Joining a host that isn't an Apple device

Joustine runs on Windows, Fire TV, Android TV and Android tablets as well as on Apple hardware, and any of them can be the screen everyone plays on. Until 5.00 an iPhone or iPad would notice one of those hosts… and then quietly go on hosting a room of its own.

Now an iPhone or iPad defers to a Windows PC that is already hosting, and joins it as a controller. Two desktop machines that both want the job settle it by whichever one was running first — the same rule people apply without thinking when somebody already has a game up on the TV.

A phone that deferred to one of those hosts also, finally, draws its controller. It had been connecting correctly and then showing you nothing, which is a difficult bug to describe to somebody standing in your living room holding the phone.

The Mac stopped flip-flopping

Devices announce themselves on the network, and those announcements linger for a while after a device goes away. The Mac was believing them: it would hand the room to a machine that had already left, notice the mistake, take the room back, then find the same stale announcement again and hand it over once more.

It now verifies before it commits. An announcement is a claim, and a claim gets checked before the Mac acts on it. This turns out to be a theme — see 5.04, where I had to learn it several more times.

Find your own bird, on any host

Holding down makes your bird flash so you can pick yourself out of a crowded screen. That worked when an Apple device was hosting and did nothing at all when the host was a Fire Stick or a PC. It now reaches every host from every Apple client.

A related trap: holding down and then walking away used to leave your bird stuck flashing forever. A hold is a finger on a button, and fingers come off buttons.