BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

Apple Cancels AirPower Charging Mat: This Is No April Fool's Joke

Following
This article is more than 4 years old.

Apple announced today that it is not going to deliver its AirPower wireless charging mat that has been in the works for more than 18 months.

Apple

Here’s everything you need to know.

Apple announced the AirPower wireless charging mat in September 2017. It was scheduled to appear in 2018 and never did.

Just days ago, every sign was that it was happening. Elements on the Australian Apple.com accidentally revealed an image of AirPods on the charging mat and even the rear of the boxes on some second-generation AirPods, which only arrived in customers hands and ears this week, had a picture of the AirPower mat.

So, to say this was a last-minute decision is putting it mildly.

Today, Dan Riccio, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Engineering, made a statement to confirm this. He said:

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.”

Apple

Bolt from the blue, right? I had believed that the charging mat would appear, sooner or later.

But Apple has confirmed to me that the above statement is true - it's not an early April Fool's prank. Would that it were.

So, what happened?

Well, we don’t know what the reasons were, but the fact that it came from someone as senior as Dan Riccio means it needs to be recognized as important.

There have been rumors that overheating was an issue. Since the items to be charged on the mat included $1,500 iPhones and $1,000 Apple Watches (that's the Hermes edition, you see), Apple had to be 100% sure that nothing was going to damage those valuable gadgets, least of all something they had made itself.

Apple was doing something truly ground-breaking here, to have a mat which would charge three different gadgets on the same mat, however casually you placed them down, in whatever order.

Multiple charging coils near each other, all being powered up from underneath, need to be controlled with granular efficiency.

Getty

Making that work sounds pretty hard and if anyone was going to have success with it, it would likely only be Apple.

In fact, I’d predict that if Apple can’t make it, nobody else will manage.

Let’s remember that powering a phone or other gadget too hard, or with something unstable in the mix can be disastrous. Let's also remember that other products have been delayed, like AirPods, and gone on to be storming successes. It may be a sobering reminder to Apple that it used to only announce products when they were ready to go on sale...

To cancel AirPower is terrible, but it’s way less bad for reputational damage than, say, the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 which caught fire.

Apple has played safe and if it really can’t make it work, canceling is the best choice for sure.

Even so, it's a shame. Goodbye AirPower, we hardly knew ye.

If you enjoyed this story, you might also like these:

Apple Watch ECG Feature Goes Live In 19 More Countries Including U.K. How To Use It

What To Expect From Apple's 'It's Show Time' Event: New Hardware Tipped?

New 2nd-Gen AirPods Launched: Hands-Free Siri, Wireless Charging: Here's All You Need To Know

Apple Reveals Stunning iPad Air, iPad mini With Apple Pencil Support

Apple AirPods Vs. Samsung Galaxy Buds: Which Wireless In-Ears Should You Buy?

Follow me on Twitter