TOPIC:

to be honest ... what happened is many years ago with the original AirPort Express from Apple they released a firmware for the hardware device and didn’t properly protect its cipher Key ... basically a programmer jumped all over this and built his own open source version using this secret key and called the app ShairPort... without this exploited key this wouldn’t have been possible and keep in mind that Apple knows the key used in ShairPort and can disable their iOS devices at anytime if they so choose to, but they’re chosen not to so far.

Years later ShairPort was discontinued and someone else took up the mantle for support for things like Album art and video/audio syncing support so was born the project ShairPort-Sync which is based off ShairPort but much better.

Volumio contains a build of ShairPort-Sync, the best AirPlay emulator around and the one used in 90% of hardware apps that support AirPlay ... the only hardware I can think of that has properly/officially implemented AirPlay and gone through the Apple Certification process is dCS and Hegel ... everyone else ie Auralic etc uses ShairPort-Sync to deliver AirPlay capability ... same story goes for Spotify Connect but that’s a different topic again

that is correct but there are plenty of devices out there who are using the official airplay implementation.
these days airplay 1 is not even allowed to be released by brands they all have to use airplay 2 which is better in some aspects (especially regarding multiroom grouping / synchronization).

the point is:
you can look up at the Apple MFI program what is required for the official airplay.
in fact it is not quite easy to pass the certification especially if the device are wifi enabled / costs are high.

devices/brands out with official airplay + certified by apple:
Naim
Devialet
Dynaudio
Kef
Onkyo
Denon
Technics
Pioneer
Libratone
Harman
Bluesound/Node
B&W
Cambridge
and there are many many more ....


Spotify --- very similar to Airplay / just a but easier to get it certified.

Lumin calls their version of Airplay "Lumin Streaming". I'm pretty sure it is Shareport-sync.




I wonder why Apple has allowed this to continue.

.. because Apple is "overlooking" it - by accident or on purpose.

funny to hear that Lumin is using this function and claiming "Streaming's new cutting edge" on their webpage for their products.