HomePod

Apple’s surprise January resurrection of the original HomePod arrived with a handful of new software features. One of the more intriguing of the bunch was sound recognition for smoke and carbon mono

According to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple could be working on a new HomePod device that would feature a built-in display for 2024. The rumor seems to be based on third-party supply chain companies, suc

Maybe nothing ever truly dies in Apple land. The Mac Pro went on an indefinite hiatus as the hardware design team regrouped and reengineered. MagSafe appeared to be gone forever, only to be reborn in

Welcome to the dark night of the smart speaker. A few years back, the category felt inevitable — and, frankly, why not? We’ve smartened our phones and watches. Why shouldn’t our homes be the

Ditching HomePod was a strange choice. At the time, Apple told us, “HomePod mini has been a hit since its debut last fall, offering customers amazing sound, an intelligent assistant, and smart home

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry continues to grow, with a re

Apple is now rolling out access to its new, lower-cost Apple Music Voice plan, first introduced this fall at the company’s hardware event. The new service, designed largely for use with HomePod

A year ago I accidentally turned my house into a smart home. What started out as an easy (and lazy, let’s be honest) way to switch off the radio in the kitchen without getting up from the couch

In 2019, Amazon introduced a more affordable way to stream Amazon Music with the launch of a free, ad-supported music service that streamed only over its Echo speakers. Today, Apple is catching up wit

Probably not what anyone was expecting on the HomePod front, but now that the mini is Apple’s primary smart home device, the company has just announced a handful of additional colors for the line. A

Audio startup Syng has been building on quite a bit more hype than the average fresh hardware startup, largely because of the team behind it. Founder and CEO Chris Stringer was Jony Ive’s first

Apple recently began a research study designed to collect speech data from study participants. Earlier this month, the company launched on the App Store a new iOS app called “Siri Speech Study&#

Apple didn’t announce that rumored combined Apple TV device that would combine the set-top box with a HomePod speaker during its WWDC keynote, but it did announce a few features that will improv

Apple is reportedly working on a couple of new options for a renewed entry into the smart home, including a mash-up of the Apple TV with a HomePod speaker, and an integrated camera for video chat, acc

Apple has discontinued its original HomePod after four years. It says that it will continue to produce and focus on the HomePod mini, introduced last year. The larger HomePod offered a beefier sound s

It’s hard to shake the sense that the smart speaker market would look considerably different had the HomePod Mini arrived several years back. It’s not so much that the device is transformative on

In the past several weeks we’ve seen refreshes and product expansions from about every facet of the smart home virtual assistant world. Apple launched the HomePod Mini, Google offered a long-ove

New numbers from Canalys point to a strong growth in smart speaker shipments in Mainland China this year. The market is on track to grow in 2020, having gotten the COVID-19 pandemic mostly under contr

Apple HomePod owners, starting today, will be able to use the newly announced “Intercom” feature to send messages between their HomePod smart speakers. The feature, which arrives via a sof

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the TechCrunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all. The app industry is as hot as ever, wi