Last month brought the new Chromecast Audio. I like mine just fine though not quite enough to displace any of the existing Airport Express devices in my house. Last month also brought Apple's El Capitan to my machine.
With El Capitan's Safari 9, Apple appeared to say 'your move.' to Google and their Cast extension for Chrome by breaking iTunes' 11-year stranglehold on official desktop app support for Airplay. What Apple actually said was 'your mo... oh, dear. i've soiled myself.'
Apple's otherwise great new webkitShowPlaybackTargetPicker() media element method lets web content sling itself to Airplay without obnoxious extensions or API keys. Awesome. The resulting Airplay picker popup -- triggered from an audio element here at reograph labs -- shows
exactly none of the Apple Airport Express devices installed around the house. An old Apple TV and a third-party Airplay server running on a Mac put in an appearance but that's it.
I don't know whose move is next but I'm getting tired of this game. System-level mediated audio made sense in the past when the system actually multiplexed audio streams. Essentially none of my audio today except the terminal bell is routed to a DAC attached to a bus in my computer. How is Apple struggling with a feature that worked with iTunes on my G3 iBook?
Is this perhaps a sign that the old Airtunes-protocol hardware is on the way out? Does the bulky new Apple TV create room for a Chromecast Audio-like Apple TV for the Blind? You heard it here first.
