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

141–150 of 500 posts

Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product

#141

Post by canthonytucci »

randyrand wrote: post #78
gumby wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They wanted you to just toss some devices arbitrarily on the mat and have it "just work". The one you discuss requires alignment, like all others -- for a reason! There's a reason the watch has a magnetic alignment setup. I thought you might be able to use a 2D array of small loops but a little bit of modeling shows that to be a pretty dumb idea.

In retrospect, I wonder if a motorized device that moves the coils to match the location of your device would have been a better approach.

I had the same thought.

I l suspect that Apple has so little in house experience with moving parts these days that they’d have a hard time shipping a good one that worked this way.

Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product

#142

Post by threeseed »

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.

So obviously it depends on the country.

In many parts of the world there are consumer rights which guarantees the ability to return items even if opened.

Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product

#143

Post by gfosco »

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.

This is ignoring the fact that very few people have issues with these keyboards overall.

Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product

#144

Post by FireBeyond »

geddy wrote: post #126
tambourine_man wrote: post #33

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’…

> no one wants Can't tell you what this phrase does to me. It's so prevalent in tech and gaming discussions and it'd be tough for me to think of a more holier-than-thou thing to say. There are people in the world who are different then you! That being said, I didn't really understand the streaming service either, and I do agree that their priorities have seemed all over the place lately. I only learned of the upcomin…

And yet in this very thread, we have multiple people saying "no one wanted / needed the AirPower for their AirPods etc so yawn/big deal". Goes both ways.

Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product

#145

Post by mcphage »

Hamuko wrote: post #49
jmole wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd be a slimier move to release a $200 charging pad that doesn't work well.

That's nothing for Apple. They have released $2000 laptops that don't work well.

> That's nothing for Apple. They have released $2000 laptops that don't work well.

Right, and I don't know why you think that's not slimy.

Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product

#146

Post by gordon_freeman »

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.

I am not sure but I guess you can start online return or through a support agent and then ship it back?

Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product

#147

Post by chrischen »

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 has a 1-week (or is it 2 weeks?) unconditional return policy. It actually disservices them to announce it after since they may now get a bunch of open box returns.

Additionally your edit doesn’t hold because apple sells iPhones without an official wireless charger either. The AirPods can also be charged with a wire, not to mention any compatible qi charger.

If you’re going to call out apple for making the charging standard based on USB power delivery (an open standard), well then I think you’ve lost everyone. The whole point of Qi, and USB PD is that you can use any charger, even non Apple ones.

Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product

#148

Post by 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...), 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.

Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product

#149

Post by griffordson »

ihuman wrote: post #113
griffordson wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product

#150

Post by threeseed »

tambourine_man wrote: post #33

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’…

You do realise this comment is hilariously contradictory. Complains that Apple doesn't release Mac Pros but then also complains that Apple doesn't keep announce new products until they are perfect. What exactly do you want from Apple ?

Also Apple never added any value to the WiFi routing space. It's almost like complaining that Apple doesn't make printers or digital cameras again.

Post reply on HN