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Apple Officially Cancels AirPower

Relentless Power said:
This has *nothing* to do with cash. It has everything to do with perfecting the engineering behind this product, which posed its problems. And If It’s so simple as you noted in your post, then why hasn’t any other manufacturer really developed Apples form of a wireless charger where you can place the device anywhere to charge without a specific contact point like other wireless chargers require? The fact that Apple abandoned this, obviously provided that it has his technical difficulties. Why ANNOUNCE the product if it’s not ready for mass adoption? It’s better that Apple terminated this project versus release something that could potentially have problems or faults that would make them even look worse.
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It would have been better if Apple had never announced the Airpower in the first place. So I fixed your question in BOLD
 
ThisBougieLife said:
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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Agreed it’s a bigger news item because it’s Apple. They never should have teased it, but they just couldn’t help themselves, apparently.
 
This is not a surprise to anyone. Apple tried to overcome the laws of physics by being too ambitious and they just couldn't do it. After the many delays, people should've expected that this device wasn't seeing the light of day.

Getting confirmation that this product is done for brings a sigh of relief to me more than anything else. The persistent rumors that Apple was pushing forward with this project when it wasn't ever going to launch was just annoying to me.
 
Schrödinger’s said:
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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Maybe AirpowerMax or AirpowerPro :)
 
thadoggfather said:
How do ya mean? Not new management as far as I can tell up the totem pole
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I mean as in management thought it would be available waaaay earlier. I’d go as far as saying that management teased a vapor ware. It is not new that Apple teases something 6 month ahead of release. At that point you have a prototype that is practically the final product. AirPods just never seem to have gotten to that point and for sure wasn’t in that phase when first teased.

AirPower not getting released does actually surprise me. This kind of failure is not something we’d expect from a world-leading tech company but a KIckstarter project..
 
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Maybe they will just create a regular standard Apple Qi Charger? I wonder. Cmon Tim  get it together!
 
xanderville said:
It would have been better if Apple had never announced the Airpower in the first place.
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Except, Apple never envisioned to encounter technical issues that they did with the Airpower manufacturing, so that doesn’t mean they _shouldn’t_ announce a product, it just means that the product wasn’t developed maturely enough for them to know the future of its existence and what problems posed as limitations.
 
trifid said:
2009 - Palm has the first smartphone with inductive charging, truly visionary.

2019 - Apple is late almost a decade to the inductive charging party, and fails to innovate and bring anything new to the table.

Where is the Apple that was constantly ahead of its time?
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It is gone. Just like Apple treating new technology, “never come back”.
 
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PickUrPoison said:
Agreed it’s a bigger news item because it’s Apple. They never should have teased it, but they just couldn’t help themselves, apparently.
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The irony is, they teased it to try and mitigate negative publicity from getting rid of the headphone jack and being late to the game with wireless charging. They’ve now got a much bigger PR problem on their hands. Like you said, they should’ve just left teasing it.
 
Trik said:
I'm pissed they waited until AFTER the AirPods wireless charging were launched. I purchased the Wireless charging case with my AirPods specifically for the future AirPower functionality. I have almost no interest in buying some 3rd party wireless charger.
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You should definitely return it, you can save $40.
 
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Donnation said:
This coupled with the "new" AirPods is a pretty ****** move by Apple. AirPower should have been cancelled last year and the AirPods 1.0000000001 should have been released last year as well.
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They should announce products when they are ready and by ready I mean on sale next month after the keynote. Like it was for many years.
 
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skillwill said:
The irony is, they teased it to try and mitigate negative publicity from getting rid of the headphone jack and being late to the game with wireless charging. They’ve now got a much bigger PR problem on their hands. Like you said, they should’ve just left teasing it.
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No they don’t. Nobody actually cares. The average apple customer never heard of AirPower.
 
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LordVic said:
of course, but we as a species have not yet cracked that barrier.

it's one step at a time. the fact that we can charge our devices inductively is just a step. technology doesn't just materialize in a vacuum and is often a result of incremental upgrades to tech

We may need a pad today. But next year could be within 1ft. than a few years later 5ft, than maybe 20 years later, same room.

Expecting us though to g from needing a full thick wire plugged directly in, to walking around the street getting charged is a delusional dream that ignores the reality of how technology is innovated one step at time.
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Sure. Technology does not advance overnight. I just say pad-based wireless charging is not true wireless charging. That is all. Maybe one day in the future we will get there, having a battery emitting electrical power to charge many devices within a range.
 
So let me get this straight, when apple announce to the world a piece of hardware at a keynote such as the iPhones and all, they are not actually in it’s final or ready to be released form at the event?

Don’t announce to the world what is not ready to be released.
 
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Schrödinger’s said:
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?
Click to expand...

The biggest challenge of Wireless energy transfer is efficiency. It is simply not efficient to do it over long distances. Sure in theory you could blast out a few hundred watts but it wont be anywhere a feasible product. Finally current wireless receivers in their products won’t support this new magic technology anyway, so first they’d need to release iPhone XX, AirPods 3 and watch 5.
 
Relentless Power said:
Except, Apple never envisioned to encounter technical issues that they have with the Air power manufacturing, so that doesn’t mean they _shouldn’t_ announce a product, it just means that the product wasn’t developed maturely enough for them to know the future of its existence and what problems posed as limitations.
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Ok, since this product has never been created before, then a logical step would be to wait until the product has developed maturely, as in a working prototype. It would have been difficult to predict any technical issues, so again, that is why you do not announce it yet, given it is a new product. The Airpower announcement correlated with the wireless charging capabilities of other Apple products. Of course they wanted to present their own wireless solution for these products, which possibly had Apple fans hold off until the Airpower was released. This is a way to beat the competition to the punch.

Though given all this, I would have a hard time believing that Apple engineers did not present some of these potential issues in the beginning stages. Apple has some of the best engineers in the world. They would have known some of these roadblocks before the announcement
 
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Apple can't do a simple wireless charging mat, wow! They have to do an imposible wireless charging mat with is ... imposible to make.
 
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This is absolutely crushing. I was refreshing the Apple store hoping to catch when they go on sale, and then Apple drops the news. This completely ruins my weekend for me, if not the entire month. But imagine how Apple engineers feel.. they worked long and hard, in the end it wasn't good enough. As bad as we all feel now, there are hundreds of people at Apple who feel worse. Thanks for trying guys, keep at it.

And to the trolls who say "Apple can't make a wireless charging mat, but competitors can" -- the difference is that Apple actually adheres to safety standards. Unlike a certain company famous for making exploding phones, Apple does not release crap. If you're planning on buying a wireless charging mat from anyone, you had better think twice.
 
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