Chromecast vs. AirPlay (spoiler alert: AirPlay sucks)

I can’t believe there are still quite a few streaming apps that only support AirPlay (eg. Roku, Audible, smh). Chromecast is clearly a better protocol and solution for streaming media files off of mobile devices onto other bigger or stationary devices like TV or bluetooth speaker.

This evening I got very frustrated by Roku’s AirPlay feature not working with my phone and that inspired me to write this long rant about why Chromecast is better than AirPlay.

• Media streaming isn’t AirPlay’s main use case: When AirPlay was first introduced like 10+ years ago, it surely was an impressive piece of technology. I remember the first time I saw my phone’s screen projected onto TV when I connected my phone to Apple TV and blown away by the experience. The technology was clearly designed to cover multiple use cases including screen mirroring and media streaming. Chromecast, on the other hand, was solely designed to stream media sources so I guess they were able to design their systems in much more lightweight way (more on this in the next bullet point)
• AirPlay tries to do it all vs. Chromecase delegates: I’m not an engineer but it’s very clear to me what each protocol tries to do in order to accomplish their job. AirPlay to me feels like it tries to handle everything locally. It connects to the receiving device (Roku, Apple TV etc) and transfers the data between two devices directly. In doing so, it requires a lot of resources from the phone which prevents users from using their phones for other things (eg. browsing the internet on their phone while playing a TV show via AirPlay). I tried this and almost all the time the video stopped playing (got dropped off from AirPlay because of some kind of time out). Today I didn’t get to go that far since AirPlay failed at initiating the connection between my phone and Roku, smh. Chromecast, on the other hand, once the casting the media to the target device is ordered, it’s a complete hand-off. I believe from then on the media streaming is streamed directly from the streaming services media servers to the target device (Google Chromecast on my TV, my Nest home Hub Max). That frees up my phone from having to stay connected with the target device and lets me do other things on my phone while watching TV. It definitely enables the “second screen experience”. This also feels like a great metaphorical example of why we should delegate more as opposed to being a control freak or micro-manager (obviously I’m joking, no hard feelings Apple!)
• Chromecast devices work together: One of the reasons why I like Chromecast much better than Roku Stick is that I can control the video playing on my TV with voice command through Nest Hub Max. I can even transfer the video I’m playing on Nest Hub Max to TV by a simple voice command (eg. “Hey Google, play this on Living Room TV”). Also I can ask it to rewind, fast forward or play from beginning, all with voice commands. Wonder if Apple has come up with anything like this, unless I’ve been sleeping on it. Chromecast becomes more powerful thanks to the power of network it creates.

It’s not like Chromecast is perfect, and I see so many opportunities for Nest Hub Max to get smarter about voice commands but it’s another story for another time. I hope Apple does something about the AirPlay and Google keeps improving Chromecast for the next-generation hardwares and come up with even more advanced features.