filthylucre

No one is discussing Airplay. As a developer who makes a living from web, mobile, TV, and desktop applications I find the Airplay feature of iOS 5 to be the single most disruptive technology since the first iPhone. TV is important. Google heavily promoted Google TV at their conference a year ago. Apple released two iterations of the Apple TV. All of the cable, set-top box, satellite, and TV manufacturers are gearing up to take on the inevitable huge TV app and content market. But still, no one is really discussing Airplay.

I can't possibly be the only person to see how Apple could immediately disrupt the gaming console market upon the release of iOS 5. For the first time iOS 5 will have cordless screen mirroring. What you see on your screen will be displayed on your TV wirelessly. Now consider the fact iOS 5 will also allow you to use your TV as a second display. You will be able to display something different on the TV than what's on your iOS device. Your iOS device could become the controller while you play your game on the TV. Now take it one step further and assume you wirelessly connect a bluetooth game controller to your iOS device while it powers your TV display. You now have a fully-fledged gaming console, completely powered by your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. The games are affordable, the console is with you at all times, and Airplay makes it easy to utilize your TV.

iOS graphics are inferior to consoles you say? This is true yet I'm not sure it will matter when you consider the fact that you can buy 5-10 games on iOS for the price of 1 console game. The graphics may not be as good but they're nowhere close to 5-10x worse. Also, let's not leave out the fact that companies such as OnLive are quietly waging war against the console market to stream games over the net which would give a device such as the iPhone the ability to provide games that are visually competitive. iPhone 5 + Bluetooth Game Controller + OnLive + Airplay (TV) = something to get excited about.