Newer GPUs are fine in Wayland. I have a 3090 and Wayland is the only way I can get full refresh rates on all my monitors because X locks you to the lowest value. Only thing is that the translucency on themes doesn’t render super well and sometimes the system clock and taskbars will freeze up. That aside, it’s been a good gaming experience overall.
Then tell them to get an iPhone and they can use AirDrop.
A LAN share is easier than whatever you’re doing now. You’re here asking how to deal with the firewall when you could have set up the network share in ten steps, and never once needed to touch the firewall.
https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/mac-help/mh17131/13.0/mac/13.0
SMB is not an Apple specific thing, it’s a standard file sharing protocol.
https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/mac-help/mh17131/13.0/mac/13.0
If you don’t know what SMB is, it’s probably a bad idea for you to turn off the Mac firewall. You don’t know enough about this stuff to be monkeying around back there.
You can theoretically set up actual network shares that are readable by both devices which will solve your problem and not require any messing around with the firewall at all.
It works better with newer cards. I am currently using Wayland on my 3090 and it works about 75% of the way I want it to. Occasionally the taskbar and/or system clock will freeze, which is fixed by a relog. Also the translucency in themes does not render properly, but that’s a small price to pay for full refresh rates across varied monitors.
I have a laptop with a 1650 and because it’s kind of a weird half-niche card, Wayland does not work well with it forcing me to stick with X.