod touch, iPhone, and iPad came AirPlay. AirPlay allows users to stream video (mostly, YouTube) from his or her iDevice, to the new Apple TV. Unfortunately, as interesting a concept as it may Appear, as with most things Apple really limited its use, hence, the aforementioned “mostly, YouTube” and “Apple TV.”

While there have been a few apps released for jailbreakers, one namely AirVideoEnabler, from Cydia, that allows for use with most 3^rd Party video players, prior to now, you could only stream to Apple’s Apple TV.

Since I learned of this feature around the time the first iOS 4.2 beta version was released, I immediately hit all the usual sources, Google, Bing, and so on to try and find out if I would be able to stream music to my Mac. The reoccurring answer was no.

I’ve then since learned that I am not alone in seeking this implementation of said feature. Many, many people have been asking me the same thing, and as a matter of fact, it was a major point for a friend of mine, who owns an iPhone 4. He decided since not many features were added for the latter of the iOS devices, as the update was primarily for the iPad, that since his iPhone would not yet be able to stream video to Mac, “Why bother updating?”

I am here to tell you today, that you can stream video to Mac from your iDevice (iOS 4.2+ only).

Not because Apple has allowed this, but rather because TUAW’s Erica Sadun reverse engineered AirPlay and has now found a simple way to make it work with your Mac, “AirPlayer.”

AirPlayer creates a custom Bonjour AirPlay service that in essence “pretends” to be an Apple TV. Bonjour, if you don’t know, is Apple’s networking program for allowing devices and applications to communicate using a LAN (Local Area Network), which is pretty much the same way the Apple TV pulls off AirPlay. It is said that it is quite likely that Windows PCs could support this also, since Apple offers Bonjour for Windows, however, Sadun states she likely will not be attempting a Windows build of this program in the near future.

If you are interested to get this alpha (AKA beta for all intents and purposes) and ad supported version for MAC OS X jump over to Sadun’s website. Just download the file named “airplayer-0.04.zip” and install. You are good to go. You do not have to be jailbroken in order to use this “hack” as it is installed on your Mac, not your iPhone. However, if you are jailbroken I do suggest downloading “AirVideoEnabler” and “AllPlay” from Cydia

I will state again that this is an early, (hence beta^) sort of proof-it-works release, and so it would be safe to expect a few bugs and the like.

That being said, I use airPlayer, in fact, I’m using it right now, and for me it works great. Let us know what you think in your comments!

For anyone curious to know, the iPhone on the screen is via iDemo.