271–280 of 500 posts
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.
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>There has to be something that caused this abrupt cancellation. They could have sold a Wireless Charger just like others with their mark up. Instead we got nothing. Also admitting MacBook Pro Keyboard Failure. I believe there is something happening to Hardware Engineering in general.
Were it "just like others with their markup", why would people pay more for the same thing?
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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 wo…
One thing about wireless charging is the gap created by phone cases, what does a case do to charging efficiency?
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.
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 wo…
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.
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Or maybe it was working but then yesterday one burst into flames during testing which was the final straw. They don’t want to pull a Samsungs now do they?
Why did they cancel the product rather than delay it? If they are cancelling the product, either the issues are unfixable and it means that something is very wrong with their engineering, because they are expected to understand whether the product is possible a little bit earlier than some months before production. Or managers are just acting impulsively which is as wrong.
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.
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... There has to be something that caused this abrupt cancellation.
You are assuming that Apple has great cross-team communication. By many reports, they do not: I've heard that one team does not know what another team is working on, much less the status of that project.
I remember reading a couple of articles about Bell Labs and how they had a huge cafeteria everyone was encouraged to eat in, thereby promoting cross-communication and "cross-pollination" of ideas and insight. I kinda wonder what the Big Tech companies would be producing now and at what rate if they did that instead of letting or encouraging everyone to sit at their desks all day long (mind you, Google seems to be pretty good about that part.)
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…
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.
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 dec…