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Why Apple Won't Adopt a Wireless Charging Standard
Lucas123 writes As the battle for mobile dominance continues among three wireless charging standards, with many smartphone and wearable makers having already chosen sides, Apple continues to sit on the sideline. While the new Apple Watch uses a tightly coupled magnetic inductive wireless charging technology, it still requires a cable. The only advantage is that no port is required, allowing the watch case to remain sealed and water resistant. The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, however, remain without any form of wireless charging, either tightly coupled inductive or more loosely coupled resonant charging. Over the past few years, Apple has filed patents on its own flavor of wireless charging, a "near field" or resonant technology, but no products have as yet come to market. If and when it does select a technology, it will likely be its own proprietary specification, which ensures accessory makers will have to pay royalties to use it.
even AC understands this is no news for anybody let alone nerds!!
Yup, and then all the Apple-heads will flock to it, talk about how amazing it is (ignoring the fact that the same capabilities existed before, from other companies). Their social zeal and Apple's marketing will overwhelm the field, and at some point everyone will call all wireless chargers "iChargers" even if only half of them are, and the others are actually other brands / technologies that work similarly but pre-dated it. Such is the power - the evil power - that Apple exerts in our dark age...
William George
so why ruin a good thing?
Pretty much. As long as their fapples reward them Apple will remain a standards-hostile company.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Real Nerds know that you need AC for wireless charging, DC just won't cut it.
Seriously though, my opinion as a physicist/engineer is that wireless charging is a little dumb. It wastes a lot of power in an age where energy conservation is paramount, for what exactly? It's not like you can charge your phone from a distance. Inductive charging is a sensible tradeoff in things like dil^Welectric toothbrushes -- just because it can be done, doesn't mean it's great for everything.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Their customers (like me) are happy because the Apple stuff works well for them. There's annoyances like proprietay cables, and frustration over the reluctance of Apple to open up some of their APIs; we have custom keyboards and widgets at last, but still no Siri. But for me, those are minor. I've tried Android as well on a phone and tablets, and hated it. A friend of mine (who switched from Apple to Android) explained it well: "The advantage of Android is that you are free to tweak everything to your liking. The disadvantage is that you have to". For me, Apple's garden suits me well enough to not really even notice the wall that rings it. Complain about Apple's design choices, questionable business policies, their treatment of consumers, and the locked-down environment, and I'll agree. But my next phone will still be an iPhone because I want one that'll do what I want it to, right out of the box.
I did keep the Android tablet... the ability to just grab files from my local NAS, work with them, move them, that's something sorely missing on the iPad.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Yup, and then all the Apple-heads will flock to it, talk about how amazing it is (ignoring the fact that the same capabilities existed before, from other companies). Their social zeal and Apple's marketing will overwhelm the field, and at some point everyone will call all wireless chargers "iChargers" even if only half of them are, and the others are actually other brands / technologies that work similarly but pre-dated it. Such is the power - the evil power - that Apple exerts in our dark age...
If you really believe that, you need help.
Their social zeal and Apple's marketing will overwhelm the field, and at some point everyone will call all wireless chargers "iChargers" even if only half of them are, and the others are actually other brands / technologies that work similarly but pre-dated it.
Sadly, that is probably actually what will happen.
When Steve Jobs died, major news sites like CNN ran stories proclaiming that he "invented the computer mouse". Steve Jobs. Now granted maybe someone typed "Jobs" when they meant to type "Engelbart" as a mere innocent slip of the fingers. Could happen!
Excuse me, but now it's Apple's fault that CNN can't do research?
You have a valid point on one hand, but you ignore the fact that Apple zealots are seriously deluded having swallowed so much of Apple's marketing bullshit, thereby poisoning the larger computing community.