Apple appears to have quietly discontinued the Beats Pill Plus, with the portable wireless speaker no longer appearing on either Apple or Beats’ websites, as spotted by 9to5Mac.
Originally released in 2015, the Pill Plus was the first speaker released under the Beats brand since the music company was purchased by Apple for $3 billion back in 2014. A more refined version of the original Beats Pill speaker, the Pill Plus was an Apple-ified version of the original product, with sleeker monochromatic color options and the addition of a Lightning port for charging.
Apple and Beats would continue to go on to build out Beats’ lineup of headphones over the intervening half-decade, with products like recent Beats Fit Pro or Powerbeats earbuds, both of which feature the same H1 chips and software integration as the Apple-branded AirPods lineup.
But the company didn’t show the same love to the Pill line. There was no Pill Plus successor that added support for Apple’s AirPlay standard or one with integrated Siri support. In fact, Apple hasn’t released another portable speaker (under either its Apple or its Beats brands), despite its expansion into smart home speakers with the since-discontinued HomePod and the smaller HomePod mini — the sole standalone speaker that Apple currently sells.
In the meantime, plenty of other portable battery-powered speakers around have come out to fill the niche that Apple never really explored with its Beats-branded options. There’s the Sonos Roam, which offers both Bluetooth and works with Apple’s AirPlay 2 standard, along with modernized versions of the Ultimate Ears speakers that the Beats Pill Plus used to compete with.
wazup.