When wireless Qi charging with a mat was mentioned a year or so ago, Phil mentioned that Apple does not see it as a viable solution. Fast-forward to the iPhone 8 and X, now it’s a solution. What changed since then? Is this Phil’s double-talk again. Did Apple’s solution not as good as Qi? Is AirPower any better, allowing simultaneous adaptive charging or is it some form of extension on Qi implementation? Is AirPower capable of rapid/fast charging?
A lot of unanswered questions at present.
Are you new here? NOTHING is a viable solution until Apple rolls out their cut of it. Apple- and particularly Phil ridiculed bigger-screen phones while Apple clung to the "perfect" of 3.5" and then 4" (both sizes were THE "perfect" size while they were the sizes Apple chose to sell). Even Jobs has plenty of 'em: "who wants an iPod to play video?" and "any tablet smaller than 9.7 inches..." to reference just two.
Apple takes pokes at features it doesn't offer for sale (yet). Passionate Apple followers then run with Apple's stance ridiculing such features to no end at every possible opportunity.
At some point, Apple rolls out their version of the feature and all that anti-feature sentiment just evaporates as if we never felt that way... even if we wrote it down and posted it in public forums. Step back only a few months and you can read passionate posts of how "I will not buy a new iPhone without TouchID", "I will NOT buy an iPhone with that ugly notch", "I will not pay $1000 for a phone" and/or "4K is a gimmick that nobody can see. Nobody needs a 4K
TV" Apple rolls those out and all such arguments fade quickly and/or cease. Step back further in time and there are a couple of YEARS of published ridicule of competitors offering features like bigger-screen phones (oh the fragmentation, pants with bigger pockets, man purses, etc), and many others. "I will not buy a Mac without Magsafe." "I will not buy a phone without a headphone jack" "I refuse to carry dongles." "I will not buy a Mac without <favored> port(s)." And on and on. Remember when iDevices having only 1GB of RAM made perfect sense because iOS was so "optimized & refined that it didn't need more than 1GB" and "who wants the battery burn that comes with more than 1GB RAM?". Did iOS become unoptimized & refined in the last few years? I've seen no such accusations
against Apple now that mobile devices have expanded the RAM.
NFC was relentlessly ridiculed. Then Apple rolls out ApplePay and not only is it suddenly & immediately acceptable, but there are many calls to boycott buying at any store that will not let us pay that way.
We'll even fragment our Apple worship-like support over the SAME feature. For example, there was the day that Apple rolled out a new iPad with a Retina screen and a new iPad Mini without Retina. We made a very passionate case to each other why Retina was THE must-have reason to upgrade the iPad. Simultaneously, we made a very passionate case to each other why Retina was NOT important on the Mini screen... that it was must-upgrade for other reasons... until the next Mini when it rolled out WITH a Retina screen and that became THE main reason to upgrade. Apparently Retina on the Mini only did NOT make sense while Apple chose NOT to include it.
Same with front-facing iSight camera in the first generation iPad. Apple opted to leave it out for whatever reason (breakdowns revealed there was even a space for such a camera). "We" made very passionate cases for why an iPad should NOT have a front-facing camera: stability, "who wants to be looking up my nose?", video chat is not important in a mobile device, etc. The very next year Apple rolls out a new iPad with a front-facing "FaceTime" camera... which immediately became THE rally-cry reason to upgrade iPads: "OMG", "Now we can video chat with our iPads!!!", etc.
In a nutshell: business as usual. There's highly passionate arguments against everything NOT yet available in Apple products for sale now... until it is... which "magically" transforms such features into a "shut up and take my money" (often THE) must-have reason to upgrade. Wireless charging has been relentlessly ridiculed for years now in countless posts. But now that Apple offers the feature, we magically feel very different about it.
In all cases, some proceed if they never made any comment against such features. Some may offer some wishy-washy transitional comments: "...but when I got to see it in person" and/or "it's kind of growing on me" posts. And some go with the old "Apple is not first, but wait so that they get it right" spin (which of course, is only selectively applied when Apple is not rolling out something first).
