There are many more AirPlay 2 devices coming from Denon, Libratone, Marantz, and more.
#AIRFOIL AUDIO STREAMING UPDATE#
Sonos’s recent update made them the first third-party vendor to ship AirPlay 2 compatible speakers, but they won’t be the last.
The Sonos One is a very worthy HomePod competitor, and its $199 price tag is just slightly more than half the cost of Apple’s smart speaker. That means that if you have an older Sonos system, you can just add a single new device to get AirPlay compatibility going throughout your home. That means that even non-AirPlay compatible speakers like Playbar or Play:1 can reap the sonic benefits of our AirPlay 2 integration, provided they’re grouped with one of our newer, AirPlay-friendly devices in the Sonos app. Of note for users with older Sonos hardware, you need just one AirPlay-compatible Sonos device to enjoy audio on your entire system.Įven though AirPlay 2 is only supported on Sonos One, Beam, Playbase, and Play:5, with any one of these speakers you can listen via AirPlay on your entire home sound system.
#AIRFOIL AUDIO STREAMING FOR MAC#
If you’ve already got one of these AirPlay-compatible Sonos device, make sure its firmware is up to date, then update to Airfoil for Mac 5.8 to start streaming any audio from your Mac all around your house. Whatever mix of AirPlay, Bluetooth, and Chromecast devices you have, Airfoil can help you stream audio in sync to all of them at once.Ĭurrently, Sonos’s AirPlay-compatible hardware lineup consists of the Sonos One, Beam, Playbase, and second-generation Play:5. That means Airfoil can now help you play audio to even more devices. We’ve got big news for Airfoil today: Sonos compatibility! With the new Airfoil for Mac 5.8, you can stream any audio from your Mac to all of Sonos’s AirPlay-compatible devices. It appears they were able to get by review initially but once someone at Apple worked out what was happening under the covers it is hard to imagine a scenario where Apple would let this slide.Posted By Paul Kafasis on July 21st, 2018 I imagine they knew by adding this feature they were taking a calculated risk with the app’s future. While I don’t know all the details around the internals of Rogue Amoeba I am friends with a couple of their employees and know them to be engineers of the highest calibre. Much of the controversy is rooted in the opaqueness of their process. I wish they would have more transparency and clarity in such matters. That is the one place where I think Apple is in the wrong.
Apple’s rejection apparently used the broad and hand-waving reason of using documented APIs in a manner not prescribed by Apple. I think the discussion around the use of private vs public APIs is a distraction from the core issue. Using a reverse-engineered, proprietary protocol that was also cryptographically protected by Apple was clearly going to raise red flags. It seems entirely reasonable that Apple would not condone the use of their hacked private key in this manner, least of all in an App Store app. Last year James Laird hacked out Apple’s private key from an old Airport Express and published it.Īs best I understand the technical details of this, in order for any of these apps to operate they must then make use of this private key to impersonate an Airport Express.
The protocol (outlined here) is cryptographically secured to prevent anyone other than Apple or its approved vendors from using it. In order for these apps to simulate an AirPlay receiver they must reverse-engineer the AirPlay protocol. As things have shaken out and more details have come to light Apple’s motivation in this has become clear. The mechanics of how Apple goes about these things could use a lot of improvement but the reasons behind this rejection seem sound. The prospect of having your livelihood suddenly disappear is disconcerting to say the least.Īs much as I tried to get my dander up about this particular case I found that I couldn’t get upset. As always when Apple makes these unilateral moves there was a commotion amongst App Store developers. Similarly another AirPlay emulator, AirFloat, was pulled. Yesterday it was announced that Rogue Amoeba’s iOS audio streaming app, Airfoil Speakers Touch, had been removed from the App Store.