Apple has completely cancelled its much-hyped AirPower project. The wireless charging mat would have charged an iPhone, a pair of AirPods and an Apple Watch simultaneously, but now it will charge nothing. Today, Apple made the embarrassing decision to admit defeat.
AirPower was announced along with Apple’s first generation of smartphones that were built with the ability to be charged wirelessly. Since then, there’s been little comment on the accessory from Apple and it’s failed to materialise. Now we know that the Cupertino giant just couldn’t figure out how to make the charger work.
“After much effort, we’ve concluded AirPower will not achieve our high standards and we have canceled the project. We apologise 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 first reported to TechCrunch. Gizmodo confirmed the report and statement with Apple.
The decision happened so recently and rapidly that the new AirPods 2 case even has AirPower illustrated on it.
That’s it as far as the official explanation goes, a quick and vague declaration on a Saturday morning that one of the company’s highest profile and most anticipated products is done before it gets out the door, just as rumours have laid out.
Those rumours and reports over the last year provide some context around Apple’s decisions: Bad heat management, buggy battery levels, unavoidable interference and the inability to live up to the design mock-ups that Apple has been showing off since 2017 have all been reported as reasons contributing to the product’s demise.
Apple’s website even scrubbed almost all mentions of AirPower recently despite the product being on AirPower 2 boxes, a weird case of — and I apologise in advance — Apple’s wires getting badly crossed.