
Apple Cancels AirPower Product - gtCameron
https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/29/apple-cancels-airpower-product-citing-inability-to-meet-its-high-standards-for-hardware/
======
minimaxir
The whole AirPower saga is a _weird_ event in product development. AirPower
compatibility was highlighted as a feature _in the packaging of the just-
released AirPods 2_ :
[https://twitter.com/itsnicolenguyen/status/11106569269650636...](https://twitter.com/itsnicolenguyen/status/1110656926965063680)

There has to be _something_ that caused this abrupt cancellation.

~~~
_bxg1
Especially weird for Apple, who aren't known for vaporware. And even Google
wouldn't come out and say "we can't make this work", they'd just stop talking
about it until it was eventually solvable down the line, or let it evaporate
altogether. It's very odd to see a tech giant just hit a technological wall.

~~~
rickyc091
I appreciate that Apple was honest with their communication. Too often have I
seen managers/CEOs employ the strategy of avoiding the hard conversation and
letting the topic fade away.

~~~
Noctem
I appreciate it too, unfortunately Apple is not always so transparent. One
example that comes to mind is their 2010 promise to make FaceTime an open
standard. It was Steve Jobs that made that promise in 2010 (one year before
his death), and apparently a patent dispute with VirnetX may be to blame, but
to my knowledge they haven't made any public statements about it since the
initial promise.

If legalities are to blame it seems like that would be all the more reason to
come out and say something along the lines of: "sorry everyone, we want to
keep our promise but stupid software patents have made that impossible."
Instead they've (to my knowledge—please correct me if I'm wrong) chosen to
remain silent and hoped that people would forget.

~~~
sbuk
I don’t have the source to hand, but I’ve read (or heard on a podcast) that
Job’s made that decision on stage. It surprised everybody, including the dev
team behind facetime. So it’s less a case of Apple remaining silent, and more
Steve being Steve.

~~~
Noctem
I don't know who made the decision (or when), but he did have a slide prepared
that said "OPEN" [1] in big letters next to a FaceTime screenshot, which I'd
assume means the decision was made at least before taking the stage.

[1] [https://youtu.be/AmXc1Mjr5J4?t=5816](https://youtu.be/AmXc1Mjr5J4?t=5816)

------
GeekyBear
Apparently, even the Chinese supply chain thought this product was going to go
into production, according to Ming-Chi Kuo, whose sources inside Apple's
supply chain are impeccable.

However, good for Apple.

They need to be more willing to say this product isn't good enough, and stop
listening to those who say they are too secretive.

They had a good thing going when they didn't comment on products under
development (or even acknowledge that they were under development) until they
were ready to ship them.

~~~
urda
Agreed. I much rather have a company like Apple just flat out say "we can't
make this work to our standards, to our customer standards, and we're not
comfortable with releasing this product this way."

Versus say Google who'll just never mention it again or launch a broken
version only to kill it off within two years.

~~~
ianai
I hope it’s a sign of change to come. Their hardware has been actively moving
from what users want to what their designers want (thinner is always better,
ne legacy ports, no finger I’d, etc).

~~~
umanwizard
What makes you think you know better than Apple what most of their users want?

I suspect you just know what _you_ want, and why you want it, and are
extrapolating from that to everyone else.

~~~
jplayer01
I'd assume that users want a keyboard that doesn't break with alarming
frequency and isn't nearly impossible to replace. That may just be me though.

------
brokencoder
Apple's management has enacted a policy of not offering competitive
compensation for top engineering talent. I've had multiple Apple managers
express frustration with the company's inability to attract and retain top
talent. I myself got an offer from Apple for less than half what three other
top companies offered, and Apple was unwilling to negotiate.

This product cancellation and Apple's general product quality decline is the
inevitable result of this short-sighted, penny-wise, pound-foolish strategy to
keep payroll down.

~~~
cageface
Across the board Apple just seems to be struggling to execute on software.
What they do offer is incomplete and buggy and they're falling farther and
farther behind on new features. If they're serious about pivoting to being a
services company they need to fix this ASAP. There's a deep-seated arrogance
at Apple that I think they inherited from Jobs that isn't serving them well
now that their competition has gotten its act together.

Just as a thought experiment ask yourself - of the apps you use daily on your
iPhone, how many are made by Apple, other than Safari?

~~~
eanzenberg
Pretty much all of them? On my home screen, music, maps, calendar, photos,
camera, wallet, news, reminder, phone, messages, mail and safari. Work fairly
great too :). Seems they know what they’re doing by the massive profits they
bring in.

------
julianozen
I suspect Apple's launch plan was to ship last week's AirPods with the new mat
for last holiday, and that as of ~Sept 2018, Apple assumed AirPower was
possible (which is why last weeks AirPods were manufactured with AirPower
documentation placed into the box)

I spent sometime working on a hardware team at Amazon and we had an expression
"hardware is like fruit" meaning the longer it sits unsold, the more stale and
obsolete it gets (and it costs an unbelievable amount of money to keep it in
storage). A few weeks/months ago, Apple must have decided that AirPower isn't
going to happen, and that the AirPods that have been sitting in storage since
September need to be sold so that they can actually sell their inventory
before the launch of AirPods 3 (whenever that arrives)

~~~
bredren
Apple has pulled off some reported last minute hardware changes while
stretching timelines.

The 2016 MBP which had a 500+ day update cycle was apparently supposed to have
the terraced battery used in MacBooks. [1]

That got chucked last minute and led to a lot of battery complaints early on.
I returned a loaded 13” due to limited battery life.

The company ended up working SW systems to squeeze more out of what it has and
it seemed to work.

In that case they also seemed to be trying to meet a holiday release.

[1] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-20/how-
apple...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-20/how-apple-
alienated-mac-loyalists)

~~~
scarface74
The most famous example has to be that the iPhone was introduced with a
plastic screen, but after Steve Jobs noticed how easily it scratched, they
changed to a glass screen.

I can’t find it now. But Apple even had a press release that they were
changing to a glass screen.

~~~
karmelapple
[https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-new-iphone-
screen...](https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-new-iphone-
screen-2012-1)

------
derefr
Something I don't understand about induction charging: why is it even
necessary if the device and charger are still expected to be in flat contact
with one another (with at most a few millimeters of separation)?

Is the point just for arbitrary positionability on a flat charging surface?

If so, I feel like there are simpler ways to solve that, just with clever
solid-state connector design.

Imagine a BGA processor that could be arbitrarily aligned into a BGA socket
(not only rotated, but placed anywhere onto a BGA array _larger_ than the
CPU), and would continue working. That's possible, no? It doesn't exist, but
it's possible. You could have the motherboard look for known _sense pins_ on
the processor by putting its own BGA pins into a sense mode; and then, having
found which pins the processor is aligned to, it could "hook up" the rest of
the pins appropriately. Any pins the CPU isn't touching would remain powered
down or in a low-voltage sense mode, where they're safe to touch.

Well, if you can imagine that, then just reduce the number of pads on the
device side from hundreds to two, while keeping all the pads on the socket
side. But lose the "socket" part.

Imagine a charger that's just a big flat matrix of tiny copper pads, where
each copper pad is actually four quadrants: two for sense, one for power, one
for ground. The power and ground are normally powered down.

If you have a device (a phone, say) with two large flat charging pads on the
back, and you lay it onto the BGA matrix—then the phone's pads will activate
(a number of!) the charger's sense pads; the charger will have an "image" of
which pins to power, and discretize that image into two clusters (like
discretizing touch-points on a digitizer); and then one cluster of activated
sense-pins will have their sibling power pins activated; and the other cluster
will have their sibling ground pins activated.

Other than the copper being exposed to the elements, I don't see why this
isn't workable.

(And before you say "my phone is in a case"—your case would just need a pair
of pass-through conductor pads.)

~~~
ryanmcbride
I've always felt it was unnecessary too. A company I worked for a few years
ago spent thousands to install wireless charging pads directly into the tables
in every meeting room (4 floors worth of rooms). This was before any iphones
had wireless charging though, so they also had these wireless charging
adapters that plugged into iphones so that they could use them. That means
that to charge your phone, you had to plug it in, but then leave it in a
specific place in the table, making it so you can't really use it. It was the
absolute worst of both worlds. They could have saved a ton of money by just
having some cables attached to the table, but instead they wanted to use the
hip cool technology before it was practical.

~~~
OkGoDoIt
That company also had like 10 video dongles/adapters in every conference room,
including ancient 30-pin connectors, but no USB-C which was the only thing
most employee laptops supported. Yay technology!

~~~
ryanmcbride
Hi Roger!

------
PascLeRasc
I wish we could get some kind of writeup or interview from the RF engineers
who worked on Airpower. Overlapping charging coils have been dreamed of pretty
much since the origin of induction charging but there must be tons and tons of
issues we can't even think of. I'd love to hear their stories.

~~~
cogman10
I wonder how you could do it without seeing some pretty big losses. Wireless
charging is already pretty lossy, Dynamic coils though? I mean, I guess you
could do it mechanically, but that would still result in less than ideal coils
and a noisy device.

If you did it through transistors, somehow, then you'd end up with a lot of
loss at each transistor. Too few and you don't make a good field. Too many and
the losses would be really high. The cost would be crazy as well. For the
transistor approach, I don't know, maybe a big silicon wafer? Maybe just a
load of transistors and wires. Who knows.

~~~
kdot
One thing about wireless charging is the gap created by phone cases, what does
a case do to charging efficiency?

~~~
PascLeRasc
In practice Qi chargers have just one operating power, either "within range"
or "not within range", so whether you have a case or not won't affect charging
rate, but in theory RF power does scale with 1/distance². So you could argue
that Qi standards engineers did have to limit our usable charging power
because they knew cases would be used.

------
slg
It is a slimy move to wait a week after the wireless charging Airpods were
released before announcing this. You can't tell me that Apple didn't know this
was coming. What percentage of people who have bought new Airpods in the last
week wouldn't have made that purchase if they knew AirPower was never going to
be released?

EDIT: Several people are responding that other manufactures make wireless
chargers, so what is the big deal? Sure, you are right other options exist.
There are also a wide variety of USB-C laptop chargers available that could
charge your Macbook. There would still be plenty of complaints if Apple
stopped selling their USB-C power brick. Two of the primary reasons people buy
Apple products are because of the ecosystem and their standard of quality. Now
people are forced out of the Apple ecosystem and must buy a product from 3rd
parties that don't have the same quality requirements. What happens when that
$5 Qi charge from some noname brand fries your devices battery?

~~~
spectramax
No matter what Apple does, people will be pissed off at _something_.

Contrary to your point:

A. They announced the cancellation a week later, you still have time to return
your AirPods 2.

B. If they had gone with substandard product, then you will still complain,
why didn't Apple cancel this product a long time ago!? Why did they release
this piece of shit? We will have #AirPowerGate storm on Twitter, armchair
specialists would start analyzing and delivering nasty analysis about Apple,
Louis Rossman would make a new angry video, etc... Jeez guys.

See, Apple is in a no-win situation here. No matter what they do, people
complain obsessively without understanding and putting yourself in their
shoes.

~~~
Nullabillity
They could have cancelled the AP2 too, or at least announced this cancellation
before that launch.

~~~
MBCook
Why? The new AirPods still have Hey Siri and longer battery life on telephone
calls. If you choose the Qi case they still charge wirelessly with other Qi
chargers.

It’s a solid spec bump to a product. Not a huge leap (which is there is no 2
in the name) but it’s not like they were ONLY going to work with the AirPower
and had no other new features.

No reason to cancel them.

------
mjsweet
Is it my understanding that induction rings can't overlap?

You can't just plonk a phone, watch and AirPods case anywhere on a charging
pad and expect them to start charging right?

The coil in each device needs to be fairly well aligned with the coil in the
Qi charging pad. The proper way to do this is to have three individual coils
with visual location targets for each device to charge.

I wonder if Apple was trying to make it a bit too magical (judging by the pre-
render shots) allowing the user to throw a device onto the pad anywhere and
expect them to charge.

Do the laws of physics apply here?

~~~
adtac
Following up on this, why is it impossible to use just one coil that's more
powerful? IIUC To transmit power, you just need a temporally varying EM field
to induce current on the other end, so why not have one that produces enough
power? (My Electromagnetics course was 2-3 years ago, so forgive me if I'm
missing something basic.)

~~~
kalleboo
Qi includes communications between the charger and the charged device, it's
not just a "dumb" magnetic field. I'm not sure what it's negotiating, but if
it's something like the power level that could cause conflicts between
multiple devices.

------
tambourine_man
Instead of reliable WiFi routers and induction chargers, Mac Pros and you
know, laptop keyboards that you can actually type on…

We get a credit card, news and streaming service that no one wants or
understands.

I really don’t get Apple's priorities recently. Which is a shame, since few
companies step to the chalange of serving the expensive high quality tech
stuff market.

And what happened to the company that wouldn’t pre announce stuff, under
promise and over deliver? I just hope they don’t also cancel whatever it is
they are doing with the Mac Pro.

~~~
eridius
> _that no one wants_

Be careful, just because you don't want this doesn't mean no one wants it. The
HN crowd isn't Apple's target demographic with this stuff.

~~~
griffordson
I would love to have something that competes with YouTube TV but respects
privacy and doesn't funnel even more data to Google. The other live TV
services all have absurdly arbitrary DVR limits.

Not that Apple's streaming service will compete with YouTube TV, but I wish it
would. Also, YouTube TV doesn't work all that great on Apple TV and I'd hope
Apple could get that right too.

~~~
ihuman
If you want to watch live TV without tracking for a one-time cost (but with no
DVR), you could just get an OTA tv receiver and antenna.

~~~
griffordson
The DVR is critical. And hardware DVRs I've used are horrible. Maybe I haven't
tried the right one, but the ones I've tried are less than worthless and I've
finally given up on them. I also despise the network specific apps for my
devices. Some are great, but most are garbage and constantly require me to
authenticate over and over again.

And the cost is not a major driver for me.

------
hartator
Stupid question. I have an iPhone, the watch, and now the wireless AirPods.
What will be the best charging pad out there?

~~~
sandstrom
I have an IKEA charger (Nordmärke) that works really well:

[https://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/categories/departments/ho...](https://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/categories/departments/home_electronics/41069/)

------
m3kw9
Is a very good sign that Apple is willing to cancel shitty products. Still got
that culture

~~~
minikites
If only they cancelled their laptop keyboards.

~~~
seppin
I _love_ their keyboards, and have never met anyone IRL that has complained
about them.

~~~
setquk
Everyone I know who bought a 2018 MBA, me included, has returned it due to
keyboard issues. Which is a shame because I loved the damn thing apart from
that.

~~~
luxuryballs
I didn’t think I would like it but after a few months I love it. Did you
return it within the 14 days because of a defect or because you just didn’t
like the feel?

~~~
setquk
I returned it because of duplicate keypresses being registered. Same problem
my friends faced with their machines. The keyboard feel was fine. Takes a
couple of days to get used to it but I prefer it.

I had it for three weeks. They had extended return times around Christmas
which was handy or I’d have to have fought the repair/replace process.

I’d just sold my old 15” MBP before it failed so I am now using an old
thinkpad T440 running xubuntu.

I’m more glad I have £1630 of cash in the bank than having the MBA if I’m
honest.

------
mises
This kind of stinks, but it's good to see Apple doing right by its customers.
Telling them something will come that won't isn't right. And if they simply
can't deliver a product, then they shouldn't make a half-baked attempt.

They've recently caught flack for the problems with their keyboard, which is a
hard thing to get right. This time, they chose not to deliver a marked-up,
fiddly, overheating mess to their users, and we ought to credit them for it.

It takes a lot of guts to admit you can't do something; a little more
corporate humility might just be a good thing.

~~~
trimbo
> problems with their keyboard, which is a hard thing to get right

Not sure what you mean here. They got the old keyboard right, and made it
worse!

~~~
mises
Whether or not you agree with the direction in which they are taking their
product, making a keyboard so thin that types as well as it does is quite
difficult. The problem they have is literally because of stray dust specks.

~~~
sofaofthedamned
So test it, and if it doesn't work then don't sell it?

As opposed to users of the last 3 years of Macs being beta testers for their
current flavour of stupid keyboard of the month?

~~~
mises
Yes, pretty much exactly as opposed to that. That's why I'm giving them credit
for it; maybe they've realized their users want a really high-quality product.
This might even indicate that they're going to actually get the next macbook
keyboard right (though that's still unlikely).

------
randomacct3847
I haven’t found a situation where wireless charging is superior to wired
charging, especially for my iPhone w wireless charging. The only situation is
if you’re out and about and don’t have your cable with you, and in that case
the only public wireless charging I’ve ever come across is at a certain
Starbucks places, but it wouldn’t make sense in that situation why your own
wirelessly mat would help since you probably wouldn’t haul that everywhere
with you.

If you wirelessly charge then you have to lay your phone flat on the charging
surface, whereas if you use a cable you can hold it and use it normally near
the outlet.

~~~
FireBeyond
My bed stand alarm clock. Just drop the phone on it (it sits vertical, at a
slight angle). No need for rapid charging overnight, and if I need to fumble
for my phone in a sleepy haze at 3am I don't risk breaking the connector,
pulling and yanking at things awkwardly.

------
thothamon
So the thing here is Apple would never have announced the product and pumped
it the way they have unless someone who at the time was highly respected said
with very high confidence that it could be done. Not only that, but a lot of
other experienced and respected people would also, almost certainly, have
looked at it and also agreed it was doable.

For Apple to say now it can't be done in a timely manner means those people
either got a serious black eye, or they're out of the company and the
remaining people don't think it's doable.

------
andyfleming
It seems like they could have cancelled the multi-device charger and just
released a single-device charger branded as AirPower.

~~~
Isamu
Well, except the bait-and-switch would also cause outrage.

~~~
andyfleming
That might be true, but they could at least acknowledge that the multi-device
version is not ready and provide a first-party option in the meantime.

------
ProAm
Will these devices charge on a normal Qi charging pad?

~~~
rhodysurf
Not the apple watch. That was the draw of it.

~~~
jzl
Was AirPower supposed to support the watch? I don't see how that would be
possible given the curved shape of the watch back.

~~~
Eric_WVGG
eh? The back of the watch itself is flat.

John Gruber says he saw a prototype backstage of an event a couple years ago,
put his watch on and it started charging just fine, incidentally.

~~~
quailmaster
The back of the watch is very much curved. It's not as noticeable when people
are wearing them because the watch sits right in between your wrist bones.
[https://i.gzn.jp/img/2018/09/21/apple-watch-
series-4-open/p4...](https://i.gzn.jp/img/2018/09/21/apple-watch-
series-4-open/p4590955.jpg)

~~~
Dylan16807
It's flat enough to stay inside a 7mm charging range. (Or the inch plus that
newer chargers can supposedly do.)

------
ineedasername
I'm just surprised they announced a product at all when, especially that long
ago, they must have known there were issues that could be potential show
stoppers. Whatever his faults, I can't imagine that ever would have happened
under Steve Jobs.

------
spondyl
_Apple didn’t say why exactly the product was canceled, but people familiar
with its development told Bloomberg News last year that the company faced
challenges with the software, overheating and the ability to charge multiple
devices on any spot on the mat._

Source: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-29/apple-
can...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-29/apple-cancels-
anticipated-airpower-wireless-charging-accessory)

------
midnightdiesel
Are there any official announcements about this? It seems odd for Apple’s
leadership team to make statements about unreleased products to reporters like
that without any other context.

~~~
cududa
It’s called a “Friday news dump” - toss it out with the trash to some outlet.
TechCrunch wouldn’t just make up a story.

------
pfortuny
Will they cancel the Macbook Pro?

~~~
JustSomeNobody
No, they'll continue beta testing new versions of the same junk on people
willing to spend $2K for the privilege. Keeping my 2014 until they figure it
all out.

------
sandstrom
For anyone looking for an alternative, now that the Apple charger didn't
materialize, I can recommend the IKEA charger.

Works well and is reasonably priced (I've got Nordmärke).

[https://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/categories/departments/ho...](https://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/categories/departments/home_electronics/41069/)

------
beager
Sounds like a production issue to me, and they're taking an opportunity to
throw shade on the existing induction-charge market in anticipation of fixing
issues and launching something bigger later.

"Doesn't meet our standards" sounds like "we have something vastly superior to
Qi charging but it isn't _quite ready yet_ " which will get eaten up by Apple
stans.

------
InTheArena
There's a non-trivial chance that part of the problem here was safety related.
I for one, therefore, am happy they didn;'t ship it.

------
eappleby
What is the implication for all the other wireless charging mats on the
market? Are charging mats by other manufacturers smaller than the mat that
Apple wanted to introduce so the other mats won't run into overheating issues,
or is it likely that the other mats will also run into overheating issues, but
their standards are lower than Apple's so they are ok with it?

~~~
vbezhenar
Apple charging mat was unique because it allowed multiple devices with
arbitrary placement. I did not see any other similar charging mats. I'm using
Xiaomi charger and it's barely producing any heat with iPhone 8, definitely
not something that could run into overheating issues.

------
Animats
_“Over time, these harmonics add up and they become really powerful signals in
the air,” explains William Lumpkins, VP of Engineering at O & S Services. “And
that can be difficult—that can stop someone’s pacemaker if it’s too high of a
level. Or it could short circuit someone’s hearing aid.”_

"Over time, these harmonics add up?" Huh?

------
makecheck
Sounded like a ton of complexity for minimal gain. If they could for instance
create a “magnet disc” phone charger that works like the watch charger,
wouldn’t that be basically as convenient (drop your phone close enough to mag-
snap to the charger and walk away)?

------
Aardwolf
Qi charging used to be a useful thing, but much less available now.

It doesn't need to fast charge with risk of heat, it's already very useful if
it charges at a regular speed whenever you put the device on it, e.g. on your
desk...

------
Hamuko
Should Apple stop announcing products before they're sure they can ship them?

~~~
Angostura
Is this a frequent thing?

~~~
Hamuko
AirPower

AirPods

White iPhone 4

~~~
minimaxir
AirPods/White iPhone 4 were both heavily supply-constrained; it wasn't an
announcement then never shipping the product.

------
Shivetya
to be honest I was never onboard. I have phone chargers that hold the phone
upright and this orientation made it easy to just glance over when texts and
notifications popped. If I owned a watch I would want something similar; think
how many watches are displayed in a stand up case; to keep the dial easily
visible.

plus in the end, the predictions of price were all elevated and in a world of
ten and twenty dollar chargers the idea of a product near a hundred or over
just doesn't make sense.

edit: will be interesting for those who bought the wireless charging version
of the airpods or the case seprately.

~~~
rconti
Belkin produces a thing like this; "Valet Phone Dock", which holds an iPhone
and watch in view. I have one by my bedside. It's convenient with the watch
because a slight tap causes it to wake up and show the time. Everything's at
the 'right' angle.

------
namelosw
Been waiting for this for a long time because I always forgot to recharge
something every day...

Hope this does not happen to Mac Pro.

Thinking about the subscription stuff recently it seems they do have some
strategy shifting recently.

------
lawrenceyan
Gather as we witness a coup d'état in the making, as Engineering rises up
against Design. Who will end up on top? Find out next time, on Dragon Ball Z!

------
donohoe
For people like myself who just bought AirPods for wireless charging, what
wireless chargers are you using that you would highly recommend?

------
kd22
This is so unexpected coming from a company like Apple, I am thinking this is
Apple's version of April fool's this year.

------
omarish
Revenue loss from not releasing a faulty product is infinitely better than the
customer trust lost from releasing something faulty.

------
Animats
This is a good thing. There were three competing wireless charging schemes.
They got together and agreed on Qi as the charging mat standard.[1] Then Apple
had to go off in their own incompatible direction. This delayed charging mat
deployment in hotels and such. With Apple's scheme out of the picture,
everybody can go with Qi.

[1]
[https://www.wirelesspowerconsortium.com/](https://www.wirelesspowerconsortium.com/)

~~~
sgjohnson
All the Apple devices that support wireless charging use Qi.

~~~
jandrese
Well, they kind of have to since it's the only standard that that has products
you can actually buy.

It's great that they avoided fragmenting the market. Even if AirPower was
great at this point it's way late to the market, and compatibility would be a
constant headache for years. I'm ok with Apple throwing in the towel here and
just using the damn standard.

~~~
hinkley
Apple can show up late to a market and steal market share. Or at least they
used to know how to do that...

------
odyssey7
My guess is they looked at what they had, and thought about their hard-learned
lessons from the Maps release.

------
tonmoy
Could it be that they may have found a unfixable serious bug (maybe in some
extreme corner cases)?

------
Despegar
Guess the WSJ got their reporting wrong. They said it was in production.

~~~
bdcravens
Perhaps they had started a limited run, and QC found too many units out of
spec.

------
eugeniub
My guess is that an AirPower-like mat will come back in late 2019 or 2020,
after Apple updates the Apple Watch to use the same wireless charging
technology as iPhones.

~~~
skiman10
It technically already does use the Qi standard, just locked down to Apple
approved devices [1]. This AirPower cancelation was supposedly canceled
because 3D layered coils generate too much heat and they could not figure it
out.

[1] [https://www.cultofmac.com/398423/apple-forces-you-to-buy-
its...](https://www.cultofmac.com/398423/apple-forces-you-to-buy-its-own-
apple-watch-wireless-chargers/)

~~~
cududa
So the issue was on the receiving device, not the mat?

~~~
skiman10
The issue with AirPower was the mat generating too much heat. Supposedly.
[https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/17/airpower-delay-due-to-
overhe...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/17/airpower-delay-due-to-overheating-
reports.html)

The issue with the Apple Watch not charging on all Qi pads is Apple locking it
down to only approved devices.

------
aheilbut
Why didn't they just buy uBeam??

~~~
resonantcharger
Or better yet, buy WiTricity instead of buying PowerByProxi. Apple placed its
bet on the non-resonant Qi standard instead of “thinking different” with the
newer emerging resonance based alternatives.

------
aj7
From the article: “This is a very, very rare public mis-step for Apple.” Not a
mis-step at all.

~~~
gumby
It is given their usual M.O. which is not to preannounce at all.

------
gigatexal
Daaaaaamn

This is going to be Apple’s HL3

~~~
ihuman
At least this was explicitly cancelled. IIRC Valve never came out and said
development stopped; they just stopped talking about it.

~~~
phinnaeus
HL2: Episode 3... coming soon. That was the last we heard, IIRC.

------
notadoc
Great, can they cancel the horrible keyboard on the MacBook line next?

------
cprayingmantis
So they’ll cancel AirPower but they won’t revert their laptop keyboard? Come
on guys my 2014 MPB can’t last forever!

------
veryworried
I don't even know why they bothered making the AirPower so complicated,
especially for its first version.

Do people even care about device orientation or communication of charge
levels? 90% of the purchase decision is based on just having an Apple branded
power mat.

~~~
s17n
Product decisions like this one are the whole reason why people base their
purchase decisions on the Apple brand.

------
m0zg
That is a truly "magical" example of "courage". To promise (on stage!), a
magical multi-charger, then continue to promise it for 2 years, and then
cancel it without any explanation.

------
imandride
"Apple cancels AirPower product, citing inability to meet its high standards
for hardware"

Apple claiming high quality standards for their hardware doesn't feel right;
When I can't trust buying a laptop from them, in fear that it was won't "just
work" for the next six months.

------
tomatotomato37
Why does this thing need to be so thin you have to cancel it over heating
issues!? It's the perfect shape and size to mount a heat sink on the bottom;
no one's going to give up apple products forever because there's an extra
centimeter of aluminum on the bottom of their phone charger

~~~
hinkley
Where are you moving the heat by putting aluminum on the bottom? Into the
surface it's on? That won't be very conductive.

Also heat issues with a power supply means losses. Thermodynamics might be
keeping them from hitting numbers they wanted to reach. It's quite easy for an
executive with some clout and bad listening skills to insist on a feature set
that violates the laws of physics. I've worked on a few of those projects.

------
ithinkinstereo
For anyone interested in the challenges of true wireless charging (i.e.,
actual wireless, not induction-based), I highly recommend this blog from Paul
Reynolds, who formerly led engineering at ubeam:
[https://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com](https://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com)

~~~
unethical_ban
Could you explain how charging without cables, via induction, is not wireless?
I can't click that link at work (uncategorized by proxy).

~~~
Swizec
It’s wireless but not touchless. Some (many?) people conflate “wireless” and
“over-the-air” charging.

You _can_ do OTA charging but that’s a tesla coil and not very safe.

~~~
Hamuko
>Some (many?) people conflate “wireless” and “over-the-air” charging.

Probably doesn't help to name your product "AirPower".

------
rock_artist
It seems Elon Musk companies such as Space X is what Apple would've evolved if
it had a visionary leading it.

I'm not sure how much time Cook can keep his position. He's great at supply
chain and operation but product quality and innovation has been degraded for
many years now.

------
blhack
I feel like I'm living in a bizzare-o-world here or something with this whole
wireless charging thing.

I had wireless charging in my _Nexus 5_ almost 6 years ago. Even back then, I
bought a cheap wireless charger off of amazon for like $20, and thought it was
a relatively interesting novelty. 6 years is an absolute eternity in tech, but
for some reason this is being touted as some new innovative tech.

I honestly thought when apple was announcing "wireless charging" that they
meant something like your entire house would be a charger while you inside of
it.

Basically: no wifi, less space than a nomad. Lame. Seriously though, wireless
charging even being mentioned in the marketing as though it matters seems on
par with a laptop advertising that it also has WiFi. No kidding it should have
wireless charging; it's 2019!

~~~
pwinnski
The point wasn't wireless charging. They've supported Qi charging for a while.
The point was wirelessly charging several devices simultaneously with no need
to consider the orientation the devices being charged. That's what turns out
to be so hard to deliver well that they're giving up. And no, nobody else is
doing it either. Yet.

------
rdiddly
_" Everything I’ve personally heard... about the AirPower delay has been
related to tough engineering problems related to the laws of physics."_

I had to LOL at that. Not in a cruel way, but the statement makes it sound
like they're working with insane complicated stuff at the frontiers of
particles and quarks and whatnot, whereas the "laws of physics" they're
talking about really just revolve around the fact that a piece of copper is
always going to be something like 20 orders of magnitude more electrically-
conductive than air. It would be cool if they could get something like this to
work without frying all our brains, but right now I guess it's basically still
science fiction.

Edit: No, huh? 3 people disagree and think inductance can transmit power just
as efficiently as a wire? OK granted maybe my mentioning the conductivity of
air wasn't that relevant (although FYI it is indeed a difference of about 20
orders of magnitude - source:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_resistivity_and_con...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_resistivity_and_conductivity#Resistivity_and_conductivity_of_various_materials)),
but don't ignore the obvious: all it says is that copper is very good at
conducting. And that's actual electrons mind you, not electrons moved around
and converted to something else and back again, which is part of where the
inefficiency (a.k.a. "heat") comes from. Another source of inefficiency is the
fact that the field isn't contained very well... you are somewhat
"broadcasting" that energy, unlike a wire which leads exactly to where you
want it to go. Yes, you can transfer power that way, but because of the
inefficiencies, you have to run it at a level that generates an amount of heat
that they are saying is excessive.

