Airplay 2 (Anychance!)

Looks like Airplay2 is still under construction. 🆒 😃

Digger77 wrote:

A quarter of the year nearly over and still no Airplay 2? Anyone know when this is gonna be released on Sonos. Appara it was suppose to be released early 2018 they said when the Sonos One was released back in November?

I’ve not seen an ‘early 2018’ target release date stated anywhere by Sonos.

amazed by this one ...... Airplay2 isn't even released by Apple yet ... .how can Sonos possibly release it. Apple's own speaker doesn't have it. I beat my head against desk sometimes.

I would expect it to be released to Sonos in the neighborhood of 3 months after Apple eventually fully releases it. That would coincide with normal Sonos development and beta periods. Therefore I would still expect it to be this summer being that Apple is trying to get Airplay2 out soon (as it seems unless they fall back on their release again).

Apple was supposed to release Airplay2 with their speaker back before the holidays and they postponed. Then the released their speaker with no Airplay2 support because Airplay2 still not finished. They added Airplay2 to betas a few weeks ago and then I believe they pulled it. Apple is making a mess of Airplay2 so who knows when a stable release is going to come. Then Sonos can focus on their side.

Looks like Apple may be releasing Airplay2 soon!

Zac Hall for 9to5 Mac on Apr. 3rd: Following yesterday’s developer betas, Apple has seeded iOS 11.4 and tvOS 11.4 public betas. iOS 11.4 includes both AirPlay 2 and Messages on iCloud for testing, and tvOS 11.4 can be used for AirPlay 2 testing.

Read more here: https://9to5mac.com/2018/04/03/ios-tvos-11-4-public-beta-1/

Apple have only just released iOS 11.3 ... it’s still many weeks away before iOS 11.04 GM is likely to hit our devices.

I think in regards to Airplay 2 for Sonos, we are probably looking at a likely (northern hemisphere) Autumn release (post 23rd Sept 2018). That’s my prediction and that’s if Apple decides to not push it back down their list again.

Airplay 2 was, as I recall, originally in several of the beta releases of 11.x, and pulled out at the last moment, before the official release. I will be happy if it makes 11.4, as that will mean they’re no longer messing with the API, and outside folks like Sonos can start working on integration.

Given the amount of time the different OS is usually in Beta, I suspect 11.4 will be released around early June, which means we should probably/hopefully see something by the end of summer.

I personally always like to give Sonos about 3 month buffer on implementation of things. If it goes gold code in early June I wouldn't expect anything from Sonos until September (I'm sure they want to have done prior to November shopping season).

Reason: Sonos always seem to have stuff in beta long before general release. So with public availability on Airplay2 not happening until June they wouldn't start a beta until then .... so it will take a while to get to full implementation and release. Don't expect June/July airplay2 support to ever happen.

Chris, would Sonos start working now that the Beta for Airplay 2 is public (ie we could all download it if we wanted to, it's not just for testers/developers)? Just not sure when Sonos would "start" working on the Airplay 2 stuff. It wouldn't surprise me to wait until it is officially released, so they aren't trying to hit a moving target.

That’s an excellent question.

In my time I’ve had engineers/coders work on a moving target before, and had a lot of wasted effort as the API provided continued to change. On the other hand, my team was able to supply the other company with a plethora of feedback that helped make the new API better, and the time from when the API went ‘gold’ and we were able to release was significantly shorter. But I have wondered what other more useful work could have been done while we were iterating on the early codebase.

I honestly think it depends on a multitude of possibilities, none of which I am privy to. 😉

Now that I have AirPlay 2 enabled on iOS and tvOS betas, this would be great to test with Sonos if a beta exists. I like having access to my Apple TVs with airplay 2, but Sonos support is really what I’ve been waiting for.

I agree if we are adopters of the iOS beta’s , we are the type of people to accept a Sonos beta program and feedback issues to help all bearing in mind what bugs we would be faced with.

iOS 11.4 developer beta was released on 16th April. Airplay 2 was included again and my guess is Sonos will start working on it now.

https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/04/02/apple-releases-first-developer-betas-of-ios-114-tvos-114-and-watchos-431

Or wait to see if it's included in the actual release, instead of being pulled out just before the actual release, like it has for the last 2 betas from Apple.