Async iterables seem to be more like a unifying feature to me. For example the TC39 docs on async iterable say this: > Furthermore, we introduce a new symbol

Async iterables seem to be more like a unifying feature to me. For example the TC39 docs on async iterable say this: > Furthermore, we introduce a new symbol > used for obtaining an async iterator > from a given object, Symbol.asyncIterator. > This allows arbitrary objects to advertise > that they are async iterables, similar to > how Symbol.iterator allows you to advertise > being a normal, synchronous iterable. > An example of a class that might use this > is a readable stream. [1] So, the readable stream may end up implementing this api. I went to see if the same thing might go for the observable api. I found that they may have the ability of coercing async iterables with Observable.from()[2] or they could have the ability for asyncIterators to be used as observables through other methods [3]. Observables do implement their own Symbol.observable which does make them different. Really Observables do play a different role than async iterables though[3]. Something that makes observables different is they don't have to be asynchronous. As you may have noticed in the article Promises are added to a queue as micro-tasks where as observables can and will execute immediately if they have a value ready. Honestly we don't even know whether both or either of these will make it into the final spec. I personally hope they will make it. As long as there is strong interoperability it is fine with me, which as it is this seems to be the case. [1] https://github.com/tc39/proposal-async-iteration#async-iterators-and-async-iterables https://github.com/tc39/proposal-async-iteration#async-itera... [2] https://github.com/tc39/proposal-observable/issues/130 https://github.com/tc39/proposal-observable/issues/130 [3] https://github.com/tc39/proposal-async-iteration/issues/47 https://github.com/tc39/proposal-async-iteration/issues/47 [4] https://github.com/tc39/proposal-observable/issues/116 https://github.com/tc39/proposal-observable/issues/116