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Apple Cancels AirPower Product

techcrunch.com

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Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product

#471

Post by dwighttk »

macintux wrote: post #398
dwighttk wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, I'm never paying monthly for my password manager. Thankfully 1Password let me roll back, but I need to find a new way forward at some point. The funny thing is I'd probably be fine paying more every year or so than I would with a monthly fee.

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.

...year or so... they update to a new version, I pay them when I decide to

Not: every 12 months I pay them if I want to keep using my password manager.

I do prefer to pay for software. I do not appreciate the sea change toward monthly subscriptions.

Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product

#472

Post by DavidNielsen »

macintux wrote: post #397
basch wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There would still be plenty of complaints if Apple stopped selling their USB-C power brick. Of all the examples you could give, I actually think just about nobody would care about the USB-C power brick. To be honest, its kind of stupid already to buy a first party charger. It';s throwing $50+ into the wind. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DW3QGJJ

I’ve been much happier with the elegant Apple charging equipment than anything else I’ve used. The bricks are reconfigurable to use different outputs and different inputs, and the cables roll up neatly with the help of a simple hook and loop cable tie.

I’d be sad if Apple stopped selling their chargers, primarily because with their engineering I’m pretty sure I get a safe well engineered product, whereas 3rd parties can display both lower quality and some really concerning cost cutting measures.

http://www.righto.com/2016/03/counterfeit-macbook-charger-te... http://www.righto.com/2014/05/a-look-inside-ipad-chargers-pr...

Sure one could then find reputable vendors, the Apple ecosystem has quite a few but most people would more than likely get the cheapest one from Amazon and sadly some of those products carry some serious safety risks.

I like that Apple has their own offering which one can feel confident in using. It is also nice to see that they will walk away from a design such as AirPower if they realize they cannot ship it to the standard which should be required for power delivery. At it’s base such a product should at least be easy to use and safe.

Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product

#474

Post by setquk »

luxuryballs wrote: post #345
setquk wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone I know who bought a 2018 MBA, me included, has returned it due to keyboard issues. Which is a shame because I loved the damn thing apart from that.

I didn’t think I would like it but after a few months I love it. Did you return it within the 14 days because of a defect or because you just didn’t like the feel?

I returned it because of duplicate keypresses being registered. Same problem my friends faced with their machines. The keyboard feel was fine. Takes a couple of days to get used to it but I prefer it.

I had it for three weeks. They had extended return times around Christmas which was handy or I’d have to have fought the repair/replace process.

I’d just sold my old 15” MBP before it failed so I am now using an old thinkpad T440 running xubuntu.

I’m more glad I have £1630 of cash in the bank than having the MBA if I’m honest.

Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product

#475

Post by heartbreak »

Noctem wrote: post #358
rickyc091 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate that Apple was honest with their communication. Too often have I seen managers/CEOs employ the strategy of avoiding the hard conversation and letting the topic fade away.

I appreciate it too, unfortunately Apple is not always so transparent. One example that comes to mind is their 2010 promise to make FaceTime an open standard. It was Steve Jobs that made that promise in 2010 (one year before his death), and apparently a patent dispute with VirnetX may be to blame, but to my knowledge they haven't made any public statements about it since the initial promise. If legalities are to blam…

Attorneys usually advice against discussing ongoing legal matters.

Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product

#476

Post by MichaelZuo »

stephenamills wrote: post #420
raverbashing wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There has to be something that caused this abrupt cancellation. Well, there is no way of getting 30W wirelessly (to the device side) without a lot of heat. I guess someone thought they could solve this with smarter power management (and per the John Gruber article this was an issue last year, or even before) but it frankly it does not seem possible (unless Apple discovered room temperature superconductors). It seem…

Yeah, you're almost definitely right. Apple is an extremely design-first company, in the sense that the designers have always run the company. This isn't the first time that sticking to a design led to a technical hardware/physics problem. This happened originally when Steven was designing the iPhone 4 with his team and took out most of the antenna lines, leaving only a small antenna line at the top and not the notic…

Thanks for the wonderful explanation! The idea of a charging mat with multiple overlapping coils seems to be a hard wall.

Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product

#477

Post by m3kw9 »

minikites wrote: post #229
m3kw9 wrote: post #139

Is a very good sign that Apple is willing to cancel shitty products. Still got that culture

If only they cancelled their laptop keyboards.

The keyboard is shitty, but they let it rip probably because they know it worked well when it does but underestimated the way it would fail. For AirPower they knew it would trip out of the gate

Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product

#478

Post by repolfx »

emdowling wrote: post #457
thruhiker wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard product managers described as "mini-CEOs" before. I don't think it's a comprehensive description, but it speaks to ownership mentality I think.

Product Managers should never be mini-CEOs. That is a model naive, ego-driven junior PMs adopt. Good PMs should be servant leaders, doing whatever it takes to ensure their team can have maximum impact and ownership. A big part of that is identifying new opportunities, both within the org and outside of it, and empowering engineers and designers to own what they are working on.

The concept of a servant leader is a contradiction, isn't it. 'empowering to own' is a pretty weird construction too.

Tech companies need people with very clear product visions that inspire their troops to build something excellent, even when those same troops are having their own opinions overridden by those of the visionary. Those people are usually CEOs and often but not always former engineers themselves. It's very hard to create a coherent, interestingly new product when you can't impose your will on a team because invariably to be new or innovative you must be controversial, and it's hard for non-CEOs to manage that internal controversy.

Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product

#479

Post by Tempest1981 »

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…

Check out "Fig 2" on this page (coil diagram): https://ifixit.org/blog/14883/what-finally-killed-airpower/

Or "Fig 5" on this page: https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/02/19/airpods-wireless-...

P.S. Glad to finally find a technical comment, after scrolling through 200 marketing/business comments. :)

Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product

#480

Post by Tempest1981 »

kickopotomus wrote: post #435
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…

> Is it my understanding that induction rings can't overlap? They technically can and that is what Apple was trying to do but the overlap creates a lot of weird RF noise and makes stable induction difficult. > Do the laws of physics apply here? Yes, it's just a much harder physics problem.

If you send power to one coil, some % will be induced in adjacent coils, right? And I guess that radiates interference like an antenna?

So question: could an inverse signal be applied to adjacent coils to cancel out the interference (from induction)?

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