They are not required to drop awdl, they just have to support wifi aware as well.

They weren't specifically required to drop AWDL, they were just required to implement WiFi-Aware in such a manner that neither technology had an advantage.

In theory Apple could've maintained both, but that seems like a waste of development time to me.

I doubt they would've had to implement any specific protocol if they had just opened up AWDL, but I suppose they'd rather keep that closed to maintain the ability to guard their walled garden in non-EU devices.

> In theory Apple could've maintained both, but that seems like a waste of development time to me.

They need Airdrop to work with phones who haven’t upgraded, so doesn’t feel like a waste to me. And they already have working AWDL code, so it’s just maintenance, probably not a ton of work.

So does Mac OS support Wifi Aware now? I didn't think so, which is confusing if Airdrop still works between iOS and Mac OS.