Apple's Home Sharing for Music is apparently due for a comeback with iOS 9, a company official has confirmed.
When it rolled out iOS 4.3 a good while back, Apple borrowed the Home Sharing feature from the Mac and added it to iPhones, iPads and iPods. It quickly became a widely popular feature among iOS users, adding extra convenience. With the recent release of the latest iOS 8.4 update, however, the company disabled the music Home Sharing on iOS devices, leaving many users without an in-house option for streaming music from their Mac iTunes libraries.
The move stirred a wave of criticism from iOS users, especially since Apple made no prior announcement and offered no explanation for this change. Nevertheless, the company was expected to restore music Home Sharing for iOS devices with a future software build. In early iOS 8.4 beta release notes, for instance, Apple mentioned that Home Sharing was "not currently available." The use of the term "currently" suggested that while it was not available at that point, it could become available again sometime in the future.
It now seems that Apple is taking user feedback into account and is indeed working on bringing back the popular feature.
The news comes from Eddy Cue, Apple's Senior Vice President of Internet Software and Services. On Monday, July 6, the executive took to Twitter to reveal that Apple does plan to re-add the music Home Sharing feature to iOS devices.
"We are working to have Home Sharing in iOS 9," Cue said in response to a question regarding the absence of the feature in iOS 8.4.
The tweet indicates that at least some music Home Sharing functionality will become available again on iOS. The next iOS 9 beta is expected later this week, but it remains unclear at this point whether the music Home Sharing feature for iOS will make a comeback with this built or arrive later on.
In the meantime, the company's new Apple Music service aims to deliver a high-quality music experience to Apple users. A $14.99 Family Plan not only includes full access to the extensive Apple Music library, but also allows subscribers to share it with up to six people. In other words, this service could somewhat replace music Home Sharing, but it's not the same and it's not free.
