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Report Claims AirPower 'Doomed to Failure' Unless Apple Can Resolve Multiple Ongoing Engineering Issues

Every photo I see of this shows the watch flat on the mat. I like the sport loop so I’m not sure it would even work for me if it were released unless I detached the band. Maybe I could flip the band inside out but haven’t tried.

The only time I currently use wireless charging is away from the house in a public spot that offers it. I will not plug into a connection some place to charge unless I brought the plug with me. Too much of a chance for security.
 
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Mydel said:
With that level of complication the price would be way beyond acceptable levels. Wireless charging as it is now I find completely useless. There is no difference for me if i place phone or watch on the mat or hook it up via cable. I charge overnight anyway. Not to mention that efficiency is very low what directly translates to loss of power.
That technology is not promising. Once the real wireless technology will be available I will maybe change my mind. Lets say 3m range.
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You must be real old school, I put my Note 8 on the wireless charger on my nightstand and its way more convenient than trying to find a wire at night to plug in plus my charging port doesn't get worn out as much. Its very handy once you get used to it. Samsung gave me the fast wireless charger free when I pre-ordered my phone and it works well, not sure why Apple is having such a hard time.
 
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While I commend them for wanting it to be perfect and exactly as they imagined, why was this not resolved before announcing the product? Did they even have a prototype that worked as expected?

There are multiple charging pads out there with 3 coils that can charge 3 devices, but they have to be placed on top of the coil, not anywhere on the mat. It's really not that difficult when you have a small marker for where the product is to sit, and it's still far easier to deal with in the dark than a cable solution.

At this point it would be best if they just forgot about it and let people use the thousands of other options that are available out there.
 
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MrGimper said:
I bet most people would be buying it because they just want all the fancy animations that you don't get with a more affordable, released, wireless charging solution
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The animations looked cool, but I wouldn't buy for the rumored price. I think $49-$59 would have been the only way.
 
AgentOSX said:
I don’t particularly care. I have every Apple device but this is one I would skip. It’s not like there is some sort of charging crisis going on. This was eye candy at best, a solution to a problem that didn’t exist.
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I completely agree with this but think this was a timeline issue, I think the original plan for idevice wireless charging was an Apple proprietary method, based on Qi but not compatible, Apple would sell this device by the bucket load, however it was late to the party and Apple couldn’t wait any longer, the 8 in particular needed a big new feature such as a wireless solution, Apple went with the industry standard (which is quite unlike them in my view). Now they can’t go back to proprietary but have already invested to much to pull out.
 
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I just re-watched the announcement. I feel like they weren't too confident. Schiller uses words like, "Want, "Think" and "Idea".
"Our team wants to create something"
"We're going to give you a sneak peak of this Idea right now."
"We think we have an idea of how to make this a better experience."

It was a concept.


He also put a lot of emphasis on how they wanted other manufacturers to innovate and push the limits on the standard.

"But our team knows how to do this" but he may very well have been wrong.
 
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This is a mess. For the foreseeable price of this AirPower mat you are able to buy NOW about ~10 great quality standalone wireless chargers and put them in various convenient places around your hose/flat. Why would anyone really NEED a single pad???

Even if Apple wanted to push this "smart" wireless charging - wouldn't separate, MUCH CHEAPER, single device smart & fast wireless chargers would make way more sense than this?
 
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I thought by now our devices would be using fuel cell technology for power and charging. It's been ready for some time for adoption.
 
"Currently the device produces far too much heat, which causes performance setbacks, and can affect the ability of the devices to charge if they become too warm in the process. It also affects the ability of Apple's custom charging chip, which runs a stripped down version of iOS, to function as intended."
AirPower BOOOOOM!
 
The thing is that I want a better solution, especially in the bedroom in terms of charging. AirPower sounded like the perfect solution, one charger that could charge my iPhone, Apple Watch and AirPods simultaneously. Charging efficiency doesn't matter all that much as things in the bedroom is being charged overnight anyways.

I love the idea of AirPower. Currently I'm using a Samsung non-fast wireless charger + Apple Watch charger + I have a regular Lightning-charger as well for the AirPods. It's just silly to have all these at once. I do have the wireless one for my iPhone because it makes it possible for me to use my wired Lighting Shure SE846 for ASMR while going to sleep while charging. Can't use those + lightning for charging at the same time. The Apple Watch is pretty much stuck as it simply won't charge wirelessly on regular QI chargers...

Most dual-wireless chargers are from non-reputable brands and I will go nowhere near them. I don't cheap out on chargers as handling electricity in my home is not something I take for granted. And these chargers are useless for my Apple Watch anyways...

I suppose the best thing is to go for one of these 1x Power-outlet into multiple USB-A chargers so we are at least utilise one single power outlet for all these devices instead of having to use five different one as we do today... But it will still be a stupid amount of cords going everywhere..
 
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MrGimper said:
I've not read the article, but you'd have thought they'd been like 90% of the way into testing before announcing this thing.
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Yeah, maybe even one major issue left to resolve before it gets announced ― but 3 major issues that are in the way? And while the AirPower is cool, it's not mind blowing, so I'm wondering who was dying to announce it
 
Innovation is hard. Sometimes you try, but fail. They knew they still had quite a way to go when they just said “sometime in 2018” last year.

But Apple’s got a bunch of smart engineers working on this, hopefully they’ll figure it out. If the product won’t deliver by the end of the year, Apple will give a status update in an announcement of some sort... at least that’s their usual m.o.
 
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steeevo said:
Why not mention it last week. Just admit theres a hold up so people can stop second guessing
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Probably because even they don’t know if it’ll ever see the light of day. I wish they’d be more communicative too man, but if they came out and said “hey we’re still working on it and hope to have it out this year” and it turns out it’s just a dead product, that looks even worse because by talking about it, they built up more expectation. At least now it’s been a year, a lot of people have forgotten about it and don’t really even expect it to come out
 
I think they announced it preemptively in order to sell people on wireless charging and also justify why Apple was so late to the party. The idea of a mat that charges multiple devices wherever they are placed is great and extremely difficult. Others haven't even come close to it. I mean we don't even have mats that can charge one device wherever it is placed save 3 of very different technologies.
 
chabig said:
Actually they are. This device would sense the location of up to three devices on a large open mat and intelligently direct energy to the individual devices, regardless of position. There is nothing on the market today that can perform that trick.
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This. From what I understand, it’s redirecting different levels of power to different (specific) coils for each device, each time. There aren’t pre-determined larger coils in a single spot designated for iPhone, Airpods & Watch.

Twitter ramblings among Gruber and others also said this was a proprietary thing, non-Qi and all the devices were constantly communicating with each other on power levels, adjusting based on charge level and current heat. But because of this, the 2nd gen Airpods are now delayed because they were going to be non-Qi and exclusively work with the mat.

I was looking forward to building one of these into a custom office desk where I could set any of my devices within a fairly large area and charging them all at once surreptitiously.
 
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