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Apple Cancels Long-delayed AirPower Charging Mat (venturebeat.com)
One and a half years after announcing a wireless charging mat for iPhones, Apple Watches, and AirPods called AirPower, Apple has unexpectedly cancelled the accessory. From a report: It notably missed its expected shipping dates multiple times, including a potential release alongside the second-generation version of AirPods and charging case this week. "After much effort, we've concluded AirPower will not achieve our high standards and we have cancelled the project," said Apple SVP of Hardware Engineering Dan Riccio in a statement today. "We apologize to those customers who were looking forward to this launch. We continue to believe that the future is wireless and are committed to push the wireless experience forward." Mark Gurman of Bloomberg, adds, "This is fairly unprecedented and unbelievable. The AirPods even have a picture of the AirPower on the box."
And here we have a stunning example of the vaporware lifecycle ...
1) Coming real soon now, the super awesomeness
2) Coming a little later than planned, the mostly super awesomeness
3) Coming still further down the road, the almost kinda sorta super awesomeness
4) Coming very far in the future, something which may or may not resemble what we promised as the super awesomeness but with fewer features
5) Well, as it turns out, we have no idea how to build that super awesomeness after all and we're cancelling it
If the product doesn't exist in a demo-able form, it's vaporware, and it may never exists at all.
This sounds like Apple is starting to become a little more prone to vaporware.
The party's over. Turn out the lights. The days of Apple innovation are long gone. It was buried with Steve Jobs.
Now I think Apple Jump the gun, by showing off a demo a couple years ago, and really is messing up setting expectations. But if they couldn't getting it working well then they should just cancel it. I expect the issue is how sensitive wireless charging it. I actually like wireless charging, as most of the time a failure in my phone is often from strain from the charging connector, wireless charging reduces the stress on the phone.
However while I got it charging if I move the phone slightly it stops charging, or if I put it on the charger too off center it will not charge. It seems to me the physics of a mat wireless charger would be difficult to get it to work as it was advertised, Just a large mat and drop your device(s) on it and they will start charging. Sure I can see something that looks like a mat, but has 2 or 3 chargers in it. But then it is just multiple wireless chargers in one case, and you need to put your phone on the right spot.
Now I know Slashdot love to hate Apple, and will point out every time they didn't do something 100% right. But for the most part they don't produce crap products, and they will often work as advertised. Just the problem is we sometimes think they will do something that isn't advertised.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It takes courage to cancel a known defective product that fanbois would buy without even think about it. I mean, Apple never balked selling junk before... maybe finally Apple is giving a flying fuck about their consumers?
Unprecedented really?
Airpower was probably just a way to help bump their stocks. People won't sell them now that their product is identified as fraudulent so Apple wins anyway here.
They've been fucking about it so much slashdot has many many articles with whining editors about their missing apple power mat.
Even when I thought the AirPower might ship someday, I was dubious about the utility of it.
For charging an AppelWatch, I greatly prefer a stand that can have the face act as a small clock by the bed.
For charging a phone, I greatly also prefer a stand so that you can leave the phone more visible than laying down.
For the AirPods, if someday I have a wireless charging case I wouldn't care, a mat might be handy but anything would be fine (I've seen amusing pictures of them propped up just high enough on a phone charger to back against the charging spot.
I do like the idea of a charge surface that is less picky about where exactly the item is to charge well (or at all). But the stands kind of take care of that anyway... maybe a stand with a low spot for the AirPod case (or anything else small) and a phone-positioned pad would be good enough.
Do other people like and use alternative flat charging surfaces?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It didn't work especially well. It charged slowly and made the whole phone hot (if it was on), and of course you couldn't do anything with the phone while it was one there.
When I finally opened it up to replace the battery I removed the induction coil and the NFC crap and put a small aluminum heatsink in there. Ended up being a much better use of the space.
Not suprising Apple couldn't solve this - if it's induction based I don't think there's any way around the inefficiency, slowness, heat, and uselessness problems.
âoeAfter much effort, weâ(TM)ve concluded AirPower will not achieve our high standards and we have cancelled the project,â Those are Apple's own words.
They couldn't find find a way to make a stationary device with no battery or mechanical parts last less than two years.
Maybe Apple was better off being secretive and then surprising us? Wait until they get it right, rather than promising and then under delivering.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
ÃoeAfter much effort, weÃ(TM)ve concluded Slashdot will support Unicode before we ship AirPowerÃ
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Go away you kook.
"After much effort, we've concluded AirPower will not achieve our high standards and we have cancelled the project," said soon-to-be-ex- Apple SVP of Hardware Engineering Dan Riccio in a statement today.
The media is incredibly pro-Apple, they're not working against them. Outside in the real world we spit when we hear the word "apple" these days.
There is NO evidence Apple said anything of the sort. Only the claims of yet another biased anti-Apple website. Stop being so naive, you sound like a libtard.
Considering they announced this with the iPhone X (the first one) and then showed it working with airpods, apple watch, and iphones I feel like this product was used to do two things:
1. Influence sales of iphones, apple watches, and airpods.
2. Inflate stock by suggesting Apple had technology no one else has been able to create.
Is this legal?
It's a direct quote from an Apple senior vice president, Dan Riccio. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Their comments make zero sense. How can they not be able to get a freaking inductor to work right? This is the same technology as has been used for over a century. It's a coil of wires. If you want a more fancy example that's a few decades old, look at any wireless charger. If you want an example how to send data, look at all the wireless tokens available.
I mean this isn't even difficult. WTF Apple?
Just sayin'. It's not like Apple to miss an opportunity like this.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I can't believe anyone still thought this product was still coming??? Of course Apple could have been more transparent about the fact most of use knew is was dead before it ever got started.
I.E. it won't work long enough to get out the door.
It's worse than that. Think more along the lines of how Microsoft used to announce they were entering a business area and all the other companies in that area would suddenly die nearly overnight. Charging mats were starting to become a thing so Apple probably tried to get ahead of the curve by promising something better than everyone else. That would make customers wait for Apple instead of buying competing products and it would cause some competitors to go under when they spent too much trying to meet the too high specs Apple suggested. Apple sees the mats aren't going to suddenly become the next fad so it ramps down the research. If the fad picks up again, they now have the patents and less competitors to deal with.
I suspect a merger with Google is afoot.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
One has to wonder why a multi-billion (soon to be Trillion!?!) company wasn't able to perfect a technology that is for all intents and purposes already 'out there'. Clearly, from the wording of the press release they were able to make it work, but not to their standards. What those standards were relative to this case we may never know. But again, with all of resources they have at their disposal, how can they have not achieved this when other competitors have? It begs to reason that their may have been other factors at play in their decision (such as market factors, etc).
some real tech company will figure it it and bring it to market. Then apple will "develop" one and their cult members will claim apple invented it.
There is now no excuse not to simply make the back-side of these things' cases SOLAR PANELS. To charge, simply put it face-down. Let the sun do it.
"what if you're indoors, or it's cold out, or there's a storm, or there's winter?"
Place it under a LAMP. SOLVED.
My calculator is powered wirelessly by a glowing power-ball almost a hundred million miles away. FOR FREE.
The fact that you still have to charge these things is PATHETIC. Even if the issue is that the sun doesn't put out enough power, FINE... it would still do two things for you if the back-side of the case were a solar panel.
1. It would make your phone's battery last longer, especially when you're holding it; if you set it face-down in bright sunlight, that would charge it faster. Also, depending on what you're doing with it, (if it's playing music or a podcast, etc., over Bluetooth headphones, with the display off, it might be able to make almost enough power from incoming light to usable energy for the phone; at least the battery would discharge slower while it has extra power. But far and away the biggest reason is that it produces power passively from the environment, meaning that if your battery ever dies on you in the middle of nowhere, and there's no charging stuff or miles, you're screwed. If you can simply get it out in the sunshine anwhere's, it'll recharge itself, meaning you'll be able to use your phone again.
Having the solar panel built straight into the case/chassis would eliminate the extra bulk, the extra weight, and expense of going this way. This should be a standard future.
Too bad no one else though of any of this.
Sad no one else seems to be tracking that, or thinking of that. Or are they?
Really?? "High standards" from apple. What a crock of shit.
After much effort, we've concluded AirPower will not work as well as our highly rated laptop keyboards and we have cancelled the project," said Apple SVP of Hardware Engineering Dan Riccio
FTFY.
Tim Cook brought it back
Leadership has limits. Tim has found his finally.