Apple reportedly preps native support for Google Cast in iOS 27 | Hacker News Reader

Apple reportedly preps native support for Google Cast in iOS 27

macdailynews.com

26 pointsspeckx14 comments

There's three common methods for wireless screen local sharing:

• Miracast, from the Wi-Fi Alliance, an open and free standard that works reliably, without a need to even have a local Wi-Fi network, despite being developed by an organization who's entire purpose is to promote Wi-Fi equipment

• Google Cast, a proprietary protocol from Google, requires a common access point connection to share a screen, and it often takes multiple attempts, for it to load a shared screen before it times out

• AirPlay, a proprietary protocol from Apple, also requires a common access point connection to share a screen, but at least it loads reliably

Miracast is probably the most supported by TVs, but Apple doesn't include it on their phones, and while many Android phone manufacturers do include support, Google doesn't on their Pixel phones. Because of that, it's likely the least used of the three, despite being the best.

It's a bummer that Wi-Fi Alliance completely fumbled basics like standards for naming (Miracast has 30+ names) and UX consistency. It's not much of a mystery why Apple is throwing its weight behind Matter Casting and even Google Cast.

Ive never used Miracast. Does it not monopolize your WiFi card? Which would be fine if you want to show a keynote or something, but if you want to stream a video or anything requiring network access...

There's no technical reason it should. When I've used it on my phone, it's indicated that it's still connected to the WiFi network, but I've never specifically tested to verify that it was.

I had heard about FCast and it looked promising but many apps don’t support it

https://fcast.org

Great. AirPlay has been nothing but trouble for me. Doesn't work half the time, uses the wrong language channel, needs funky setup on my TV. And when I finally get it working and take out my phone to browse a website, it will replace whatever I was streaming to the TV with the ads on that website.

I hope Google Cast will be better.

I'm personally quite excited for Matter Casting. I haven't actually looked into the details of casting protocol itself, but I've been really enjoying my Matter devices at home and would love for my screens and speakers to integrate with the standard as well.

Air play has been super solid for me but I love to see solid interop! Big news for the chrome stick users!

Can't we just have a standard for this stupid shit already? How many years is it going to take before we can just cast to a goddamn screen. This would have been figured out years ago if there was any actual competition, and Google and Apple didn't prevent 3rd party implementations.

There is. It's called Miracast. It's great. It works even without connecting to an access point. Pretty much every major TV manufacturer supports it, and Samsung has it pre-installed on their phones. For phones that don't ship with support installed, like iPhones and Google Pixel phones, it's possible to install software to add support.

The Wii U used it to send video to the gamepad, and it's fast, low latency, and reliable. The real question is how did we get to the point that such a widespread standard supported by TV manufacturers and even used by Nintendo, who can't even follow the USB-IF standards, has been so long avoided by the Apple/Google duopoly.

It's really not a replacement for Google cast. It requires actively encoding video to send over wifi. If it's anything like wireless Android Auto it will eat a lot of battery. Google cast is usually a tiny payload to the device to start playing some URL from the Internet.

I haven't found any software that reliably does Miracast on Android. It's been my understanding that older versions supported it natively, but Google dropped support?

Have you found anything that works?

Is this European Union related?

10 years too late.

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