I think it's very uncommon for Apple to fail at something like this, but they admitted they couldn't get it working (in their words: 'didn't live up to our quality standards'), but at least they tested it for a long time and kept their standards high. That's not a bad thing. There are enough wireless mats out there, even though you'd have to place each device on an individual 'group' instead of Apple's intended innovation.
So they can design a self-driving car but they can't design a working charging mat.
As it turns out they can't design a self-driving car or a wireless charger. If Apple can't do it, I am a little concerned about buying one from any another company now - are they safe to use or will they fail and burn my house down?
It seems like everyone who complains about Apple’s quality going downhill has very selective memory. Nobody remembers this garbage mouse whose ball would inevitably quit working and need to be cleaned within the first couple of weeks, eventually getting to the point where even cleaning it wouldn’t fix it?
Kind of troubling. It can't be the engineering, since there are a billion Tom/Dick/Harry Qi chargers out there... Can't be manufacturing, since Apple makes far more complex things.
"Can't meet our high standards"? So what was it, really?
The current Qi charging mats require fairly well aligned devices. This was supposed to allow the devices to charge in any position on the mat. I'm an electronics engineer and have experience with wifi charging/power transfer/RFID, and I'm not really sure how Apple thought they'd achieve arbitrary positioning whilst keeping both a reasonable efficiency and compatibility (on the device side) with Qi. It is certainly possible to have several devices charging within a single magnetic field, but it's much more difficult to optimise efficiency in that scenario, to limit heat dissipation and to output enough power in that coil both to comply with regulatory agencies and for a reasonable charging speed.
Do you suppose then that they were having trouble getting RFI under acceptable levels?
I wouldn't be surprised, if they were going the single coil route. Which IMO is the only option really for truly arbitrary positioning with multiple devices on the mat. AFAIK Qi does support multi-coil systems that will allow charging one device at a time, but not multiple devices. RF emissions on the unlicensed bands Qi uses (somewhere between 80 and 300KHz) are in the US around 1w, and 0.5w in the UK. Keeping under that level without the close coupling usually employed by a single or multi-coil Qi system would be very difficult.
I think the frequent leaks around regulatory filings also lend credence RF being an issue, as they often file with the FCC after announcement of something new to prevent leaks. They could have had it working well in the lab but when submitted for FCC approval it was rejected, so they had to pretty much go back to the drawing board.
Apple wireless charging mat would have level set and standard to compare for USB-C connector with 5W.7.W,10W for charging multiple devices same time. Apple canceled because of quality and also pricing.But, this is no elephant product that Apple killed so who cares. Plenty wireless chargers on market.
Disappointed is an understatement. I've been waiting for it since they gave us a sneak peak. Let's be honest, its a massive egg on Tim Apples face right now, he basically promised and failed to deliver - someone in the engineering department should be getting a big telling off for saying that it's not far off final production.
GOOD NEWS:
I ordered a SliceCharge Pro yesterday - initially for use as a travel charger or use in other rooms while I waited for the AirPower so I advise you all take a look at it before you cancel your wireless AirPods case. The link is below, thank me later!
Is this the first time Apple have cancelled a pre-announced product before it launched? Only thing even remotely similar I can remember is the 3Ghz G5, which wasn't an announcement so much as a vague promise.
I wonder if they'll go back to the old favourite of only announcing things that are ready to ship the same day.
There was a period in the 90s where multiple announcements regarding then Mac OS just fizzled out and never was released in any useable from, if at all. This was also a period of customer frustration.
SJ firmed it up when he returned to Apple and you will be hard pressed to find any announcements not shipping during his two periods of leadership.
"SJ firmed it up when he returned to Apple and you will be hard pressed to find any announcements not shipping during his two periods of leadership."
The 3GHZ PowerMac G5. Mac OSX Leopard. While it was released, it was pushed back 5 months from announcement in favor of the release of the iPhone. Facetime Open Standard. Annouced at the 2010 WWDC.
The 3GHz powermac was an external problem. delayed software isn’t the same as abandoning something the reasons there for the FaceTime issue are also external, Apple has patent issues.
The funny thing here wasnt that Apple abandoned something that didn’t work internally but that they announced something that wasn’t ever going to be ready. They probably have plenty of products that will never see the light of day but they don’t announce em.
Doesn't matter. Steve Jobs announced on stage at WWDC that there would be a 3GHZ Power Mac G5 and it never surfaced. Then he went on stage later and apologized and announced the switch to Intel.
Tim Cook REALLY needs to go. If you can’t deliver, don’t suggest that you can. Apple is beginning to be known for all the wrong things now. No vision, ok but not innovative products, over-promising and under-delivering, and nothing to suggest that this is likely to change. But more importantly, the company has simply lost operational excellence. That was its DNA. This is a management problem because I doubt that all the smart and creative people have left the building.
It seems like everyone who complains about Apple’s quality going downhill has very selective memory. Nobody remembers this garbage mouse whose ball would inevitably quit working and need to be cleaned within the first couple of weeks, eventually getting to the point where even cleaning it wouldn’t fix it?
A cheap mouse isn’t anything compared to a failed key on a laptop keyboard that costs $700 to fix/replace.
"Yet, that graphic was not present on the shipping AirPods"
I've seen a few unboxings of the new AirPods and the AirPower graphic is definitely there. It also shows a copyright year of 2018, so they clearly meant to ship it at some point, but ran into the production issues once they started mass producing them.
Glad they're up front about it. Apple will survive just fine. This is only an indicator that their QC is actually doing its job, unlike what the haters keep saying.
The fact that the Airpower picture was on the 2018-dated Airpods 2 packaging proves that Airpods 2 were delayed. Products are slowly dripping out of Tim’s empty pipeline...
Tim Cook REALLY needs to go. If you can’t deliver, don’t suggest that you can. Apple is beginning to be known for all the wrong things now. No vision, ok but not innovative products, over-promising and under-delivering, and nothing to suggest that this is likely to change. But more importantly, the company has simply lost operational excellence. That was its DNA. This is a management problem because I doubt that all the smart and creative people have left the building.
And while you're trashing Tim Cook name one company that has it all together with zero blunders?
Tim Cook REALLY needs to go. If you can’t deliver, don’t suggest that you can. Apple is beginning to be known for all the wrong things now. No vision, ok but not innovative products, over-promising and under-delivering, and nothing to suggest that this is likely to change. But more importantly, the company has simply lost operational excellence. That was its DNA. This is a management problem because I doubt that all the smart and creative people have left the building.
I agree to be honest. 6 years ago I wouldn't hear a bad word be said about Apple but slowly but surely things have gone downhill and I, myself, am getting tired of lack of vision and ambition. Apple used to lead and now they are getting very bad press for basically becoming a cash cow with no forward thinking. It's just really irritating considering the time and money I've placed in Apple.
Yes, it is a ridiculous world we live in when real-life engineering problems make my entitlement to consumer goods secondary. Don't they know who I am??
Dunno, I've launched real-world products before and have experienced the trials & tribulations, and the disappointment when the mass produced product doesn't match how we envisioned it when things are perfect inside our head alone. Real life is funny like that...but what can you do? So perhaps I have a little more engineering empathy and a little less entitlement about these sorts of things compared to what im sure we'll be reading. Agreed that it's disappointing tho, for sure.
There's no way you can put a positive spin on this. Apple f***d up. Big time.
Tim Cook REALLY needs to go. If you can’t deliver, don’t suggest that you can. Apple is beginning to be known for all the wrong things now. No vision, ok but not innovative products, over-promising and under-delivering, and nothing to suggest that this is likely to change. But more importantly, the company has simply lost operational excellence. That was its DNA. This is a management problem because I doubt that all the smart and creative people have left the building.
Total nonsense. Cook is not an engineer; if his staff tell him a new product is not up to snuff, then the right decision is to cancel it. That's leadership. Passing the buck with a crummy experience is poor leadership.
Cook remains one of the greatest modern CEOs of all time. Revenue, profit, and consumer satisfaction ratings confirm it. This misstep doesn't change that. Firing Cook is simply an idiotic notion.
Kind of troubling. It can't be the engineering, since there are a billion Tom/Dick/Harry Qi chargers out there... Can't be manufacturing, since Apple makes far more complex things.
"Can't meet our high standards"? So what was it, really?
The current Qi charging mats require fairly well aligned devices. This was supposed to allow the devices to charge in any position on the mat. I'm an electronics engineer and have experience with wifi charging/power transfer/RFID, and I'm not really sure how Apple thought they'd achieve arbitrary positioning whilst keeping both a reasonable efficiency and compatibility (on the device side) with Qi. It is certainly possible to have several devices charging within a single magnetic field, but it's much more difficult to optimise efficiency in that scenario, to limit heat dissipation and to output enough power in that coil both to comply with regulatory agencies and for a reasonable charging speed.
Do you suppose then that they were having trouble getting RFI under acceptable levels?
I wouldn't be surprised, if they were going the single coil route. Which IMO is the only option really for truly arbitrary positioning with multiple devices on the mat. AFAIK Qi does support multi-coil systems that will allow charging one device at a time, but not multiple devices. RF emissions on the unlicensed bands Qi uses (somewhere between 80 and 300KHz) are in the US around 1w, and 0.5w in the UK. Keeping under that level without the close coupling usually employed by a single or multi-coil Qi system would be very difficult.
I think the frequent leaks around regulatory filings also lend credence RF being an issue, as they could have had it working well in the lab but when submitted for FCC approval (which they often do after announcement of something new to prevent leaks) it was rejected, so they had to pretty much go back to the drawing board.
Sometimes when you swing for the fence, you strike out. I don’t see it as dire a situation as some other posters who seem to suddenly be experts in electronics and engineering, when just the other day they were experts in aerodynamics. That said, I also didn’t order the new wireless AirPods case in anticipation of a thin, white, charging pad. People seem more upset than when Apple cancelled the XServe.
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I think the frequent leaks around regulatory filings also lend credence RF being an issue, as they often file with the FCC after announcement of something new to prevent leaks. They could have had it working well in the lab but when submitted for FCC approval it was rejected, so they had to pretty much go back to the drawing board.
Apple is beginning to be known for all the wrong things now. No vision, ok but not innovative products, over-promising and under-delivering, and nothing to suggest that this is likely to change. But more importantly, the company has simply lost operational excellence. That was its DNA. This is a management problem because I doubt that all the smart and creative people have left the building.
The fact that the Airpower picture was on the 2018-dated Airpods 2 packaging proves that Airpods 2 were delayed.
Products are slowly dripping out of Tim’s empty pipeline...
Total nonsense. Cook is not an engineer; if his staff tell him a new product is not up to snuff, then the right decision is to cancel it. That's leadership. Passing the buck with a crummy experience is poor leadership.
Cook remains one of the greatest modern CEOs of all time. Revenue, profit, and consumer satisfaction ratings confirm it. This misstep doesn't change that. Firing Cook is simply an idiotic notion.