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Apple Officially Cancels AirPower

Tarantularock said:
I hope they don't follow a pattern here (we did get the homepod).
Announce Mac Pro is coming
delay...
delay...
delay...
pretend that they never announced it was coming...
canceled.
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From Tim’s autobiography, published in 2030:
”In 2013, after creating the embarassing trashcan, we decided to put genious macpro team to do something completely different, something that wouldn’t create rage among the pros: airpower. And after 6 years of the theam working hard, we could fire the whole team! We just had to give few M$ to leaders of that team as bonuses, but we did get rid of them!”
 
archer75 said:
No, the actual knock offs that are not just 2-3 coils side by side. The ones that allow you to charge anywhere on the mat. However that appears to still be in the kickstarter phase and not actually released.
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they'll probably run into the same technical problems Apple did.
 
Electronics, charging, heat and devices that live next to a lot of people's beds are many of the ingredients in a recipe for a disaster, just ask Samsung.

This is embarrassing to be sure, but if it was going to be a bad product, or even worse an unsafe one, they will have made the right call. But naturally, because now we will never know how bad it would have been if they'd just launched and hoped for the best, they will attract a lot of criticism (not entirely undeserved).

Could it be this is true, actual "courage" as opposed to the marketing-speak 'courage' for removing the headphone jack...? I think it might be, embarrassing as it is for them. I'm not pleased about them having such a public failure, but a small dose of humility is perhaps not the worst thing for them as a company right now.

And, looking on the positive side, it's better this fails than any one of numerous other (in my view) more important upcoming products. At least there are plenty of alternatives to this, even if they aren't as elegant and full-featured as this was supposed to be.
 
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Porco said:
Electronics, charging, heat and devices that live next to a lot of people's beds are many of the ingredients in a recipe for a disaster, just ask Samsung.

This is embarrassing to be sure, but if it was going to be a bad product, or even worse an unsafe one, they will have made the right call. But naturally, because now we will never know how bad it would have been if they'd just launched and hoped for the best, they will attract a lot of criticism (not entirely undeserved).

Could it be this is true, actual "courage" as opposed to the marketing-speak 'courage' for removing the headphone jack...? I think it might be, embarrassing as it is for them. I'm not pleased about them having such a public failure, but a small dose of humility is perhaps not the worst thing for them as a company right now.

And, looking on the positive side, it's better this fails than any one of numerous other (in my view) more important upcoming products. At least there are plenty of alternatives to this, even if they aren't as elegant as full-featured as this was supposed to be.
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Well said.
 
cmaier said:
Nobody has developed charging mat that lets you place three devices in any location on the mat.
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Does it really matter how many devices can be charged (from the physics standpoint)? There are mats that do not require exact device positioning and can charge multiple devices.
 
Scottsdale said:
I will be canceling my AirPods 2! What a joke! To think Tim Cook fires Scott Forestall for his failures when Scott was the future of Apple and innovation and then Cook sells products with promise of AirPad. I would fire Cook, hire Forestall, and get AAPL back on track.
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Are you normally this knee jerk?
 
This isn't something I was planning on using -- no watch, no airpods, and an iPhone SE.

Still, like the Apple Newton, dreams alone aren't enough.
 
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I guess we should have known that it isn't possible..
Apple gave other manufacturers plenty of time to release such a device too.... but none of them quite do what airpower promised.
 
ThisBougieLife said:
This will go down in tech history as one of the most notorious examples of vaporware.
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Me and others who saw this as vapourware when it was not released and the removal from Apple’s site were mocked by the MacRumors Apple Kool-Aid crowd. Time to eat some humble pie folks.

Nah just kidding, we all make mistakes :)
 
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Apple was working down to the wire on this and they gave it until the last possible minute before calling it quits. They had the new AirPods stockpiled for months hence the packaging referencing AirPower. I think they meant to launch the new devices together but when it became clear that the project was a failure they just released the new AirPods, old packaging and all.

I just find it so unbelievable they would announce a product that was clearly not working. For anybody else it would be a written off as a misstep but when you’re the biggest company in the world this is a massive fiasco that will talked about for years to come.
 
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They needed the money and resources to go into more Animoji’s isn’t that obvious? They said it was one or the other. The mat lost.
 
PickUrPoison said:
Canceled after three months overdue? Not even close!

Notorious at MacRumors, no doubt.
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They've been talking about it for much longer than that. It's not even that they hyped it as much as they actually printed it on their products and really seemed to behave like it was a sure thing. That makes it more "vaporous" than something that was just a plan floated but never came to fruition.

The Nikon DL cameras were vaporware too but I'm pretty sure I was the only person in the world who cared about those :p Apple vaporware is a bigger deal, even if it is just a charging pad.
 
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Zanton68 said:
This is poor. Don't announce till it's ready. Really poor show. I'm really sorry if these seems like a lazy post but if "someone" was still around, this would be in the shops already and would be insanely great or....would never have seen the light of day and certainly never been announced.....just saying......
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Rose-colored glasses. Not everything Steve did was great and Apple hasn’t always been perfect.

This is a bad look, but it’s still a minor accessory at the end of the day and Apple essentially admitted they weren’t all in on developing their own charging accessories when they gave the devices the Qi standard.
 
I really wish they’d get out of the habit of telling us about things way, way in advance which now seems to be the norm rather than the exception. AirPower being on example. It’s not good for Apple and not good for consumers... keep it under wraps and tell us a month (max!) in advance.

What the hell is Tim doing over there!
 
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Relentless Power said:
You do realize that Apple has dedicated engineer teams to specific projects? It’s not like every engineer was working on the Air power and not some other product. I believe Apple has a league of engineers spread out accordingly to work on future products, and not just focus on one accessory.
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I do. I was really referring more to $$$$.
 
Despite this pathetic failure, are we ever going to have a true 10w wireless quick charger for our iPhones like the android devices have had for almost 2 years now? the gimped 7.5w quick chargers we're forced to use make little difference from the basic 5w versions that have been out for half a decade.
 
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They got longer range (resonant inductive couling) wireless power working efficiently enough and ditched AirPower immediately. So, place you device close (30-50 cm) enough (let’s call the power delivery mode to “nightstand area power”, or NAP) to a small antenna, sized like a tobacco box (still remember those?) or so, and your devices will be delivered fresh juice in a very convenient way.

Considering how inexpensive Qi chargers now are, Apple could have not milked charged customers enough with AirPower, but the upcoming NAP gadget will sell for $299 easily, it’ll be that convinient to use. Worth every penny/dime/c€nt. Smart move, Apple.

No evidence other than what can be found on websites, but my reasoning is:

1) Apple could have easily designed an ordinary Qi charger, no doubt, but could not have gotten away with their target price.
2) AirPower was to be the one to deliver the kind of customer experience (not really, IMHO) that justifies an exorbitant (for an inductive charger) price, but turned out to be too difficult/expensive/whateverreason to make.
3) Apple have been courting longer range power delivery not only recently but years. (Well, of course they have been.) IIRC, they bought (were about to buy?) a startup that was designing such a technology some time ago and have submitted patents on resonant inductive coupling.

A pipe dream? Perhaps. Still, technically plausible. 1:3 that Apple will announce AirSuperPower within a year, anyone?
 
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