Mikey Campbell
AirPower, Apple's advanced wireless charging mat that was teased at last year's iPhone event, was noticeably absent from Wednesday's "Gather Round" announcements, and mention of the device has been scrubbed from the company's website.
Unveiled exactly one year ago alongside iPhone X and iPhone 8, Apple's first handsets capable of charging wirelessly, AirPower promised to be an all-in-one power delivery solution for the company's portable device lineup.
As Apple said in 2017, AirPower can juice up three devices simultaneously. Using proprietary inductive charging technology, the ovaloid mat is able to charge iPhone, Apple Watch and a wireless AirPods case (also a no-show at today's event) at the same time. During an onstage presentation, SVP of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller said the device has the potential to change the wireless charging paradigm.
It appears that paradigm is giving Apple a bit of trouble.
Following the "Gather Round" event, Apple removed nearly every mention of AirPower from its website, including glory shots that teased the device for a year. The device makes a single appearance on a page dedicated to AirPods, where it is shown powering up the aforementioned unreleased AirPods wireless charging case and an iPhone X.
At its unveiling, Apple said AirPower would hit store shelves in 2018. Subsequent rumors pointed to a March launch date, but that timeline came and went. A report in June claimed Apple intended to begin sales in June, but ran into problems with overheating, forcing a delay to September.
Apple still has a couple weeks to make the rumored deadline, but the company's decision to strip product images and text regarding the product from its website does not bode well for the hotly anticipated accessory.
According to ZDNet, sources familiar with the matter said AirPower was too ambitious a project, even for Apple.
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37 Comments
And before anyone blathers that this product should have been easy-peasy to build please post your electrical engineering credentials before doing so. Meanwhile this gives me the go-ahead to buy wireless chargers for our iPhone 8's. I was waiting for AirPower.
Damn, this is disappointing. Ah well, hope they figure it out some day.
I still don’t quite understand the allure of wireless charging. My wife has a wireless charger and I can’t tell you how many times her iPhone X doesn’t charge at night because it’s not on the charger just right. You can’t charge and use it at the same time and it’s slow.
Apple probably identified these issues too and found that the tech isn’t worth it. I think a better idea would be to make a mat that could hold a few devices (AirPods, Apple Watch, iPhone) and use magnets to align those devices in place on the mat and then use standard wireless charging. That would make aligning the chargers easier and also give the use a nice empty space in their life for another Apple product ;)
So ... vaporware? That's an unfortunate miss for Apple ...
Not really sure how they can announce something, then suddenly find they can’t do it.
Would love to know what happened here.