Good morning.
I can't decide whether I am excited about the new Airplay 2 that Apple released in iOS 11.4. That will depend on the answer to one very crucial question.
One of the biggest issues I had with the original Airplay is that once you started a stream on your iPhone and decided you wanted to Airplay it on another device, such as an AppleTV, you still had to have the content streaming on the iPhone. That makes sense if what you are streaming is located directly on your phone that the phone would still need to be used to play the content. However, if you open an app, let's say OoTunes just as an example, on your phone, find the station you want to hear, and decide you'd rather Airplay it to those fancy speakers connected to your AppleTV, once Airplay was started, you have to leave your phone connected to the content source. With Sonos, while you use your phone to point the speakers to the source of the music you are playing, once it is up and running through your Sonos speakers, you can close the app and forget it until you either want to turn the music off through the app or directly on the speakers. Will Airplay 2 let you do that? I see no reason once you start using Airplay on your AppleTV you can't turn off the source on your phone. After all, technology should be smart enough that the AppleTV should then be pointed at the streaming material source.
I hope that make ssense. If Apple products can do this now instead of making you use two devices to simply play a source of music, then Airplay 2 has great potential. If not, then they are not as forward-thinking as I had hoped and as should be expected.
Long, drawling, boring post over.
Cheers.