When I posted my reply regarding AirFoil a while back, the article wasn't loading... now that it is, you can see the developer actually explains Apple's stance and gives an example of why they do what they do.
He says: "But then something remarkable happened. Apple approved Air Speakers – an app that enabled you to stream audio to your iOS device from iTunes and iOS devices. Using the private key of the AirPort Express. Sadly it was a horrible app. Synchronization wasn’t even implemented, so the audio was hopelessly out of sync, when sending audio to multiple devices."
I believe this is why Apple requires you license AirPlay. Not so they can make a quick buck (I'm sure the license fees are trivial to Apple), but so they can make sure things that work with AirPlay don't behave as the author claims the AirSpeakers app does.
They later claim that AirPlay implemented the key to stop piracy; "The encrypted stream was initially implemented in order to protect the transfer of DRM-encrypted iTunes Music Store audio content," but doesn't back this statement up. I think they implemented the key requirement to enforce their licensing. I can't back this up either, other than it explains Apple's actions better than his theory. The licensing isn't there as a profit center, but to give them some quality control so that AirPlay doesn't get a bad reputation for being difficult to use or unreliable.
The thing that doesn't make sense is that supposedly Apple rejected this for using private APIs. This doesn't sound like the case.
It'd be interesting to know what the AirPlay licensing terms are like, and whether or not the AirFloat developer or Rogue Amoeba approached Apple to license AirPlay (I'll guess no).
He says: "But then something remarkable happened. Apple approved Air Speakers – an app that enabled you to stream audio to your iOS device from iTunes and iOS devices. Using the private key of the AirPort Express. Sadly it was a horrible app. Synchronization wasn’t even implemented, so the audio was hopelessly out of sync, when sending audio to multiple devices."
I believe this is why Apple requires you license AirPlay. Not so they can make a quick buck (I'm sure the license fees are trivial to Apple), but so they can make sure things that work with AirPlay don't behave as the author claims the AirSpeakers app does.
They later claim that AirPlay implemented the key to stop piracy; "The encrypted stream was initially implemented in order to protect the transfer of DRM-encrypted iTunes Music Store audio content," but doesn't back this statement up. I think they implemented the key requirement to enforce their licensing. I can't back this up either, other than it explains Apple's actions better than his theory. The licensing isn't there as a profit center, but to give them some quality control so that AirPlay doesn't get a bad reputation for being difficult to use or unreliable.
The thing that doesn't make sense is that supposedly Apple rejected this for using private APIs. This doesn't sound like the case.
It'd be interesting to know what the AirPlay licensing terms are like, and whether or not the AirFloat developer or Rogue Amoeba approached Apple to license AirPlay (I'll guess no).