Apple Officially Cancels AirPower

[pat500000]

I find this hilarious. “Courage?” More like “discourage.”

 

[lordofthereef]

One delay, of almost three months. It turned into a cancellation before it actually hit the three month mark.

Maybe I'm misremembering. Was it not announced ages ago? It's possible I'm not up to snuff on my Apple news. It just feels like we were waiting for this thing for a long time. Apple isn't know for vapor ware.

 

[rlhamil]

While it wouldn't help with existing phones, if the next gen iPhones could do as some of the Galaxy phones, and wirelessly charge the AirPods (or even an Apple Watch, perhaps), that would be the next best thing anyway.

 

[WolfSnap]

It’s not eligible for return. This was also stated when I made the purchase so fair enough. Even if Apple did accept an exchange, the difference in price is not going to change my life, whereas waiting several weeks/months for replacement AirPods is not something I want to deal with. Thanks though.

Seems like it's pretty easy to return online... Just saying..

 

[Hallouminati]

Can’t return them if you had them laser inscribed “for free”. This is ********. I would never have spent the $50 extra for wireless I I knew AirPower wasn’t coming out.

They should offer an Apple credit for those that got F’d

Pretty sure after this they will give you a full refund.

 

[lordofthereef]

wait.... so.... qi charging, which has been around for years, and is eloquently done by literally hundreds of manufacturers - they couldnt get that right?

i dont want to read a lot into this, but its hard not to see this as a colossal failure and speaks a lot about just how far theyve fallen as a hardware company.

They'd wanted to allow three devices to charge simultaneously when Placed in the mat in any orientation whatsoever.

This ain't in defense of Apple. But it's not a basic Qi charging mat we are talking about here. Unfortunately most articles don't explain this in any detail.

 

[TMRJIJ]

I’ll still buy it if I could get my hand on a working preproduction model.

I don’t think you’ll want this product in your house considering they possibly cancelled it due to heat issues.

 

[Blaze4G]

Sounds like Apple wanted to make the pad have infinite x y charging ability using something like 20-30 coils. That way, you wouldn't have to worry about centering your device on the pad. That just sounds so impossible.

I don't see why Apple just didn't make phone specific airpowers. One for the XS then have a slot / raised edges that the phone fits into. No fiddling around to place your phone in the correct position. Place it in the slot and you're done.

 

[4jasontv]

No, they really didn't.

And if they did, it wasn't reasonable for them to do so.

They did, and they did it many times.

 

[trssho]

Thats ridiculous the largest company in the world couldn't build a charging pad.

 

[Focusx0131]

This post is at nearly 1200 replies in over 9 hours. What other posts have gotten this kind of response outcry? Seemed like people didn’t care about it at all or super hyped but now everyone has an opinion of Tim Cook and Apple as a whole off of one product cancellation. Unprecedented indeed.

 

[RevTEG]

You know there are numerous other wireless chargers you can use?

For real?

In all seriousness, of course I know there are many other wireless chargers available. I wanted the Apple one. Guess I’m just a fan of Apple products. I really don’t have any need for wireless chargers. I’ve spent a small fortune making sure all my/family’s current devices have Apple 30w chargers for fast charging. Wireless charging isn’t fast. It would really only work for me at night. I was interested it for the novelty of it.

But I did return the Gen 2 AirPods tonight. My first gens are still going strong.

 

[4jasontv]

I don't see why Apple just didn't make phone specific airpowers. One for the XS then have a slot / raised edges that the phone fits into. No fiddling around to place your phone in the correct position. Place it in the slot and you're done.

The main selling point of this was that you could place multiple items anywhere on the mat.

 

[Gremlinh]

Guys guys guys, its an April fools joke. Macrumors has these every year. Just relax. Its coming

 

[Abazigal]

Thats ridiculous the largest company in the world couldn't build a charging pad.

https://ifixit.org/blog/14883/what-finally-killed-airpower/

Well, it's not like there's another company out there who has done what Apple couldn't here. Physics was not on their side right from day 1, it seems.

 

[Exile714]

Ok, now just let us use regular Qi chargers for the Apple Watch...

 

[brinary001]

Incredible. The biggest tech company in the world can't build a charging mat.

I don't know whether to laugh or to shudder at such an uninformed comment, but nonetheless I'm compelled to ask, you do know it wasn't just going to be a charging mat right? This would've been the first of its kind and left their competitors scratching their heads. Hell maybe it would've won the team who worked on it the freaking Nobel Prize in physics...

 

[Blaze4G]

The main selling point of this was that you could place multiple items anywhere on the mat.

But my point is, if you had slots where each device fit into (phone, watch, airpods) that would seem imo just as easy as putting your device anywhere.

 

[Morgenland]

Thanks, Apple!

I'm an engineer and I always knew this would happen. I've always expressed myself like that here. AirPower is completely inefficient and doesn't simplify anything because it generates new constraints.

I was wondering how many people thought it was great, and that worried me a bit.
How many Middle Ages continues in Present Time?

The $9 stuff on the market cannot be extended with useful functionality. Uninteresting for Apple. I'm glad that Apple doesn't waste any more resources on this crap.

 

[Muzzakus]

You mean you couldn’t charge Apple money for tech that sells for $9 on eBay.

 

[Shanghaichica]

Thats ridiculous the largest company in the world couldn't build a charging pad.

It wasn’t just any old charging pad. It was trying to wirelessly charge 3 devices at the same time using one power source. Even current ones can only charge 2 at the same time or 3 but with 2 power sources.

 

[Morgenland]

[doublepost=1553923540][/doublepost]

It wasn’t just any old charging pad. It was trying to wirelessly charge 3 devices at the same time using one power source. Even current ones can only charge 2 at the same time or 3 but with 2 power sources.

And it was precisely this stupid idea (which is not technically feasible to implement) that caused the developers to fail. This happens when technically marketing guys make development plans for techs. That wastes an infinite amount of capital.

 

[newyorksole]

What do you see a problem with?

The iPhone X came out in 2017. At that time there were already many wireless options since other phones supported the tech.

Many people have wireless chargers now. Some would buy the Apple version, others would just keep their current setup.

Nah man. This was supposed to charge THREE devices at once. Then it looked like only two.

Neither way, most wireless chargers charge only 1 device at a time. People would’ve bought this.

 

[PickUrPoison]

You’re both clowns LOL. The point is that Apple doesn’t have it’s priorities straight but that’s something I shouldn’t have to explain.

No, the point is there were lots of engineers working on AirPower. They couldn’t make it work.

If there were no new content acquisition, TV/games subscription services, no new credit card—it would change nothing. The engineers still wouldn’t have been able to make it work.

Maybe explaining it another way would help. The AirPower engineers had one priority. The highest of priorities. Making AirPower work. That’s 100% of their time, attention, effort and thinking. The content folks? Similar, but different: Putting together deals for great content. The credit card group? One priority. Their highest priority? A successful credit card offering that will absolutely mint cash. It’s going to be a veritable cash cow. And one guess what the gaming subscription groups #1 priority is.

Looking at it another way: Apple has over 130,000 employees. They spend over $1.2 billion each month, every month on R&D. There are quite sufficient resources to work on many projects at once. The last thing we need is the emoji artist doing QA, working on the Mac Pro or designing an induced coil-current nulling/offset negative feedback control circuit.

 

[Morgenland]

No, the point is there were lots of engineers working on AirPower. They couldn’t make it work.

If there were no new content acquisition, TV/games subscription services, no new credit card—it would change nothing. The engineers still wouldn’t have been able to make it work.

Maybe explaining it another way would help. The AirPower engineers had one priority. The highest of priorities. Making AirPower work. That’s 100% of their time, attention, effort and thinking. The content folks? Similar, but different: Putting together deals for great content. The credit card group? One priority. Their highest priority? A successful credit card offering that will absolutely mint cash. It’s going to be a veritable cash cow. And one guess what the gaming subscription groups #1 priority is.

Looking at it another way: Apple has over 130,000 employees. They spend over $1.2 billion each month, every month on R&D. There are quite sufficient resources to work on many projects at once. The last thing we need is the emoji artist doing QA, working on the Mac Pro or designing an induced coil-current offset control feedback circuit.

Best summary of things. Thank you!