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.
Apple Cancels AirPower Product
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Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product
#72This is a good thing. There were three competing wireless charging schemes. They got together and agreed on Qi as the charging mat standard.[1] Then Apple had to go off in their own incompatible direction. This delayed charging mat deployment in hotels and such. With Apple's scheme out of the picture, everybody can go with Qi. [1] https://www.wirelesspowerconsortium.com/
All the Apple devices that support wireless charging use Qi.
Well, they kind of have to since it's the only standard that that has products you can actually buy.
It's great that they avoided fragmenting the market. Even if AirPower was great at this point it's way late to the market, and compatibility would be a constant headache for years. I'm ok with Apple throwing in the towel here and just using the damn standard.
Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product
#73Earlier 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.
What's the downside of Qi chargers? (Assuming they didn't figure out some hardware problem that Apple couldn't figure out.)
They typically charge devices slower than the wired approach and I find it is sometimes hard to place a phone in just the right spot where it charges.
What Apple was doing that was hard, was to charge multiple devices at a time on a single pad without having set locations.
Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Something indeed. I don't understand what the issue could be. I have a few $20 wireless chargers that work just fine. I expected Apple to put one in premium packaging and sell it for $150.
Kinja posted a deal on a dual powered mat for $35 yesterday. Crazy to think that Apple couldnt crack this to reach some level of product that consumers would find attractive.
That is not remotely related. Having a mat with two or three separated coils for phones is really easy to do. You basically just glue a few of these together.
AirPower was intended to have basically an entire surface of charging pixels. You could place phones, watches, AirPods, and combos of those on the mat in any orientation. There was also no sweetspot.
By attemping to make inductive charging mats work really well, Apple ran into some big tech contraints.
Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product
#75Should Apple stop announcing products before they're sure they can ship them?
Is this a frequent thing?
Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product
#76The 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.
If they were gonna do it after the AirPods 2 release, they would have to do it ASAP, or else they'd either have to do extended refunds (and have extra return inventory of an unwanted product) or face a class-action suit from disgruntled AirPods 2 buyers who were promised compatibility with a now-cancelled product.
Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product
#77The 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.
Especially weird for Apple, who aren't known for vaporware. And even Google wouldn't come out and say "we can't make this work", they'd just stop talking about it until it was eventually solvable down the line, or let it evaporate altogether. It's very odd to see a tech giant just hit a technological wall.
Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Kinja posted a deal on a dual powered mat for $35 yesterday. Crazy to think that Apple couldnt crack this to reach some level of product that consumers would find attractive.
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.
Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product
#79Will they cancel the Macbook Pro?
Re: Apple Cancels AirPower Product
#80This is a good thing. There were three competing wireless charging schemes. They got together and agreed on Qi as the charging mat standard.[1] Then Apple had to go off in their own incompatible direction. This delayed charging mat deployment in hotels and such. With Apple's scheme out of the picture, everybody can go with Qi. [1] https://www.wirelesspowerconsortium.com/
Apple said they were going to work with the Qi standards team to integrate what they invented into future versions of the standard.