I still do not see how it is practical to lay down the iPhone. Sure the AirPod case and the watch. But for the desk I want my phone to be standing so that FaceId works. i guess this could be to nice for the bedside but it seems a little bit steep with $200 plus for a bedside thing?
I still do not see how it is practical to lay down the iPhone. Sure the AirPod case and the watch. But for the desk I want my phone to be standing so that FaceId works. i guess this could be to nice for the bedside but it seems a little bit steep with $200 plus for a bedside thing?
First of all, it’s not just a single device ... it’s a technology. Perhaps there will be a stand implementation for your needs. As for your needs, Face ID works lying flat on a table. Your needs may be different than others and that’s fine.
Second, price is relative. I’d rather have one mat that plugs into one charger brick that can handle all of my devices, rather than 3 cables and multiple chargers to get the job done, much less carry all of that around with me while traveling.
Third, when I get home I tend to dump all of my devices on the kitchen counter. I’d love to have a mat like this to drop them all on and forget them until morning if that’s the case. At present I have a place for each of them, and it’s far from convenient to manage all of them. Again, your mileage may vary, but just because you don’t use your stuff the way I do and vice-versa, doesn’t make either of us wrong, nor suggest there’s no market for this technology.
Finally, you won’t find any competition for this mat at a lower price, maybe ever, as its new technology that does more than just charge your iPhone inductively. So the price is inclusive of the ability to throw any of your devices on the mat and have them charge without any further thought as to what they are. No other mats can presently do this, so there’s a cost to that. It may be too steep for you, but I see the benefit to justify it for myself.
So those of is with the Milanese Loop, it looks as though we'll have to disconnect one end of the loop connector from the Apple Watch body each time we charge up with AirPower. Kind of annoying, but it is what it is.
Not necessarily. You can just pull the end of the band through the connector. I keep doing it by mistake, but if I had an Air Power, and needed to, I guess I could do it deliberately. It's less hassle than actually disconnecting the loop connector.
While I hope this does ship as I'm sure a lot of people would consider it, personally I will pass - I've moved from AirPods to the B&O e8's which fit and sound much better (albeit at a much higher price), and I prefer the Watch standing up at my bedside. Might have been nice if they incorporated the vertical charging plate on one side as an option, like their stand alone Watch charging base...
When I worked in Apple product management we did not announce a product till it was working and available.
Generally good advice, but inversely people whine if Apple is silent too. As for this time, I’m sure they had it in the bag but sometimes shit happens.
People have always whined because Apple is too silent. Offset to that is the lack of trust that builds over time when promised products or services don't materialize. – Which IMO is worse.
It is not like this is the first time this happens lately.
Dear lord. The “lack of trust” only exists in your mind and that of other techies debating on rumor sites. Normals do not care. They don’t follow rumor sites, don’t know expected launch dates, and just buy stuff when it’s available and enjoy the value derived.
So those of is with the Milanese Loop, it looks as though we'll have to disconnect one end of the loop connector from the Apple Watch body each time we charge up with AirPower. Kind of annoying, but it is what it is.
Not necessarily. You can just pull the end of the band through the connector. I keep doing it by mistake, but if I had an Air Power, and needed to, I guess I could do it deliberately. It's less hassle than actually disconnecting the loop connector.
The Milanese Loop on my Apple Watch series 4 has a narrower end on the strap, that can be pulled through the lug on the watch side - no need to remove that side from the Apple Watch to open up the loop.
Why does anyone really care about this thing? It's years overdue, will be way overpriced and there are better, cheaper things out there that due the same thing. Oh yea because there are idiots that pay $1k plus for a phone that will buy this thing. lol
I imagine one reason it’s taken longer is that inductive charging is lossy compared to direct wired charging. Apple cares about the environment and part of that means using less power to perform the same compute tasks, to the extent possible. I think Apple achieves this in its products relative to competition, by owning the design of, and optimizing, most of the technology stack, from battery to circuitry to software (OS). Apple won’t like want to negate those efficiency gains with a lot of loss in the charging process, so you may expect to hear in any AirPowrr announcement/marketing about charging being more efficient than the bulk of the competition.
To be fair, that shitty troll you replied to didn't deserve your time.
Why does anyone really care about this thing? It's years overdue, will be way overpriced and there are better, cheaper things out there that due the same thing. Oh yea because there are idiots that pay $1k plus for a phone that will buy this thing. lol
I imagine one reason it’s taken longer is that inductive charging is lossy compared to direct wired charging. Apple cares about the environment and part of that means using less power to perform the same compute tasks, to the extent possible. I think Apple achieves this in its products relative to competition, by owning the design of, and optimizing, most of the technology stack, from battery to circuitry to software (OS). Apple won’t like want to negate those efficiency gains with a lot of loss in the charging process, so you may expect to hear in any AirPowrr announcement/marketing about charging being more efficient than the bulk of the competition.
This is my biggest beef with inductive charging. It’s not really that much more convenient than plugging in a lightning cable, IMO, but there’s somewhere around a 30% power loss. If you multiply that by the number of iPhones out there you have a ton of energy being pointlessly wasted. Even if Apple is better than anyone else, they won’t be better than a lightning cable.
You have to look at the total cost of charging. Even if inductive chargers are less efficient in terms of power transfer the overall charging costs could be reduced by using intelligent sensing on when full power needs to be applied to the charging coils. If you use a conventional wall mounted charger and leave it plugged into the power source even when there is no device connected, the charger itself probably continues to consume some amount of power. It's probable that the Lightning connector uses sense lines to determine when a device is connected for charging and reduces the power draw when there is no load. However, even with sense lines to determine device presence the wall mounted charger is still consuming power in the rectifier and filtering circuitry because the sense lines are on the low voltage DC side of the charging circuit. Apple's charging mat obviously has proximity sensors for determining when a device is placed on it. It may use the primary coils themselves to detect device presence, but with no device present the current draw would be very small due to reflected impedance so copper losses would be low. The hope is that Apple has more opportunities with the charging mat to be more aggressive about reducing ambient power consumption when no devices are present. It would be interesting if Apple presented a write-up that described overall power consumption with the AirPower charger. They do have keen awareness of these concerns and undoubtedly factored energy consumption concerns into their product design. Whether they determined that convenience still outweighed energy concerns is something they or a product testing lab could easily describe.
AirPower will still have a power brick at the wall outlet, with a step down transformer and power management circuitry (to deal with power spikes, for example). It won’t have the rectifier circuitry, but it’ll likely exhibit some ambient draw on par with existing iPhone/iPad power bricks. Perhaps less, but hard to imagine enough less to offset to inefficiency of inductive coupling as a charging method.
Apple power bricks are the best. smaller and lighter than the competition. Just look at the power brick on the Surface Pro4, it has to be as heavy the tablet itself and half as big.
Why does anyone really care about this thing? It's years overdue, will be way overpriced and there are better, cheaper things out there that due the same thing. Oh yea because there are idiots that pay $1k plus for a phone that will buy this thing. lol
I imagine one reason it’s taken longer is that inductive charging is lossy compared to direct wired charging. Apple cares about the environment and part of that means using less power to perform the same compute tasks, to the extent possible. I think Apple achieves this in its products relative to competition, by owning the design of, and optimizing, most of the technology stack, from battery to circuitry to software (OS). Apple won’t like want to negate those efficiency gains with a lot of loss in the charging process, so you may expect to hear in any AirPowrr announcement/marketing about charging being more efficient than the bulk of the competition.
This is my biggest beef with inductive charging. It’s not really that much more convenient than plugging in a lightning cable, IMO, but there’s somewhere around a 30% power loss. If you multiply that by the number of iPhones out there you have a ton of energy being pointlessly wasted. Even if Apple is better than anyone else, they won’t be better than a lightning cable.
All good points. The power loss is probably pretty significant when you multiply it by millions (or hundreds of millions) of devices. Hopefully not too many people use this feature. The aspect of wireless charging that bugs me more on a daily basis is the fact that it makes my phone thicker, heavier and probably more fragile, due to the glass back (I say probably because there were glass backs before wireless charging, although they had been mostly phased out). Plus the irritation of knowing that someone thought that would be useful but didn’t understand why many of us wouldn’t want to deal with dongles for headphone jacks (and USB-A connectivity on laptops).
Why does anyone really care about this thing? It's years overdue, will be way overpriced and there are better, cheaper things out there that due the same thing. Oh yea because there are idiots that pay $1k plus for a phone that will buy this thing. lol
I imagine one reason it’s taken longer is that inductive charging is lossy compared to direct wired charging. Apple cares about the environment and part of that means using less power to perform the same compute tasks, to the extent possible. I think Apple achieves this in its products relative to competition, by owning the design of, and optimizing, most of the technology stack, from battery to circuitry to software (OS). Apple won’t like want to negate those efficiency gains with a lot of loss in the charging process, so you may expect to hear in any AirPowrr announcement/marketing about charging being more efficient than the bulk of the competition.
This is my biggest beef with inductive charging. It’s not really that much more convenient than plugging in a lightning cable, IMO, but there’s somewhere around a 30% power loss. If you multiply that by the number of iPhones out there you have a ton of energy being pointlessly wasted. Even if Apple is better than anyone else, they won’t be better than a lightning cable.
You don't think that a coffee shop, hotel, airport, etc. is more convenient by having an inductive charging pad that works all manufactures, but instead think that having Lightning, Micro-B, and USB-C cables for all these devices is more convenient? You'll have to break that one down for me.
Why does anyone really care about this thing? It's years overdue, will be way overpriced and there are better, cheaper things out there that due the same thing. Oh yea because there are idiots that pay $1k plus for a phone that will buy this thing. lol
I imagine one reason it’s taken longer is that inductive charging is lossy compared to direct wired charging. Apple cares about the environment and part of that means using less power to perform the same compute tasks, to the extent possible. I think Apple achieves this in its products relative to competition, by owning the design of, and optimizing, most of the technology stack, from battery to circuitry to software (OS). Apple won’t like want to negate those efficiency gains with a lot of loss in the charging process, so you may expect to hear in any AirPowrr announcement/marketing about charging being more efficient than the bulk of the competition.
This is my biggest beef with inductive charging. It’s not really that much more convenient than plugging in a lightning cable, IMO, but there’s somewhere around a 30% power loss. If you multiply that by the number of iPhones out there you have a ton of energy being pointlessly wasted. Even if Apple is better than anyone else, they won’t be better than a lightning cable.
You don't think that a coffee shop, hotel, airport, etc. is more convenient by having an inductive charging pad that works all manufactures, but instead think that having Lightning, Micro-B, and USB-C cables for all these devices is more convenient? You'll have to break that one down for me.
Most people will have the cable with them anyway and many will also have the charger too.
I work in a so-called smart city. There are even charging points in some toilets, as well as on trains buses, street furniture etc. The charging points are USB-A sockets for cables or schuko for the charger itself.
Micro usb, usb-c or lightning aren't an issue when the other end of the cable is of the same type.
Wireless charging is slow and not of much use unless you plan to be near a pad for a relatively long period of time. Anyone staying at a hotel is far more likely to have the actual charger with them too, and as nowadays fast charging is common, a 15 minute top up from your own charger will likely see you through the rest of the day without needing a further charge.
On a bus you can sometimes see lots of charging points. Far more than could ever be effectively used via wireless charging. For example in the base of the overhead hand strap for standing passengers.
Wireless charging has its uses and is a nice convenience option but no complete substitute solution for any of the cases you mentioned.
Why does anyone really care about this thing? It's years overdue, will be way overpriced and there are better, cheaper things out there that due the same thing. Oh yea because there are idiots that pay $1k plus for a phone that will buy this thing. lol
I imagine one reason it’s taken longer is that inductive charging is lossy compared to direct wired charging. Apple cares about the environment and part of that means using less power to perform the same compute tasks, to the extent possible. I think Apple achieves this in its products relative to competition, by owning the design of, and optimizing, most of the technology stack, from battery to circuitry to software (OS). Apple won’t like want to negate those efficiency gains with a lot of loss in the charging process, so you may expect to hear in any AirPowrr announcement/marketing about charging being more efficient than the bulk of the competition.
This is my biggest beef with inductive charging. It’s not really that much more convenient than plugging in a lightning cable, IMO, but there’s somewhere around a 30% power loss. If you multiply that by the number of iPhones out there you have a ton of energy being pointlessly wasted. Even if Apple is better than anyone else, they won’t be better than a lightning cable.
You don't think that a coffee shop, hotel, airport, etc. is more convenient by having an inductive charging pad that works all manufactures, but instead think that having Lightning, Micro-B, and USB-C cables for all these devices is more convenient? You'll have to break that one down for me.
Most people will have the cable with them anyway and many will also have the charger too.
So you're beef with inductive charging is that people are already inconveniencing themselves by always carrying with them the cables and PSUs they need everywhere they go? You know that's not always the case right? My iPhone died on Saturday because I didn't have a cable with me. Luckily I had my Apple Watch with cellular so I didn't miss anything.
Speaking of, do you think the Apple Watch should also having a Lightning port because you think the benefits of inductive charging don't warrant its inclusion on CE?
I'm looking forward for a world where inductive charging is commonplace. The more inductive charging options the better.
Why does anyone really care about this thing? It's years overdue, will be way overpriced and there are better, cheaper things out there that due the same thing. Oh yea because there are idiots that pay $1k plus for a phone that will buy this thing. lol
I imagine one reason it’s taken longer is that inductive charging is lossy compared to direct wired charging. Apple cares about the environment and part of that means using less power to perform the same compute tasks, to the extent possible. I think Apple achieves this in its products relative to competition, by owning the design of, and optimizing, most of the technology stack, from battery to circuitry to software (OS). Apple won’t like want to negate those efficiency gains with a lot of loss in the charging process, so you may expect to hear in any AirPowrr announcement/marketing about charging being more efficient than the bulk of the competition.
This is my biggest beef with inductive charging. It’s not really that much more convenient than plugging in a lightning cable, IMO, but there’s somewhere around a 30% power loss. If you multiply that by the number of iPhones out there you have a ton of energy being pointlessly wasted. Even if Apple is better than anyone else, they won’t be better than a lightning cable.
You don't think that a coffee shop, hotel, airport, etc. is more convenient by having an inductive charging pad that works all manufactures, but instead think that having Lightning, Micro-B, and USB-C cables for all these devices is more convenient? You'll have to break that one down for me.
Most people will have the cable with them anyway and many will also have the charger too.
So you're beef with inductive charging is that people are already inconveniencing themselves by always carrying with them the cables and PSUs they need everywhere they go? You know that's not always the case right? My iPhone died on Saturday because I didn't have a cable with me. Luckily I had my Apple Watch with cellular so I didn't miss anything.
Speaking of, do you think the Apple Watch should also having a Lightning port because you think the benefits of inductive charging don't warrant its inclusion on CE?
I'm looking forward for a world where inductive charging is commonplace. The more inductive charging options the better.
I don't have any beef at all with wireless charging. It's another option but at the moment there are still plenty of times when a cable or charger are by far the best option.
Ask anyone staying at a hotel if they packed a charger in the case. Even if the hotel had wireless charging in every room, people would still pack a charger for the reasons given above.
I tweeted this to the AppleInsider Staff during CES. I thought they would check it out, but they didn't. It's a prototype mat that is similar to the AirPower Mat, but it only charges 2 devices at a time.
I tweeted this to the AppleInsider Staff during CES. I thought they would check it out, but they didn't. It's a prototype mat that is similar to the AirPower Mat, but it only charges 2 devices at a time.
I tweeted this to the AppleInsider Staff during CES. I thought they would check it out, but they didn't. It's a prototype mat that is similar to the AirPower Mat, but it only charges 2 devices at a time.
We've reviewed several multi-device mats. This doesn't really differentiate from any of those.
Also, we were booked pretty solid from the get-go. Not a lot of time for show wandering, I'm afraid.
Understood. It's definitely impossible to catch everything at CES.
I really haven't seen a Mat that charges the Apple Watch (since the watch is proprietary) along with a phone and earbuds. It is not a separate area for the watch that has the embedded Watch charger, you can place any device and it will charge.
Why does anyone really care about this thing? It's years overdue, will be way overpriced and there are better, cheaper things out there that due the same thing. Oh yea because there are idiots that pay $1k plus for a phone that will buy this thing. lol
I imagine one reason it’s taken longer is that inductive charging is lossy compared to direct wired charging. Apple cares about the environment and part of that means using less power to perform the same compute tasks, to the extent possible. I think Apple achieves this in its products relative to competition, by owning the design of, and optimizing, most of the technology stack, from battery to circuitry to software (OS). Apple won’t like want to negate those efficiency gains with a lot of loss in the charging process, so you may expect to hear in any AirPowrr announcement/marketing about charging being more efficient than the bulk of the competition.
This is my biggest beef with inductive charging. It’s not really that much more convenient than plugging in a lightning cable, IMO, but there’s somewhere around a 30% power loss. If you multiply that by the number of iPhones out there you have a ton of energy being pointlessly wasted. Even if Apple is better than anyone else, they won’t be better than a lightning cable.
That’s a pretty subjective opinion as well. Many times I put my phone in its car cradle, and forget to plug the Lightning cable into it, only realizing it when I get to my destination that the phone didn’t charge. I mostly charge the phone in my car while commuting, and the surplus power provided when it’s running is of course not wasted even if it’s 30% less efficient than plugging in a wire. Not having to think about plugging in a cable would be quite convenient.
At home, I drop the phone into a charging stand. But I don’t have those stands everywhere. Many a night I’ve forgotten to plug in a phone laying on my nightstand. If there had been a charging pad for me to drop it onto, I wouldn’t have had to think about it. To say nothing about being able to just drop three devices onto the same mat and have them all charge without having to worry about three separate cables. Is the convenience worth the less efficient energy transfer? Well that’s a matter of opinion, and a highly subjective one at that, and preference.
How is that different from forgetting to put the phone on the mat or not noticing that it's improperly placed and not charging (or has jiggled off the mat in the case of a car?) If you're forgetful, nothing will be perfect.
Also, the overwhelming majority of cars need a USB connection for CarPlay.
Why does anyone really care about this thing? It's years overdue, will be way overpriced and there are better, cheaper things out there that due the same thing. Oh yea because there are idiots that pay $1k plus for a phone that will buy this thing. lol
I imagine one reason it’s taken longer is that inductive charging is lossy compared to direct wired charging. Apple cares about the environment and part of that means using less power to perform the same compute tasks, to the extent possible. I think Apple achieves this in its products relative to competition, by owning the design of, and optimizing, most of the technology stack, from battery to circuitry to software (OS). Apple won’t like want to negate those efficiency gains with a lot of loss in the charging process, so you may expect to hear in any AirPowrr announcement/marketing about charging being more efficient than the bulk of the competition.
This is my biggest beef with inductive charging. It’s not really that much more convenient than plugging in a lightning cable, IMO, but there’s somewhere around a 30% power loss. If you multiply that by the number of iPhones out there you have a ton of energy being pointlessly wasted. Even if Apple is better than anyone else, they won’t be better than a lightning cable.
You don't think that a coffee shop, hotel, airport, etc. is more convenient by having an inductive charging pad that works all manufactures, but instead think that having Lightning, Micro-B, and USB-C cables for all these devices is more convenient? You'll have to break that one down for me.
Most people will have the cable with them anyway and many will also have the charger too.
So you're beef with inductive charging is that people are already inconveniencing themselves by always carrying with them the cables and PSUs they need everywhere they go? You know that's not always the case right? My iPhone died on Saturday because I didn't have a cable with me. Luckily I had my Apple Watch with cellular so I didn't miss anything.
Speaking of, do you think the Apple Watch should also having a Lightning port because you think the benefits of inductive charging don't warrant its inclusion on CE?
I'm looking forward for a world where inductive charging is commonplace. The more inductive charging options the better.
There is no viable alternative to inductive charging for the Apple Watch. Virtually any other method would have significant drawbacks and compromises, so it falls in a separate category, IMO.
As far as the coffee shop, hotel, etc scenario goes. charging pads would be nice, but for the time being, inductive charging for phones is the exception, not the rule, so if you are installing convenience charging stations in a public space, you'll either just put a 120V outlet or a USB A port since those are the most universal. Along with this, if you're going someplace and think you may need to charge your phone you don't assume there will be a charging mat since there virtually never is. (I realize this is a bit of a circular, catch 22 argument, but that's the current state of affairs.) The other important consideration is that in most of these locations, charging speed is important - you have 20 minutes before your flight so you want to get as much charge as possible. Wired charging has a significant advantage here.
The two areas where inductive charging has the clear advantage are appearance/durability and security. The lack of cables to break, wear out and clutter surfaces is a plus. For security, many people don't like using public USB ports. That shouldn't be an issue with iOS, and if you get an Android, you've already decided to compromise on security, but either way, to my knowledge a Qi charging mat is more secure.
I fully agree that the cell phone charging jacks have been a mess since cell phones were invented. I'm actually hoping that Apple switches to USB C in it's new phones because that would become a de facto standard then. The fact that Qi has become an early standard for inductive charging is good - the last thing we needed was a similar mess with inductive charging.
So those of is with the Milanese Loop, it looks as though we'll have to disconnect one end of the loop connector from the Apple Watch body each time we charge up with AirPower. Kind of annoying, but it is what it is.
I have a big hand I end up doing that anyway with my Milanese lol
Comments
i guess this could be to nice for the bedside but it seems a little bit steep with $200 plus for a bedside thing?
Second, price is relative. I’d rather have one mat that plugs into one charger brick that can handle all of my devices, rather than 3 cables and multiple chargers to get the job done, much less carry all of that around with me while traveling.
Third, when I get home I tend to dump all of my devices on the kitchen counter. I’d love to have a mat like this to drop them all on and forget them until morning if that’s the case. At present I have a place for each of them, and it’s far from convenient to manage all of them. Again, your mileage may vary, but just because you don’t use your stuff the way I do and vice-versa, doesn’t make either of us wrong, nor suggest there’s no market for this technology.
Finally, you won’t find any competition for this mat at a lower price, maybe ever, as its new technology that does more than just charge your iPhone inductively. So the price is inclusive of the ability to throw any of your devices on the mat and have them charge without any further thought as to what they are. No other mats can presently do this, so there’s a cost to that. It may be too steep for you, but I see the benefit to justify it for myself.
Because wires are the future!!
To be fair, that shitty troll you replied to didn't deserve your time.
I work in a so-called smart city. There are even charging points in some toilets, as well as on trains buses, street furniture etc. The charging points are USB-A sockets for cables or schuko for the charger itself.
Micro usb, usb-c or lightning aren't an issue when the other end of the cable is of the same type.
Wireless charging is slow and not of much use unless you plan to be near a pad for a relatively long period of time. Anyone staying at a hotel is far more likely to have the actual charger with them too, and as nowadays fast charging is common, a 15 minute top up from your own charger will likely see you through the rest of the day without needing a further charge.
On a bus you can sometimes see lots of charging points. Far more than could ever be effectively used via wireless charging. For example in the base of the overhead hand strap for standing passengers.
Wireless charging has its uses and is a nice convenience option but no complete substitute solution for any of the cases you mentioned.
Speaking of, do you think the Apple Watch should also having a Lightning port because you think the benefits of inductive charging don't warrant its inclusion on CE?
I'm looking forward for a world where inductive charging is commonplace. The more inductive charging options the better.
Ask anyone staying at a hotel if they packed a charger in the case. Even if the hotel had wireless charging in every room, people would still pack a charger for the reasons given above.
I tweeted this to the AppleInsider Staff during CES. I thought they would check it out, but they didn't. It's a prototype mat that is similar to the AirPower Mat, but it only charges 2 devices at a time.
Also, we were booked pretty solid from the get-go. Not a lot of time for show wandering, I'm afraid.
Understood. It's definitely impossible to catch everything at CES.
I really haven't seen a Mat that charges the Apple Watch (since the watch is proprietary) along with a phone and earbuds. It is not a separate area for the watch that has the embedded Watch charger, you can place any device and it will charge.
Also, the overwhelming majority of cars need a USB connection for CarPlay.
As far as the coffee shop, hotel, etc scenario goes. charging pads would be nice, but for the time being, inductive charging for phones is the exception, not the rule, so if you are installing convenience charging stations in a public space, you'll either just put a 120V outlet or a USB A port since those are the most universal. Along with this, if you're going someplace and think you may need to charge your phone you don't assume there will be a charging mat since there virtually never is. (I realize this is a bit of a circular, catch 22 argument, but that's the current state of affairs.) The other important consideration is that in most of these locations, charging speed is important - you have 20 minutes before your flight so you want to get as much charge as possible. Wired charging has a significant advantage here.
The two areas where inductive charging has the clear advantage are appearance/durability and security. The lack of cables to break, wear out and clutter surfaces is a plus. For security, many people don't like using public USB ports. That shouldn't be an issue with iOS, and if you get an Android, you've already decided to compromise on security, but either way, to my knowledge a Qi charging mat is more secure.
I fully agree that the cell phone charging jacks have been a mess since cell phones were invented. I'm actually hoping that Apple switches to USB C in it's new phones because that would become a de facto standard then. The fact that Qi has become an early standard for inductive charging is good - the last thing we needed was a similar mess with inductive charging.