AirPlay in a high-density environment isn't great | Hacker News Reader

AirPlay in a high-density environment isn't great

rachelbythebay.com

16 pointsatg_abhishek8 comments

I quite like that I can go to a friends house (and vice versa) and have their AirPlay speaker or TV just show up as a device to stream to. Seems a bit extreme of Rachel to call this usecase “insanity”.

I work in a school district where we had all the schools on a single network. Each of the principals used a Apple TV as a presentation device. All 12 or more were in the drop down airplay menu

Is that a bad thing?

The school can put them on separate networks, or they can name the devices so it's clear what room they correspond to. I'm just not seeing the problem here.

I'm assuming the school puts the devices on a network that students can't connect to, that's just a table-stakes sane thing to do.

Having recently lived in an apartment building of over 900 units, I can sort of empathize... However the connivence certainly outweighs the cons. There is also a setting where you can limit Airplay broadcast to your own network which pretty much solves this issue.

Which doesn't fix the issue of "I see all my neighbors" but I agree with you. Maybe a nice intermediate would be to only show devices on your network (or maybe even ones connected to your AppleId/family) and then a "search for more" option at the bottom that will show the full list.

I feel like they've been trying to do this with wifi. Right now (in macOS) I see "Personal hotspot" "Preferred Networks" and "Other Networks" (which requires clicking to show).

One AirPlay solution I've seen is a pop up when you physically put your phone next to HomePod.

I really, really like connectivity between non-linked account. It's been really useful when going to those corporate "business centers" and you want to send over a doc to print or visiting friends.

I have a speaker that does airplay/ google cast and Bluetooth. Bluetooth works by far the best (once you pair). Though to be fair I havent tried google chrome cast more than once.

I’ve noticed that it seems harder to not use airplay on the device with an iPhone. It involves a trip to the settings menu. It didn’t used too. I might have something not set right but it seems weird to me. It’s the same with my “just bluetoooth speaker as well…)

I appreciate airplay for video though.

Bluetooth has the downsides that you need to be in range, and that message notifications/other go through the bluetooth speaker. Chromecast pulls the stream directly from the Internet, for better or worse, so neither of those problems are present on it. No idea about how Airplay works, though screen mirroring is a nifty feature.

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