So, why did Apple scrap plans for the AirPower?
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”At the unveiling of the iPhone 7 in September 2016, Apple design chief Jonathan Ive declared it the beginning of a ‘wireless future — a future where all of your devices intuitively connect,’” Tim Bradshaw writes for Financial Times. “However, there has been turbulence on the path to Sir Jonathan’s untethered future. Last month’s cancellation of Apple’s AirPower wireless charging mat was a painful moment for a company that prides itself on creating technology that ‘just works.’”
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“AirPower was unveiled in September 2017, alongside the tenth-anniversary iPhone X, as part of one of Apple’s biggest product launch events for years,” Bradshaw writes. “But while the latest iPhones can typically be ordered within days of the new upgrades being unveiled on stage, AirPower’s release was slated vaguely for sometime in 2018. By the end of last year, Apple had gone ominously quiet on AirPower. Most mentions of the product disappeared from its website.”
“Then last month, AirPower suddenly made a reappearance — on the packaging for the new AirPods. The second generation of the popular headphones now sported a case that could be charged wirelessly. An illustration on the AirPods box clearly showed them sitting on the clean oval outline of AirPower,” Bradshaw writes. “But those hopes were soon dashed. Apple announced on a Friday afternoon that AirPower had been cancelled, after all.”
Designs in patent filings from Apple point to more than a dozen overlapping coils inside a single AirPower mat, which could alleviate the need for such precise placement. But such a design could also create multiple ‘harmonic frequencies’ which could cause electromagnetic interference with devices such as pacemakers, according to iFixit,” Bradshaw writes. “Another problem may have been with overheating — not just of the iPhone, AirPods or Watch, whose batteries can be put under strain by excessive heat, but also of nearby metal items such as coins or keys.”
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