Unplugged: Apple Kills AirPower Wireless Charging Mat
After 18 months and a great deal of speculation, Apple has killed its wireless power charging mat. The AirPower, announced back in September 2017, was supposed to offer a sort-of wireless charging holy grail. Instead of being limited to a single device, the AirPower could charge an iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods simultaneously. Since this wasn’t actually a feature of the Qi wireless charging standard, Apple was going to implement it on its own and incorporate the technology into Qi.
This will now not be happening. “After much effort, we’ve concluded AirPower will not achieve our high standards and we have canceled the project,” said Dan Riccio, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, in an emailed statement to TechCrunch. “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,”
Apple hasn’t said anything beyond this statement, but the unofficial word is that attempting to stuff all of the wireless charging hardware required to support multiple devices into a single mat simply didn’t work. Power management was difficult and thermal temperatures were high. The writing has been on the wall for a little while, as this tweet from John Gruber of Daring Fireball makes clear:
AirPower must be well and truly fucked. No one at Apple will say a word about it, even off the record. And as a result they didn’t even mention inductive charging during the event, even though the XS and XR both charge faster than the X.
— John Gruber (@gruber) September 12, 2018
Apple was clearly expecting to figure these issues out. The company’s packaging for its second-generation AirPods even references AirPower.
Don’t be surprised if that package gets redesigned in the not-too-distant future. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Apple back off launching a major feature — the sapphire glass debacle from several years ago comes to mind. But the cancellation comes at a time when Apple’s ability to manufacture quality hardware has been called into question by its own failure to address quality control issues. Every company hits roadblocks, but Apple sure seems to be slamming into a lot of them these days, raising fundamental questions about how the company builds its products.
Anyone who buys an Apple device for its wireless charging capabilities will have to plan to acquire a separate charger. The company has not announced any plans for a follow-up Apple-branded product that would handle its own charging needs. This isn’t some major hit for Apple — the revenue it would’ve made on AirPower was probably small in the grand scheme of things — but it doesn’t look great given some other issues that have been swirling around, either.
Continue reading
Apple Might Bring Wireless Charging to the Next iPad Pro
The next iPad Pro refresh could feature wireless charging and a glass back panel, says Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
Google’s Project Taara Wirelessly Transmits 700TB Across a River in 20 Days
Google says it has used the Free Space Optical Communications (FSOC) links developed for Project Loon to beam hundreds of terabytes of data nearly five kilometers, no wires necessary.
Microsoft Surface Duo 2 Pops Up at FCC With 5G, NFC, and Wireless Charging
Microsoft has a Surface hardware event on the agenda for Wednesday (September 22), but an FCC filing might have just spilled the beans. The document reveals some notable details on the alleged Surface Duo 2, a follow-up to Microsoft's first Android phone in 2020.
Apple Reportedly Working on Long Distance Wireless and Reverse Charging Tech
Apple never did deliver its AirPower charging pad, but it could offer up something even better in the future.