> JUST WHAT IS… AIRPLAY 2?
Sonos launched its multiroom audio solution in 2002, utilizing a circle controller suspiciously similar to that of Apple’s crazy–popular iPod. Rather than unleashing its team of legal attack dogs, Apple responded in kind with the Sonos–esque AirTunes, released alongside iOS 4 in 2004. This enabled the sending of audio from iTunes to a speaker–connected AirPort Express, though AirTunes was, given the benefit of hindsight, a fairly limited protocol. It wasn’t until 2010, when Apple upped its abilities to go beyond audio streaming, that the rebranded AirPlay came into its own.
It’s a very easy system to understand: a sender device (an iPhone or iPad, a Mac or Apple TV) plays some media, and a receiver device (a speaker, a TV, or anything else with AirPlay capabilities) plays that media back. Pretty basic. Some devices, notably the Apple TV, can
