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One of the many features that set Twitter ablaze with the announcement of iOS 5 back at WWDC was AirPlay mirroring. AirPlay had already been around for a while, and in its initial form allowed iOS devices to steam video to an Apple TV or audio to an Airport Express. Mirroring, as the name implies, mirrors the current display of your device on whatever video display you've got your Apple TV plugged into. Crafty developers have even figured out how to output a different image than the one that's being displayed on your iOS device, which is really cool in action.

Initially, AirPlay mirroring required an iPad 2 and when it was first unveiled it was never very clear if or when other iOS would have the same capabilities– Especially since Apple has made it abundantly clear that they still consider the Apple TV a "hobby" of theirs. Well, with the release of the iPhone 4S, which also comes packed with AirPlay mirroring support, it seems reasonable to assume that all future iOS devices will have the capability.

Unfortunately, without some killer software utilizing the functionality, it sort of seems like a gimmick– At least, so far. The selection of games that embrace the mirroring functionality in interesting ways are remarkably sparse. So far the best of the bunch seems to be Chopper 2 [99¢]:

As cool as AirPlay is, its main drawback for gaming seems to be a ever-so-slight but totally perceptible lag. Piloting the helicopter in the Chopper games seems to be almost intentionally floaty (it is a helicopter, after all). This seems to mask the lag very well, and using the iOS device screen for input is done well.

Comparatively, Real Racing 2 [$4.99 / HD] does much more with the actual iOS device screen, but the previously mentioned slight lag in controls makes just playing the game normally without the Apple TV seem much more fun. The multiplayer mode does feel like the future though:

Aside from the small bit of lag, it works really well, almost surprisingly so. I downloaded the game on my iPad 2, flipped on AirPlay mirroring, and hosted a local game. Seeing the same video output on my iPhone being routed through the iPad 2 and rendered on my TV wirelessly seemed like magic, especially as more iOS devices joined the race.

I'm so incredibly torn on this functionality right now. The potential it has is just incredible, especially in future devices and/or developer optimization of these games reduces the lag between the iOS device and the Apple TV. Once this delay goes from barely noticeable but always there to non-existent, I think it'll be totally easy to get onboard, and an Apple TV might even be required hardware for the dedicated iOS gamer to own. Right now though, I wouldn't encourage anyone to rush out and buy an Apple TV specifically to try out this new Real Racing 2 mode.

That being said, the Apple TV is a really cool device that is well worth the $100 if you've got an HDMI port on your TV and don't already have an Xbox 360, PS3, or even something like a Roku Streaming Player hooked up to it. If you've got an A5-powered iOS device, being able to do some neat things with an incredibly small (right now, anyway) library of games is just icing on the cake. Sure, you can duplicate all this mirroring functionality with the Apple Digital AV Adapter as well, but it's incredibly clunky hanging off the side of your device, and at $40, you might as well just spend another $60 and get all the added functionality of the Apple TV.

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Steve Jobs unveiled iOS 5 back at WWDC this year. Since then, those of us with an iPhone 3GS or later device have been anxiously looking forward to the array of new features and functionality introduced in the update. At last week's Let's Talk iPhone keynote, Apple revealed that today was the lucky day for iOS 5, and if you've got a device that'll run it– Plug it into iTunes, make sure you sync, and mash that update button.

My favorite improvement so far has definitely got to be the entirely revised push alert notification system. That nasty blue popup that interrupts everything you're doing when you get a text message, your Tiny Tower is ready for something, or the zillion other things that used that type of been notification is a thing of the past. Now there's an incredibly elegant notification center where all these alerts are stored, and the actual popups themselves simply scroll in from the top instead of stealing focus.

If you've got an iPad 2 (or are getting an iPhone 4S in a few days), you'll be able to do display mirroring via AirPlay. Doing cool things with this is largely dependent on developers utilizing it in interesting ways, but so far Firemint is doing awesome things with Real Racing 2.

In addition, Game Center has seen a few tweaks. One I'm most excited for is turn-based support. If developers utilize it, Game Center can handle all of the matchmaking and turn data management between players. I've heard from developers that this functionality does not degrade gracefully to previous versions of iOS, but once iOS 5 adoption picks up we could see a rush of great turn-based games now that developers can offload their entire online infrastructure onto Game Center.

iCloud isn't something that should be underestimated. Out of the box it'll keep your device backed up to Apple's data centers and in the event of device failure, loss, theft, or whatever else you'll be able to re-download the entire contents of your phone regardless of the last time you synced. Also, once developers start embracing it, you'll be able to seamlessly sync save game data between devices. As someone who often plays games on both my iPhone and iPad, I can't wait for this to pick up steam.

iOS 5 is an incredible upgrade. I've been running the developer version since the gold master hit last week, and much like the upgrade from iOS 3 to iOS 4, my iPhone 4 feels like a totally new device. iOS 5 boasts a feature list of over 200 additions and improvements, so if you want to know everything that is new and different, check out this huge list over on MacRumors.

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The iPhone 4S will utilize the Apple-designed A5 chip, which according to Apple, allows for studios to make games with up to “7X faster graphics.” At its press event moments ago, Apple brought Epic Games CEO Mike Capps on-stage to discuss the innovation and show off a new project set to harness the dual-core chip: Infinity Blade 2, the sequel to the hugely popular and eye-poppingly gorgeous Infinity Blade by Chair Entertainment.

The demo was brief, but people on the ground apparently got an eye-full of graphical awesome, as Capps showed off a significantly better looking sequel with shadow and reflective effects, as well as some neat little touches like, say, real-time koi swimming in a pond. The mechanical part appears to be pretty similar: you'll play as a soldier-y type of guy charged with killing big monsters with various slashes.

Capps said, during the demo, that the game is “only going to run like this on the iPhone 4s. Why? Because it's awesome." And the wait for it won't be long: Infinity Blade 2 is due out this December 1.

[via Endgadget]

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While Apple keynotes themselves are always a lot of fun, I actually almost like the day immediately before the keynote more. Speculation on what's coming reaches a climax, and all you've got to do is wait a day to see who was right and who was wrong. MacRumors provides a rundown of possibilities from the hardware lineup, and subsequent rumors make an iPhone 4S seem even more reasonable as more and more vague leaks of "iPhone 4S" branding appear. Following case leaks and a few other shaky rumors, there hasn't been a very strong indication that the redesigned iPhone 5 is coming at all– At least not yet.

Regardless of what the new iPhone looks like, the addition of the A5 processor should make the iPhone 5 (or 4S) a pocket-sized power-house. Anandtech recently posted a set of benchmarks of mobile GPU's, and the GPU in the iPad 2 is still blowing the doors off the competition:

The rumor mill seems to be in agreement that the "main" feature to be touted at this keynote will be an entire new voice-powered "Assistant." Check out a demo video that MacRumors compiled based on rumors of how it will work:

9to5Mac has an interview with the co-founder of Siri, the company who is believed to be behind this new technology, who has the following to say:

Make no mistake: Apple’s ‘mainstreaming’ Artificial Intelligence in the form of a Virtual Personal Assistant is a groundbreaking event. I’d go so far as to say it is a World-Changing event. Right now a few people dabble in partial AI enabled apps like Google Voice Actions, Vlingo or Nuance Go. Siri was many iterations ahead of these technologies, or at least it was two years ago. This is REAL AI with REAL market use. If the rumors are true, Apple will enable millions upon millions of people to interact with machines with natural language. The PAL will get things done and this is only the tip of the iceberg. We’re talking another technology revolution. A new computing paradigm shift.

So here comes the fun part, what do you think is going to come of tomorrow's keynote? A spec-bumped iPhone 4S? A surprise reveal of an entirely new iPhone 5? New iOS 5 features that haven't been revealed yet like Assistant? New iPod touches to coincide with the iPhone launch? Or will something come out of left field like the iPad 3 with Retina Display, or a million other things that could potentially happen that Apple managed to keep a total secret?

Personally, I think the iPhone 4S is happening but I just can't shake the thoughts of the potential redesign. I'm not sure how credible the weird case "leaks" we've seen are, but the rumored redesign appearing in an Apple app I just can't rationalize in any way other than a design like that is coming. What reason could Apple, a company who historically has put immense importance on a refined user experience place that icon in their own apps? It just doesn't make sense!

I guess we'll find out tomorrow, but, in the time being, we can let our speculation run wild– At least for another 24 hours or so.

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QuakeCon 2011 doesn’t have a whole lot in store for id Software’s mobile fans. The studio's focus is squarely sitting on the promotion of RAGE, which is hitting this fall. Even in past years the show has been more about the ‘big’ titles as opposed to the ‘small’ mobiles ones, but we thought you should check out the opening keynote from designer John Carmack anyway, which has been graciously uploaded to YouTube.

Carmack speaks with a totally unique voice. Not only is the dude brilliant and articulate, he’s a visionary in the games design and technology field. What he says matters and what he does has mattered to mobile audiences in the past; we wouldn’t have, say, RAGE HD [$1.99] or DOOM Classic [$1.99], if there wasn’t a John Carmack. We also wouldn’t even know what DOOM was if not for him and his team of pioneers. Anyway, here's the video:

The keynote is over a hour-long and we’re still working through it. Dude hooked me within the first 15 seconds, though, so I’ll be sticking around until the end.

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In this week’s episode of TAS we discuss WWDC and The Bearded Ones’ adventures at the San Francisco-based event. We also gab about Super Goblin War Machine, Red Ball 3, and the next sensation to sweep the world, Techno Kitten Adventure. As if that wasn’t enough, we also cover some of the more profound stories from the front page.

If you’re into us — and, really, who isn’t at this point — you can grab us on the iTunes as well as the Zune Marketplace. We’re also into streaming and you can do that just below via this little link thing:

iTunes Link: The TouchArcade Show
Zune Marketplace: TouchArcade.com Podcasts
Direct Link: TouchArcadeShow-004.mp3, 51.3MB

A couple of notes this week before the official show notes. At the top of the show, we ask that you all rate us on iTunes and shoot us written reviews. If you haven’t done that yet, I forgive you and allow you this second chance to do so. Also, a bunch of audio interviews with some people you know are coming down the pipe. We’ll bust these out separately to listen at your leisure. Hope you enjoy them as much as we will.

Now for the REAL notes:

Games

• Super Goblin War Machine [Free]
• Red Ball 3 [$1.99]
• Techno Kitten Adventure [Free]

Music for this episode was provided by the super talented Jim Guthrie. The song is "Audio Pepsi" off the album A Thousand Songs. You can buy the entire album or stream all the songs at his Web site. Guthrie is also responsible for the Sword & Sworcery [$4.99] soundtrack. Cool stuff.

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While they weren’t technically the first to do it, Firemint’s Real Racing 2 HD [$9.99] was the first game to officially support full screen 1080p TV-Out on the iPad 2. After the iPad 2 dropped, it was discovered that a few other games also supported this already, but more of by chance and not necessarily as a specified feature. Now Real Racing 2 HD is making sure its the first game to announce support for one of the new features revealed for iOS 5 at Monday’s keynote.

When iOS 5 is released sometime this Fall, Real Racing 2 HD will support fully wireless TV-Out via the iPad 2 and AirPlay Mirroring with an Apple TV. Essentially, it will perform the same function as the TV-Out feature did using an HDMI cable plugged directly into your TV but completely wirelessly, though it won’t be displayed in full 1080p. It will still run in full screen, but the maximum resolution AirPlay Mirroring can output is 720p. However, that is a very small price to pay to be able to play Real Racing 2 HD on a TV using the iPad 2 as a controller and having it be completely wireless.

In short: I want this for every game ever. The Real Racing franchise has typically been at the forefront of adopting new and interesting features in iOS, and I really hope others follow suit. In fact, AirPlay Mirroring combined with gaming is incredibly similar to what Nintendo is touting as a huge feature of their new Wii U console that was unveiled at E3 yesterday. This gives even more credence to the talk that Apple is now a firm player in the console gaming market with AirPlay Mirroring as they increasingly try to invade the living room space.

I personally love it, and although there are many things the home consoles offer that iOS doesn’t, I absolutely feel there is room for my iPad 2 as a viable option when deciding what to play on my TV at home. We’ll keep a close eye on how this feature is utilized in other games too as we near the release of iOS 5 later this year.

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There's no way to beat around the bush on this. Even though many developers have gotten onboard the universal app train, a select few have implemented any cloud-based game save storage system to allow you to sync progress across devices. Of course most server-based free to play games already do this, but in your typical super-casual 99¢ time-waster, your progress is largely locked onto the device that you're playing it on. I can't really fault developers for this, as implementing such a system would largely be overkill for most games, and maintaining the entire online infrastructure to track cross-device progress in a game like Dungeon Raid [$2.99 / Free] would be silly for the developer to do by themselves. For them, there's not much benefit. It would take a heck of a lot of engineering, and servers cost can be substantial– But that's where Apple comes in.

Monday's keynote introduced us to iCloud, an entirely free cloud-based storage system usable by everyone who owns a recent iOS device, and every developer who wants to use it. So, while it might have been entirely unrealistic for the Dungeon Raid developer to do all this himself, Apple has made it nice and easy.

I've spent most of the day today discussing the prospects of iCloud with many of the developers around WWDC and really one word can describe the temperature of each conversation: Excitement. According to developers who have attended various iCloud-centric WWDC sessions, implementing iCloud-based storage of game saves will be nearly as trivial as dealing with gave saves stored locally on the device is now. This means that as developers inevitably work on tweaking their various apps and games to make them more iOS 5 friendly over the next few months, they'll also likely switch their storage methods over to iCloud, as there's little reason for them not to.

It's still early though, and we're really just scratching the surface of what's possible on the first day of WWDC. One thing I wasn't able to get a very solid answer on was how this was all going to work between standard and HD versions of games. For instance, right now Game Center works like this: If you release your game as a universal app, you can share Game Center leaderboards and achievements for that game across all iOS devices. However, if you release the same game as a separate standard and HD version, Game Center treats those as entirely different apps, and as such, keeps leaderboards and achievements for each app individually.

It's an interesting problem, and no one is sure right now if there's a real solution. Apple obviously seems to want developers to focus on universal apps, but developers vastly prefer two different apps due to pricing flexibility, chart advantages, and several other very valid reasons. If Apple is sticking with the same restrictions as they have for Game Center leaderboards, I hope this just spurs developers to continue the trend we've started to see in offering universal compatibility in the HD version.

This truly seems to be the best of both worlds, as developers can still retain pricing flexibility for two different apps, while providing universal compatibility and cross-device iCloud save syncing while still providing a lower-priced option for those who only own an iPhone or iPod touch.

Another potential snag might be in how game saves are reconciled across multiple devices that might not always be connected to the internet. For example, if you've got a non-3G iPad and an iPod touch, and play the same game on both before returning to a friendly WiFi network. Each game will have different amounts of progress, and the developers I've spoken to so far aren't really sure how things will shake out once these two different game saves hit the iCloud.

Surely this is something Apple has considered, and I'm almost positive we'll find out the answer to all these questions and more in the next few weeks as developers delve into iOS 5. One thing is for certain, holy cow am I happy that cloud-based game save storage will practically be a standard feature in the not too distant future.

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