Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple Cancels AirPower Product

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 500 posts

Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product

#131

Post by brandur »

bangonkeyboard wrote: post #48
brandur wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normally I'd agree, but the fact that the AirPower mat is printed onto the back of the new AirPods case box does seem to be a pretty good indicator that this was a very sudden decision. That is unless they were trying to make it look sudden, but I don't think we have good enough reason to be that cynical about it.

The new AirPods boxes were printed in 2018: https://twitter.com/horwitz/status/1110977803183374341

But even if we take copyright year to be the same as the printing year, Apple would almost certainly have just made a new box if they'd known well in advance they were going to cancel AirPower. This still shows an unusual level of disorganization on their part, which is surprising enough that I'm willing to believe a sudden decision was made.

There's a good chance that we'll see this somewhat proven in that Apple will probably get that box discontinued within the next couple weeks.

Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product

#132

Post by spectramax »

slg wrote: post #4

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 t…

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.

Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product

#133

Post by 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.)

Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product

#134

Post by cm2012 »

addicted wrote: post #52
slg wrote: post #4

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 t…

Apple will almost certainly allow you to cancel or return without cost. I dont think it will have that much of an actual impact, which is why I doubt that fewer sales are why they chose to announce now. They were probably more concerned about negative headlines and media coverage leading up to the event when choosing to reveal this information a week after.

Returning has a cost (The time+effort).

Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product

#135

Post by ghaff »

covercash wrote: post #111
ghaff wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s what you really want to get too. A big charging mat you just toss everything on. TBH I don’t find wireless charging today a particularly big win. It’s a bit easier than plugging in a cable. Of course, in the watch, it eliminates a port which is a win for other reasons.

I find Anker 24w fast charging bricks and 10’ lightening cables are a pretty reasonable way to quickly charge Apple devices while still using them. I bought a cheap 5w wireless charging pad to throw my phone on while I sleep.

I don’t even bring my wireless charging when I travel. One more piece of gear to pack and keep track of.

Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product

#136

Post by bluthru »

andyfleming wrote: post #5

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

I'm not sure why Apple thought people were willing to spend $100 more just so they wouldn't need to be precise with how products were placed on the charging pad. Just make some indentations for the watch and airpods and be done with it.

Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product

#137

Post by untog »

Hamuko wrote: post #121
Bud wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But not on purpose. In this case, after a sustained engineering effort, Apple finally and reluctantly concluded that they could not build this particular product up to their standard, so they decided to just not build it at all, instead. We should applaud that. That's how things should work.

>But not on purpose. You could argue that after three models with butterfly keyboards, it's pretty purposeful. It's not like no one pointed it out to them.

Not sure why this is being downvoted. You could excuse the first model using the butterfly keyboard as them not knowing the issues, but multiple revisions have been released since and the keyboard was untouched. That can't not be deliberate.

Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product

#138

Post by [deleted] »

phinnaeus wrote: post #99
thamer wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new AirPods can be charged on Qi chargers, that are available on Amazon for $10. No one bought wireless charging AirPods because of AirPower.

> No one I did. I don't want to add another cable to my nightstand, I wanted to replace my Apple Watch puck with Airpower and gain the ability to charge my headphones there too, and then if I ever get a wireless charging iPhone be able to get rid of the lightning cable as well. I don't mind trading the lightning cable between my phone and Airpods, but I imagined I wouldn't have to for long with the AirPower releasing…

[deleted]

Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product

#140

Post by bdcravens »

vbezhenar wrote: post #97
rjknight wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, announcing it now means that anyone who really would have changed their minds still can. Apple will almost certainly accept returns, even in countries which don't provide statutory rights to return unwanted goods within a certain time period. Announcing it a month from now, or later, would make such returns impossible. It does seem like this is the very latest date such an announcement could have b…

What do you mean by "Apple will accept returns"? There's no Apple Store in my country and I'm not sure that ordinary shops would accept returns, especially after box was opened.

Can't speak to what's available in your country, but I've never had issues returning opened stuff (Best Buy, Microcenter, etc) as long as it's in new condition and in the original box, with receipt (most stores have a 14 day return period)
Post reply on HN