by Jason Snell
Apple cancels AirPower
Matthew Panzarino, once again, with the scoop. AirPower, the long awaited wireless charging pad that Apple announced back in 2017, has been officially canceled:
“After much effort, we’ve concluded AirPower will not achieve our high standards and we have cancelled 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 push the wireless experience forward,” said Dan Riccio, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Engineering in an emailed statement today.
As Panzarino says (and I too had heard), the challenges appear to be ones of physics, rather than pure engineering. Heat was a real issue in the product, and one that the company wasn’t able to overcome.
What is most fascinating is that this comes amidst a lot of suggestions that AirPower would be shipping imminently, including support in the recently released iOS 12.2, images appearing on Apple’s websites, and even a picture on the back of the box for the new AirPods’ wireless charging cases. Which just goes to show you that sometimes where there’s smoke, there’s fire…and sometimes there’s just, you know, fire.