AirPower

Apple discontinued AirPower even before the product had a chance to hit stores, and since then the company has been investing in its MagSafe lineup of accessories – which includes the MagSafe Duo Charger. Although I really like the MagSafe Duo Charger, Apple still needs an AirPower-like accessory.

At a launch event today, Xiaomi debuted its latest smartphone lineup and more. One of the new accessories is an AirPower clone with an affordable price. And interestingly, the company says it started work on it when Apple gave up – that’s today, two years ago. Alongside that multi-device charger, the company also claims to have cracked how to make wireless charging just as fast as wired with a new super high power wireless smartphone charger.

Looking back, 2017 should’ve been a great year for Apple: ten years of the first iPhone, Apple Watch Series 3, updates to the Mac, new iPads, the Apple TV 4K, and two brand new products: HomePod and AirPower. But as time has passed, some products by the company didn’t age well.

Wireless charging startup Aira has acquired patents from rival Spansive as it seeks to do what Apple couldn’t with AirPower: Create wireless charging mats that allow you to place devices anywhere on their surface. Apple also seems to think Spansive was onto something, as it hired the company’s CTO back in July.

Aira previously hired Apple’s then head of patent strategy as it works on a range of products under the FreePower branding…

As part of a broader look at the new Nomad Base Station Pro and the Aira wireless charging technology behind it, Bloomberg reports that Apple is working on a “less ambitious” wireless charger for the iPhone. This comes after the infamous announcement, delay, and eventual cancellation of AirPower.

After first announcing its multi-device smart wireless charger back in 2017, Apple officially canceled AirPower in March of 2019. Now a video has surfaced that shows a teardown of an alleged AirPower prototype revealing an intricate design.

It was reported earlier this week that we might see an Apple wireless charger after all, despite the AirPower debacle.

Some have suggested this isn’t a great idea, simply reminding everyone of Apple’s failure to deliver what it originally promised: a single charging mat that allowed you to charge iPhone, AirPods, and Apple Watch by laying them anywhere on the device. Compared to that, an ordinary wireless charger would be a massive climbdown – and what’s the point anyway when everyone makes them… ?

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A report from Ming-Chi Kuo today centered on the impact to Apple’s supply chain of the coronavirus. Nested in the report, Kuo mentions several new products from Apple expected to arrive in the first half of 2020.

The lineup includes the iPhone SE 2, a new iPad Pro and MacBooks with scissor keys, and most interestingly a “smaller wireless charging mat, UWB tag, and a high-end Bluetooth headphone”.

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More than nine months after Apple finally gave up on its AirPower charging mat, some people haven’t yet gotten over their disappointment. The Zens Liberty doesn’t act as a full replacement, but it’s the closest thing we’ve seen yet.

The Qi-compatible charging mat has a total of 16 overlapping coils to allow casual placement of devices…

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After Apple canceled AirPower, another company picked up the idea and brought something very similar to market a few months later called AirUnleashed. With the same design as AirPower and wireless charging for three devices, including Apple Watch, AirUnleashed likely hit a number of checkboxes for Apple customers. Now the company is back with a limited black edition and we’ve been able to test it out.

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What lessons could – and should – Apple learn from the AirPower debacle? Clearly, lessons do need to be learned; this was a massive embarrassment. But I also think it’s important that the company doesn’t over-react.

Apple has a long history of announcing products before they are ready, with often lengthy delays before customers are able to get their hands on them. And that’s one area where people can’t say it would never have happened under Steve Jobs …

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In a Friday afternoon announcement, Apple shared today that AirPower is officially dead. The news came as a surprise as support for the special wireless charging mat was found in a recent iOS beta and other evidence was pointing to an imminent release. Now that Apple’s advanced wireless charger is off the table, let’s take a look at some of the best AirPower alternatives you can buy today.

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Apple has announced today that it is unable to ship the AirPower charging mat and have cancelled the project, via TechCrunch.

In a statement from Dan Riccio, Apple apologized to customers that had been waiting for the product to come out. The AirPower mat was originally announced in September 2017 alongside the iPhone X. Apple was silent on the project for a year and a half, and today confirmed that AirPower is cancelled.

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Apple last week announced a new version of AirPods and an accompanying Wireless Charging Case, but AirPower was nowhere to be found. As it turns out, the packaging for the AirPods Wireless Charging Case clearly depicts AirPower, even though it’s still not available.

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Update: The AirPower image has been removed from Apple’s servers, but the HTML and CSS references remain for now. Who knows when AirPower will show up for real?

The AirPods page was updated yesterday to highlight the new features in the updated model and mentions the wireless charging case. However, the previously featured picture of AirPods and an iPhone X laying on the AirPower mat was removed in the redesign.

It turns out — there is actually a new never-before-seen official AirPower image hidden in the source code that was intended to be on the AirPods page. It shows the new AirPods charging case and “David’s” iPhone XS laying on the so far unreleased AirPower mat …

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There’s mounting evidence that suggests AirPower could be released any day now, and the long-awaited release of AirPods with a wireless charging case only adds fuel to the rumor fire. The Wall Street Journal adds new reporting about the state of AirPower in their coverage of the new AirPods launch:

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Apple finally launched the long-awaited second-generation AirPods. These offer a new H1 chip which boost talk-time and speed up switching between devices, but the headline features are hands-free Hey Siri and … a wireless charging case.

The latter – also available as a standalone accessory for existing AirPods owners – has been a long time coming. The thinking until now is that Apple was waiting until it could finally get AirPower working, so it could announce the products together, but it hasn’t done so.

The big question is whether AirPower is coming tomorrow as a separate launch …. ?

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Yesterday, Apple released the sixth developer beta of iOS 12.2. Looking into what is in the update, we noticed it brings significant changes to the component responsible for wireless charging, including the code responsible for identifying that two devices are charging on the same mat.

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New patents granted to Apple today reveal some of the possible problems its now-fabled AirPower mat might have needed to resolve before its public release, including what Apple calls a “magnetic vision system”.

Recently, we’ve been hearing reports of AirPower hitting the production stage, however, with Apple still tight-lipped on the product since last year, today’s patents offer another glimmer of hope.

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