After 18 Months, Apple Admits It Can’t Make a Wireless Charger

AirPower, announced back in September 2017, was supposedly a combined charging hub for iPhone, Apple Watch and AirPods (or anything else you could put on the charging pad).

In its recent email to TechCrunch, Apple officially canceled the AirPower based on the fact that it could not achieve the company’s standards of hardware. The email from Apple SVP of hardware engineering Dan Rico said,

After much effort, we’ve concluded AirPower will not achieve our high standards and we have canceled the project. We apologize to those customers who were looking forward to this launch. We continue to believe that the future is wireless and are committed to pushing the wireless experience forward.

What it Should Have Been

AirPower was announced with iPhone X and according to Apple, at that time, it should have been available for shipping some time in 2018. It was supposed to have multiple coils for charging your iPhone, Apple Watch and AirPods at the same time, allowing users to charge them by placing them anywhere on the pad. You wouldn’t have to find the right spot.

Moreover, it would sync all the charging products and show the charged percentage on the iPhone. I guess Apple was too ambitious for its own good for this one.

Rumors suggest that the engineers were facing problems with heat management due to using multiple coils and the inter-device communication was just not working due to the interference of all the devices. These issues, mainly the heating problem, could not be fixed by Apple.

Not The First Problem

We have seen more than a few rough launches when it comes to Apple products. For starters, AirPods, when initially announced, took months to ship. The wireless case for the AirPods was announced in 2017 and has only started shipping a few months ago.

Then the butterfly keyboard on the MacBook Pro, which had faulty E and R keys, Apple still hasn’t done much to solve the problem and hasn’t posted a formal apology to its users either.