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Apple Cancels AirPower Product

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Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product

#441

Post by blihp »

bredren wrote: post #436
blihp wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that this is anything new. Apple has been known for decades as a company unwilling to pay top dollar but rather count on their mystique / sense of mission to attract talent. However, with the mystique fading and no longer having a go-go stock price to make options/RSUs as attractive, that strategy is probably not working nearly as well as it used to.

Where’s the evidence of this talent drain creating great products elsewhere? I believe this is possible but am genuinely curious.

Who said that they were necessarily creating great products elsewhere? I only argued that they were likely going elsewhere. What happens when they get there is a function of management/environment/etc. Most companies don't offer a sense of mission or mystique to their people, but strangely many are willing to settle for stacks of money instead.

Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product

#442

Post by ulfw »

xuki wrote: post #417
ulfw wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am sorry to say but that’s what happens when you don’t have a proper product management org. Unbelievable in a large company like Apple but they do not have a Head of Product / CPO and are basically still a Sales and Marketing company with attached Engineering departments. There has been something very very wrong with products not getting out the door at Apple over the last few years. How does it take years to upda…

Steve Jobs was their Head of Product :(.

That is exactly right

Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product

#443

Post by m_mueller »

bredren wrote: post #436
blihp wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that this is anything new. Apple has been known for decades as a company unwilling to pay top dollar but rather count on their mystique / sense of mission to attract talent. However, with the mystique fading and no longer having a go-go stock price to make options/RSUs as attractive, that strategy is probably not working nearly as well as it used to.

Where’s the evidence of this talent drain creating great products elsewhere? I believe this is possible but am genuinely curious.

Lately it seems to be happening elsewhere entirely, at least on hardware front. See for example Huawei's foldable. Google and Microsoft will gladly solve their software problems, what they are mainly missing is their own distribution channels overseas. I think it we are now caught up to Japan in ~1970s, soon it will probably be time of dominance like ~1980s.

Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product

#444

Post by chrischen »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #424
macintux wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know 1Password offers a yearly subscription, right? I too didn’t think I’d switch to a subscription model for it, but it’s such useful software for so many purposes, and I’m very happy if it makes the company more sustainable. It’s hard to make money with software. I don’t begrudge them at all.

It's not "I want the term to be yearly" it's "I would pay for permanent upgrades so they could still get money from me repeatedly without a subscription model" Subscriptions are fine as an offer for software that's getting significant new features all the time. But a password manager is the kind of code that barely needs any devs to keep going once it's already in a good state. And it's the kind of code where integra…

LastPass is also a subscription, but they technically have a free option as well which is not a subscription. At this point I'd buy any password manager that isn't a subscription, but in all likeliness I"ll just start using Apple keychain as it improves.

Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product

#445

Post by chrischen »

ctphipps wrote: post #195
chrischen wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 charg…

Apple has much less consumer friendly return policies in many non-US markets. Take Hong Kong for example: "All products purchased at Apple Store in Hong Kong cannot be returned or exchanged. Exceptions for exchange will be allowed for defective products only." https://www.apple.com/hk/shop/help/exchange_return I'd have a hard time arguing that the AirPods are defective because the non-bundled mat on the box didn't sh…

I'm fairly certain the exception is Hong Kong. Japan, Taiwan, all allow returns under the standard policy.

Hong Kong probably does not allow it for other reasons. Maybe the policy gets exceptionally abused there.

Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product

#446

Post by chrischen »

culturestate wrote: post #241
ctphipps wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has much less consumer friendly return policies in many non-US markets. Take Hong Kong for example: "All products purchased at Apple Store in Hong Kong cannot be returned or exchanged. Exceptions for exchange will be allowed for defective products only." https://www.apple.com/hk/shop/help/exchange_return I'd have a hard time arguing that the AirPods are defective because the non-bundled mat on the box didn't sh…

This is...exactly the same as nearly every other retailer in HK. Off the top of my head - of places I’ve bought from recently - only Ikea allows random returns in HK. Everyone else is the same as Apple. Unlimited returns for any reason at every store is quite an American thing.

I actually think it's a good policy that while emotionally one may be hesitant to offer, but in reality it generates more profit for the retailer so long as they're not doing anything shady or anti-consumer in the first place.

Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product

#447

Post by kalleboo »

adtac wrote: post #369
mjsweet wrote: post #319

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 t…

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.)

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.

Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product

#448

Post by konschubert »

gumby wrote: post #433
konschubert wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious what you discovered during your modelling. From a first principles point of view it seems to me like it might just work.

It's hard (very lossy) to try to couple the B fields when the rings are different sizes.

But what if they’re all small and all the same size? In a Grid pattern, like streets between city blocks?

Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product

#449

Post by georgespencer »

golem14 wrote: post #371
mackey wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw a report on twitter with serial numbers showing build dates of September and November, along with old copyright dates on the boxes on the new AirPods. Combine that with the "Hey Siri" being shown in "Gather Round" video in September, I bet they were hoping to ship the AirPods before the holidays, but were holding out hope that Airpower would work. https://twitter.com/rouven81/status/1110980080170340352 https://…

My completely uneducated guess is a behind-the-scenes patent dispute or something along those lines...

Would be quite rare for a patent dispute to go on behind the scenes. There were a lot of leaks suggesting mass production was due to start. I would bet production did not start, and that early production runs had low yields due to the complexity of the product.

Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product

#450

Post by speedplane »

georgespencer wrote: post #449
golem14 wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My completely uneducated guess is a behind-the-scenes patent dispute or something along those lines...

Would be quite rare for a patent dispute to go on behind the scenes. There were a lot of leaks suggesting mass production was due to start. I would bet production did not start, and that early production runs had low yields due to the complexity of the product.

> Would be quite rare for a patent dispute to go on behind the scenes.

Actually the opposite. Most patent disputes are resolved behind the scenes, long before anyone sues each other.

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