Is that what you meant to say? AirPlay isn't restricted to special Apple routers either.

That is true, but I also believe there are some lower level "nice to haves" they enable on their routers to make sure Bonjour/mDNS works properly for airplay. If not intentionally, I do know that some routers (Actiontec / FiOS comes to mind) that have particular difficulty with providing reliable Airplay connections.

I'll bite, can someone help me understand the downvotes? Actiontec routers (among others I'm sure) may not work well with Bonjour out of the box: https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e...

Airports generally don't need attention for airplay, and that probably leads a lot of people to the impression that you need an Apple router.

It's actually more like Sonos. Airplay streams from the device to the receiver. With this (and Sonos) a command is sent to the device which does the streaming on its own.

I'm not sure that's totally accurate – I think AirPlay has multiple modes of operation, including the ability to stream directly from a third device.

I don't remember the details of this off the top of my head.

Even better I bet speaker manufacturers will ship both and basically your speaker will "just work" regardless of what platform you are using.

This is the best news yet coming from the auto manufacturers and Android Auto/Apple Carplay. I personally would never choose one of the two, but the option will make both ecosystems more successful.