IT House January 17 news, earlier this month, Apple discontinued its last battery-powered speaker Beats Pill+. After the news was announced, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman revealed that Apple had discussed and prototyped the battery-powered smart speaker internally.
In the latest issue of the Power On newsletter, Gurman said that although Apple designed a prototype of a battery-powered smart speaker a few years ago, it was not launched in the end. Currently, the HomePod mini is the only smart speaker apple sells, and it must be connected to a power source to use it.
IT House understands that Gurman talked about a number of other topics in this week's newsletter, including the long-rumored Apple AR/VR headset, which he once again said will perform on par with the M1 Pro chip in the new MacBook Pro and could cost more than $2,000 at launch.
Gurman also said hyundai's luxury brand Genesis plans to support Apple's digital car key feature, which allows users to lock, unlock and start their vehicles using a pass stored in the Wallet app on the iPhone or Apple Watch. Since its launch in 2020, the feature has been limited to some BMW models, but Gurman said Genesis plans to roll out support for the feature in the summer.