Apple says SharePlay won’t be part of initial iOS 15 release – The Verge

One of iOS 15’s marquee new features, SharePlay, has been delayed and now won’t be rolled out until after the major update is released this fall. Apple has informed developers that SharePlay will be disabled in the next betas of iOS 15, iPadOS15, tvOS 15, and macOS Monterey. SharePlay allows people to enjoy entertainment (TV shows, movies, music, etc.) together at the same time and syncs everything up across devices.

The company has confirmed that this feature will be absent in the official release of iOS 15 when it widely rolls out in the fall. Apple now says that SharePlay will return “in future developer beta releases and will launch to the public in software updates later this fall.”

“We’re thrilled with the high level of enthusiasm we’ve seen from the developer community for SharePlay, and we can’t wait to bring it to users so that they can experience your apps with their friends and family in a whole new way,” Apple said in its update to developers.

This is the first major new aspect of iOS 15 to be pulled back from the launch release, but it will undoubtedly raise questions about which other features might also have to wait for a later update. Apple has yet to include Universal Control, one of the most impressive tricks it showed off at WWDC, in any of this summer’s beta releases. Universal Control will allow iPad and Mac owners to work seamlessly across both products with the same keyboard and mouse.

Apple has held back some of its promised features from previous major iOS releases until they were more polished and ready to go. As just one example, Group FaceTime was delayed from the initial release of iOS 12 in 2018 until a smaller update that rolled out at the end of October.

Check out our preview of iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 for a rundown of all the new features that Apple says will be available — at some point, anyway — later this year.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/17/22629165/apple-shareplay-ios-ipad-os-15-macos-delayed