16 ms·

What Finally Killed AirPower

270 points by wp381640 8y ago

clay_the_ripper 8y ago
What a shame, this would be the actual experience of wireless charging that I had envisioned it was. The reality of wireless charging is quite different: fiddly and possible to have your phone be dead in the morning. I wish someone could figure out how to make a true wireless charging mat like this. As it stands, I wouldn’t buy a wireless charger for my wife for example. She’ll just plonk it on there and then ask me why her phone is dead in the morning. Who cares about convenience when there is a non-zero chance of waking up to a dead phone? I hope someone figures out how to make “true” wireless charging that just works so that there’s no more fiddling with positioning. I think that’s why there is so much hate on AirPower, people say “who cares there are plenty on the market”. Yeah true, but not any that my wife would want to use. And I’m betting there are a lot of people like that out there.
- david-s 8y ago
  I've had really good luck with the tilted stand ones. If my phone is propped up on it, it's charging. I have had much worse luck with the lay-down pad ones.
  - jordanthoms 8y ago
    Yeah I've had problems with previous chargers but my Pixel Stand works great every time. The design makes it very easy to get it in the right spot and keeps it there.
  - stock_toaster 8y ago
    Same. I have an anker stand and it works great.
- jachee 8y ago
  Both Qi chargers that I have make it very clear if charging is happening. The "just plonk it down" problem is human, not technical. I'm sure you're most likely underestimating your wife's ability to learn what is, in reality, a quite simple task.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - ReverseCold 8y ago
    If a human can mess it up, they will mess it up. (Modification of Murphy's Law.)
    - kitotik 8y ago
      When compared to plugging into a grounded AC wall socket or even a standard USB port, I find positioning an iphone on a wireless charger far easier.
      - stouset 8y ago
        It’s not about how easy it is to do right. It’s about how easy it is to do it wrong and not notice. And even if you are right, it’s moot if it’s on a nightstand and your cat bumps it in the middle of the night.
  - taneq 8y ago
    I believe you may be conflating ability with willingness. I've seen many people seemingly wilfully avoid learning things of which they're clearly capable.
  - eridius 8y ago
    My problem is it's really easy to get just barely on the edge of the charge zone, and then at some point in the night you bump it ever so slightly and it leaves the zone and stops charging.
    - perfect_wave 8y ago
      I've had my wireless charger for 4 months now and never once experienced this. You put it down and it makes a slight vibration to tell you its charging. Sometimes if I've had a few beers I don't hear the noise and I have to pick it up and drop it down again. This is still way easier than digging out the cable from between my bed and my nightstand and fiddling with it 'till it gets in exactly the right spot. Now I use my phone in bed and don't worry at all until I go to sleep and then it just works.
- paulie_a 8y ago
  You'd have to intentionally position a phone to not work on the Samsung charger. Plus it tilts and looks a lot nicer than the apple version. People hated on the airpower because it is a crowded market with multiple mfgs already making superior ones. Although why would the phone be dead in the morning anyways? Even on low battery it should still be on low battery in the morning.
- PakG1 8y ago
  Hah, I just saw a YouTube ad for I think a Kickstarter that claims to have solved this by redesigning the coils.
pkaye 8y ago
> The FCC rules for wireless charging devices like AirPower are quite strict, and limit exposure to 20 cm (8 in) above the device to 50 mW/cm^2. I'm surprised they waited till the end to do the testing. When I used to work on hardware products at smaller companies, some preliminary tests are done on early designs to make sure we have a comfortable margin. A company like Apple should have dedicated in-house facilities to do this earlier.
- hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
  I'm quite sure they didn't "wait until the end" to do the testing. First, this article is iFixit's speculation. Second, they probably did something similar to what iFixit envisioned: they did test early and knew it didn't pass muster, but thought they could eventually engineer themselves a fix, until they finally just hit a brick wall (aka physics) and found it wasn't an issue they could overcome.
  - TTPrograms 8y ago
    A good engineer hits the "physics limit" brick wall pretty early in the design process... I would think it more likely that they thought they could change FCC regulation via lobbying efforts in time for release.
    - sreenadh 8y ago
      Lobbying > engineering.
    - cybersol 8y ago
      So they ran into a Trump administration wall instead of merely physics!
- drcode 8y ago
  They probably knew they were close to the legal limit and their engineers probably said on a hunch "we can stay beneath the limit and retain adequate power with the right mix of tricks" and then just ended up being wrong on that hunch by a little bit. The laws of physics are very unforgiving.
brian-armstrong 8y ago
So my phone is charged by a cable. It plugs into the wall on one side and then plugs into my phone on the other. This system works great - I plug my phone in when I go to bed and unplug it when I wake up. The cable is long enough to plug into my phone even if I want to use it in bed. It's easy, cheap and failproof. What is the draw of wireless charging? What is it that I'm missing? Did anyone ask for this?
- ThatPlayer 8y ago
  Convenience. I keep one on my desk. Everytime I sit down, I place my phone down on my charger pad, because that's where it goes. The 1 less step of having to hunt for a cable and plug it in makes it second nature to have my phone always charging or fully charged. Similarly in cars that have wireless charging nowadays, there's a tray of some sort to put it in. Rather than charging when I need to, wireless charging makes it convenient enough to be charging all the time. Unless you have a lifestyle where you're out and about, and you don't have chargers everywhere you are, it's a nice addition. Also less stress on the physical port. My Nexus 7 2013 has a broken microUSB port that I can still wirelessly charge.
  - lightedman 8y ago
    "Everytime I sit down, I place my phone down on my charger pad, because that's where it goes." I hope you enjoy destroying your battery prematurely, because constant charging cycles wears it out rapidly. Lithium chemistry hates that kind of treatment.
- kbutler 8y ago
  I have a Nexus 7 2013 whose USB jack no longer works (probably accumulated damage from bumps/drops/general stressors), but wireless charging still works fine. (High-five ThatPlayer who posted at the same time)
  - brian-armstrong 8y ago
    Have you checked the port for pocket lint? Believe it or not, that disables more ports than anything else.
DevKoala 8y ago
This is a click bait title by iFixit. It’s all speculation on their end.
- jhanschoo 8y ago
  It's an educated guess with evidence presented.
  - dodobirdlord 8y ago
    The proposition that Apple wasn't checking EM spectrum compliance until the very end is so ludicrous that it's obviously false.
hartator 8y ago
Can wireless charging be harmful for the health or their concerns are only about interferences?
- darkpuma 8y ago
  It's perfectly safe. It's just inductive coupling, as found in countless devices with transformers around your home.
- dodobirdlord 8y ago
  No, it's non-ionizing.
KingMachiavelli 8y ago
Strange, the most obvious benifit of having lots of coils while would be to selectively use only the ones directly in the optimal location for charging so the charger - device coil relationship is still 1 to 1, I don't think any electrical engineer would think a M to N setup would be practical. I think it's the combination of slow charging and as the article said; heat production, - and the physical design the charging 'station' requires to account for these problems. A lot of the current 'fast' wireless charging solutions seem to have fans or a design than can dissapate a lot of heat. A flat mat charging multiple devices would need to either have a fan or a hefty heat sink to dissapate all that heat. Apple's very picky about the physical aestetic of their products which throws out a lot of designs that include visable heat sinks and/or grills. Also, if I'm not completely out of the loop, Apple devices tend to excel (relatively) at battery life making wireless charging, likely, an even more niche product for their devices. TLDR, once again Apple's aestetic requirements and the currently, relatively niche market of wireless charging make an Apple manufactured (not just branded like Google might do) a poor product to invest time and capital on and is unlikely to impress share holders.
quotemstr 8y ago
> The FCC rules for wireless charging devices like AirPower are quite strict, and limit exposure to 20 cm (8 in) above the device to 50 mW/cm^2. Who's to say that 50 mW/cm^2 is the right field strength limit? Remember when we couldn't use cell phones on airplanes during takeoff because of the theoretical possibility that something, somewhere might interfere? As it turns out, there was no interference problem, cell phones were perfectly safe to use in that environment, and the precautionary ban just stalled progress without improving anybody's safety. Maybe we're in the same situation here. I'd like to know what specific problem an EM field of the strength AirPower produced would cause in the real world. It's possible that we're weighing "backward compatibility" with existing EM-sensitive devices too heavily relative to technological progress.
- judge2020 8y ago
  You would risk even one pacemaker failing in light of 'technical progress'?
  - quotemstr 8y ago
    Well, yeah --- just like I'd risk one person getting hit by a train in order to achieve the "technological progress" of rail transport. Every new technology comes with risks. If we focus on the risks and ignore the benefits, we can't make progress, and it's progress that ultimately benefits more people than any amount of harm avoidance.
    - LIV2 8y ago
      There are plenty of wireless chargers out there, I don't think it's worth someone dying so you can have another apple toy
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - mikeash 8y ago
    We're already risking that. The regulatory limits aren’t a 100% guarantee of safety, they’re just an effort to make a good tradeoff between safety and utility. There’s no guarantee that all pacemakers will accept interference that falls below the regulatory limit, nor is there a guarantee that every certified device actually complies with the limit. Manufacturing defects or gaps in testing mean you can never be totally sure. If your standard is to not risk even one pacemaker failing due to outside interference, you would need to eliminate all other electronics. (And you’d still have the unlikely but non-zero risk that one pacemaker would emit interference that causes another one to fail.)
trhway 8y ago
meantime i bought in December a pair of phone charging pads at Costco for $35 and still feel like it is the best thing since sliced bread :) Works like a charm for both our phones - wife's iPhone in the case and my S9. If only all these wireless earbuds that we also have to charge had the wireless charging antenna inside - the life would be grand. It is very strange that Apple couldn't pull it off.
pg_bot 8y ago
Could you put a pressure sensor on the pad and only power on the coils directly underneath the object? I assume with software you could selectively turn on/off areas of the mat to manage the heat problems that come with multiple coils being on at once. I could see it being a problem if they were charging all at the same time but you should be able to fake it and call that good enough. All the devices have to charge, but they don't have to all charge at once. I think you could get tunnel vision and forget that. Could someone who is better qualified tell me why that wouldn't work?
- leoh 8y ago
  Right. Or similarly, you could figure out which coil(s) were drawing the most power and perhaps power the others down?
  - radiorental 8y ago
    I suspect they could do this but it turned out they couldn't get the cost of the design down. So, they have a working product, but once they had a better idea of the numbers they killed it, hence the late stage cancelation.
- the_pwner224 8y ago
  There wouldn't be any need for pressure sensors; this already happens. The charged device adds some power to its own coil and the charging station detects that (it's unidirectional communication). For example my charging station lights up about a second after putting my phone down, and can show the battery status with the light. I would assume that when there's nothing on them the coils transmit in a low-power mode, with the protocol allowing the device to ask for more/less power as required (edit: Wikipedia confirms that the device can actually send some pretty precise instructions to the station, with voltage controllable in 50 mV increments [0]). So logically it would seem the heat issue happens when there are three coils active at the same time transmitting at high power - the peak heat output is the issue. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qi_(standard) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qi_(standard)
  - 8y ago
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
EdgarVerona 8y ago
Thinking about that theoretical effect on pacemakers and hearing aids makes me glad that we have safety regulations.
- HenryBemis 8y ago
  >And that can be difficult—that can stop someone’s pacemaker It was that very point that made me think: thank you Apple, you ARE doing some things right! With risks like that, I like that they pulled the plug and they didn't take chances. The battery fiasco on the other hands, I still cannot forgive that.
codesternews 8y ago
Always underpromise. Never overpromise.
- erikpukinskis 8y ago
  Never say never.
jo-wol 8y ago
Oh, their keyboards met "high standards" then?
sundae 8y ago
Does anyone know what happened to Intel's once promised wireless power standard Rezence? It would use magnetic resonance instead of magnetic induction.
sbhn 8y ago
I first discovered air charging many years ago. I was in the office, and outside wad a digger working on the road, and its engine noise was causing the walls to vibrate. I thought, i could put some kind of capicitor on the wall positioned to exploit the vibration, and charge my phone with that. Brilliant i thought. I got to work immediatly on the invention. And then realised that running a noisy tractor outside everytime i charge my phone, is going to cost me significantly more money than using the supplied usb charging cable and adapter.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  Look at some Rube Goldberg machines. You probably can replace the tractor with a few cows and a hamster. This makes less noise.
esemor 8y ago
I (an Apple fan) do not consider this a failure. I love it when companies take chances and go all in on pushing the envelope. Great products do emerge from these sorts of products.
- nikofeyn 8y ago
  it is a failure by definition. i don’t see the point of letting your love of a company aid in changing the definitions of words and meaning of concepts. and i personally feel this failure is an indication that their product line isn’t as streamlined and consistent as they market it or they’d like it to be. because this is a wireless charger, which has already existed on the market for many years. so why did the airpower fail or why is it so different from the others? well, for one, it was trying to charge three different types of devices, which probably complicated their solution. and their response is typical apple. it seems they actually couldn’t make it work at all or pass standards, not this idea that they have every going good but it doesn’t meet their “high quality standards”.
Razengan 8y ago
Ideal, possibly inevitable, future: Every device, including the cybernetic implants in our bodies, is constantly charged wirelessly at all times (over-the-air, with no contact required with any pads etc.) Made possible by the etherspace we just discovered, with no harmful implications until it attracts eldritch entities from the far realms.
lordnacho 8y ago
If it's hard to make an interlocking loop design, why not startwhere everyone else is, put out the product, and then iterate to where you want to get to?
chx 8y ago
What finally killed AirPower? Obviously the imminent release of the uBeam chargers which are going to obsolete these induction chargers overnight!
jackpeterfletch 8y ago
One major benefit that I've come to appreciate is that it can't break. My S8 usb-c stopped working about a year ago. Wouldn't have considered a wireless charger before then.
- nickflood 8y ago
  Writing this just in case it might help. My S8+ had started to lose contact with the charging cable as well within about a year. I thought it was wearing out because I never had any other phone's connector be clogged up, but it really was pocket lint that jammed into the connector. Once I cleaned it with the needle it was like new and very grippy. Since then I've had another friend make the same assumption and "fix" his port like that, so do give it a try if your port does not "hold" the cable as it should.
PunksATawnyFill 8y ago
Wireless charging is a dumb gimmick anyway. You still have to put the device on a mat, which is connected to power by, yep, A WIRE. So you might as well plop the device in a dock, and get more-efficient charging and no space wasted inside the device for inductors.
bibyte 8y ago
Why did they have to cancel it entirely ? They could have just use a small number of coils just like every other wireless charger.
two2two 8y ago
I would love for this all to be one elaborate April Fool's joke and it becomes available on Monday. On a more technical note, this was a bit surprising to read: "'No one looks at [Electro-Magnetic Interference] until the end.' The FCC rules for wireless charging devices like AirPower are quite strict, and limit exposure at 20 cm (8 in) above the device to 50 mW/cm^2." Depending at which point was "the end" of the AirPower development cycle, Apple either spent many many months attempting to remedy the problem with small enough breakthroughs to keep the marketing parade going, or Apple discovered something severe last minute. The issues discussed in this article, I would think, were well enough known for some time--still making this a perplexing story.
anotheryou 8y ago
Why can't they cycle through coils one by one and see where the biggest drain is? I mean: 1. Cycle through coils until you discover a drain. (From two (or more) overlapping coils which both show drain, pick just the one with the biggest drain.) 2. Assume that's where a device to be charged is (or aligns best to a coil). 3. Give power only to the this best-fitting coil (one per device) 4. Pause charging for a few ms every 500ms to repeat at (1.) As they have full control over the receiving hardware they could also easily hide the small pauses in charging when a "search cycle" happens.
HocusLocus 8y ago
The Inverse Square Law strikes again! Tesla, for all his brilliance, was similarly math-challenged.

270 points by wp381640 8y ago

What a shame, this would be the actual experience of wireless charging that I had envisioned it was. The reality of wireless charging is quite different: fiddly and possible to have your phone be dead in the morning. I wish someone could figure out how to make a true wireless charging mat like this. As it stands, I wouldn’t buy a wireless charger for my wife for example. She’ll just plonk it on there and then ask me why her phone is dead in the morning. Who cares about convenience when there is a non-zero chance of waking up to a dead phone? I hope someone figures out how to make “true” wireless charging that just works so that there’s no more fiddling with positioning. I think that’s why there is so much hate on AirPower, people say “who cares there are plenty on the market”. Yeah true, but not any that my wife would want to use. And I’m betting there are a lot of people like that out there.

david-s 8y ago
I've had really good luck with the tilted stand ones. If my phone is propped up on it, it's charging. I have had much worse luck with the lay-down pad ones.
- jordanthoms 8y ago
  Yeah I've had problems with previous chargers but my Pixel Stand works great every time. The design makes it very easy to get it in the right spot and keeps it there.
- stock_toaster 8y ago
  Same. I have an anker stand and it works great.
jachee 8y ago
Both Qi chargers that I have make it very clear if charging is happening. The "just plonk it down" problem is human, not technical. I'm sure you're most likely underestimating your wife's ability to learn what is, in reality, a quite simple task.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- ReverseCold 8y ago
  If a human can mess it up, they will mess it up. (Modification of Murphy's Law.)
  - kitotik 8y ago
    When compared to plugging into a grounded AC wall socket or even a standard USB port, I find positioning an iphone on a wireless charger far easier.
    - stouset 8y ago
      It’s not about how easy it is to do right. It’s about how easy it is to do it wrong and not notice. And even if you are right, it’s moot if it’s on a nightstand and your cat bumps it in the middle of the night.
- taneq 8y ago
  I believe you may be conflating ability with willingness. I've seen many people seemingly wilfully avoid learning things of which they're clearly capable.
- eridius 8y ago
  My problem is it's really easy to get just barely on the edge of the charge zone, and then at some point in the night you bump it ever so slightly and it leaves the zone and stops charging.
  - perfect_wave 8y ago
    I've had my wireless charger for 4 months now and never once experienced this. You put it down and it makes a slight vibration to tell you its charging. Sometimes if I've had a few beers I don't hear the noise and I have to pick it up and drop it down again. This is still way easier than digging out the cable from between my bed and my nightstand and fiddling with it 'till it gets in exactly the right spot. Now I use my phone in bed and don't worry at all until I go to sleep and then it just works.
paulie_a 8y ago
You'd have to intentionally position a phone to not work on the Samsung charger. Plus it tilts and looks a lot nicer than the apple version. People hated on the airpower because it is a crowded market with multiple mfgs already making superior ones. Although why would the phone be dead in the morning anyways? Even on low battery it should still be on low battery in the morning.
PakG1 8y ago
Hah, I just saw a YouTube ad for I think a Kickstarter that claims to have solved this by redesigning the coils.

pkaye 8y ago

> The FCC rules for wireless charging devices like AirPower are quite strict, and limit exposure to 20 cm (8 in) above the device to 50 mW/cm^2. I'm surprised they waited till the end to do the testing. When I used to work on hardware products at smaller companies, some preliminary tests are done on early designs to make sure we have a comfortable margin. A company like Apple should have dedicated in-house facilities to do this earlier.

hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
I'm quite sure they didn't "wait until the end" to do the testing. First, this article is iFixit's speculation. Second, they probably did something similar to what iFixit envisioned: they did test early and knew it didn't pass muster, but thought they could eventually engineer themselves a fix, until they finally just hit a brick wall (aka physics) and found it wasn't an issue they could overcome.
- TTPrograms 8y ago
  A good engineer hits the "physics limit" brick wall pretty early in the design process... I would think it more likely that they thought they could change FCC regulation via lobbying efforts in time for release.
  - sreenadh 8y ago
    Lobbying > engineering.
  - cybersol 8y ago
    So they ran into a Trump administration wall instead of merely physics!
drcode 8y ago
They probably knew they were close to the legal limit and their engineers probably said on a hunch "we can stay beneath the limit and retain adequate power with the right mix of tricks" and then just ended up being wrong on that hunch by a little bit. The laws of physics are very unforgiving.

brian-armstrong 8y ago

So my phone is charged by a cable. It plugs into the wall on one side and then plugs into my phone on the other. This system works great - I plug my phone in when I go to bed and unplug it when I wake up. The cable is long enough to plug into my phone even if I want to use it in bed. It's easy, cheap and failproof. What is the draw of wireless charging? What is it that I'm missing? Did anyone ask for this?

ThatPlayer 8y ago
Convenience. I keep one on my desk. Everytime I sit down, I place my phone down on my charger pad, because that's where it goes. The 1 less step of having to hunt for a cable and plug it in makes it second nature to have my phone always charging or fully charged. Similarly in cars that have wireless charging nowadays, there's a tray of some sort to put it in. Rather than charging when I need to, wireless charging makes it convenient enough to be charging all the time. Unless you have a lifestyle where you're out and about, and you don't have chargers everywhere you are, it's a nice addition. Also less stress on the physical port. My Nexus 7 2013 has a broken microUSB port that I can still wirelessly charge.
- lightedman 8y ago
  "Everytime I sit down, I place my phone down on my charger pad, because that's where it goes." I hope you enjoy destroying your battery prematurely, because constant charging cycles wears it out rapidly. Lithium chemistry hates that kind of treatment.
kbutler 8y ago
I have a Nexus 7 2013 whose USB jack no longer works (probably accumulated damage from bumps/drops/general stressors), but wireless charging still works fine. (High-five ThatPlayer who posted at the same time)
- brian-armstrong 8y ago
  Have you checked the port for pocket lint? Believe it or not, that disables more ports than anything else.

DevKoala 8y ago

This is a click bait title by iFixit. It’s all speculation on their end.

jhanschoo 8y ago
It's an educated guess with evidence presented.
- dodobirdlord 8y ago
  The proposition that Apple wasn't checking EM spectrum compliance until the very end is so ludicrous that it's obviously false.

hartator 8y ago

Can wireless charging be harmful for the health or their concerns are only about interferences?

darkpuma 8y ago
It's perfectly safe. It's just inductive coupling, as found in countless devices with transformers around your home.
dodobirdlord 8y ago
No, it's non-ionizing.

KingMachiavelli 8y ago

Strange, the most obvious benifit of having lots of coils while would be to selectively use only the ones directly in the optimal location for charging so the charger - device coil relationship is still 1 to 1, I don't think any electrical engineer would think a M to N setup would be practical. I think it's the combination of slow charging and as the article said; heat production, - and the physical design the charging 'station' requires to account for these problems. A lot of the current 'fast' wireless charging solutions seem to have fans or a design than can dissapate a lot of heat. A flat mat charging multiple devices would need to either have a fan or a hefty heat sink to dissapate all that heat. Apple's very picky about the physical aestetic of their products which throws out a lot of designs that include visable heat sinks and/or grills. Also, if I'm not completely out of the loop, Apple devices tend to excel (relatively) at battery life making wireless charging, likely, an even more niche product for their devices. TLDR, once again Apple's aestetic requirements and the currently, relatively niche market of wireless charging make an Apple manufactured (not just branded like Google might do) a poor product to invest time and capital on and is unlikely to impress share holders.

quotemstr 8y ago

> The FCC rules for wireless charging devices like AirPower are quite strict, and limit exposure to 20 cm (8 in) above the device to 50 mW/cm^2. Who's to say that 50 mW/cm^2 is the right field strength limit? Remember when we couldn't use cell phones on airplanes during takeoff because of the theoretical possibility that something, somewhere might interfere? As it turns out, there was no interference problem, cell phones were perfectly safe to use in that environment, and the precautionary ban just stalled progress without improving anybody's safety. Maybe we're in the same situation here. I'd like to know what specific problem an EM field of the strength AirPower produced would cause in the real world. It's possible that we're weighing "backward compatibility" with existing EM-sensitive devices too heavily relative to technological progress.

judge2020 8y ago
You would risk even one pacemaker failing in light of 'technical progress'?
- quotemstr 8y ago
  Well, yeah --- just like I'd risk one person getting hit by a train in order to achieve the "technological progress" of rail transport. Every new technology comes with risks. If we focus on the risks and ignore the benefits, we can't make progress, and it's progress that ultimately benefits more people than any amount of harm avoidance.
  - LIV2 8y ago
    There are plenty of wireless chargers out there, I don't think it's worth someone dying so you can have another apple toy
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- mikeash 8y ago
  We're already risking that. The regulatory limits aren’t a 100% guarantee of safety, they’re just an effort to make a good tradeoff between safety and utility. There’s no guarantee that all pacemakers will accept interference that falls below the regulatory limit, nor is there a guarantee that every certified device actually complies with the limit. Manufacturing defects or gaps in testing mean you can never be totally sure. If your standard is to not risk even one pacemaker failing due to outside interference, you would need to eliminate all other electronics. (And you’d still have the unlikely but non-zero risk that one pacemaker would emit interference that causes another one to fail.)

trhway 8y ago

meantime i bought in December a pair of phone charging pads at Costco for $35 and still feel like it is the best thing since sliced bread :) Works like a charm for both our phones - wife's iPhone in the case and my S9. If only all these wireless earbuds that we also have to charge had the wireless charging antenna inside - the life would be grand. It is very strange that Apple couldn't pull it off.

pg_bot 8y ago

Could you put a pressure sensor on the pad and only power on the coils directly underneath the object? I assume with software you could selectively turn on/off areas of the mat to manage the heat problems that come with multiple coils being on at once. I could see it being a problem if they were charging all at the same time but you should be able to fake it and call that good enough. All the devices have to charge, but they don't have to all charge at once. I think you could get tunnel vision and forget that. Could someone who is better qualified tell me why that wouldn't work?

leoh 8y ago
Right. Or similarly, you could figure out which coil(s) were drawing the most power and perhaps power the others down?
- radiorental 8y ago
  I suspect they could do this but it turned out they couldn't get the cost of the design down. So, they have a working product, but once they had a better idea of the numbers they killed it, hence the late stage cancelation.
the_pwner224 8y ago
There wouldn't be any need for pressure sensors; this already happens. The charged device adds some power to its own coil and the charging station detects that (it's unidirectional communication). For example my charging station lights up about a second after putting my phone down, and can show the battery status with the light. I would assume that when there's nothing on them the coils transmit in a low-power mode, with the protocol allowing the device to ask for more/less power as required (edit: Wikipedia confirms that the device can actually send some pretty precise instructions to the station, with voltage controllable in 50 mV increments [0]). So logically it would seem the heat issue happens when there are three coils active at the same time transmitting at high power - the peak heat output is the issue. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qi_(standard) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qi_(standard)
- 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

EdgarVerona 8y ago

Thinking about that theoretical effect on pacemakers and hearing aids makes me glad that we have safety regulations.

HenryBemis 8y ago
>And that can be difficult—that can stop someone’s pacemaker It was that very point that made me think: thank you Apple, you ARE doing some things right! With risks like that, I like that they pulled the plug and they didn't take chances. The battery fiasco on the other hands, I still cannot forgive that.

codesternews 8y ago

Always underpromise. Never overpromise.

erikpukinskis 8y ago
Never say never.

jo-wol 8y ago

Oh, their keyboards met "high standards" then?

sundae 8y ago

Does anyone know what happened to Intel's once promised wireless power standard Rezence? It would use magnetic resonance instead of magnetic induction.

sbhn 8y ago

I first discovered air charging many years ago. I was in the office, and outside wad a digger working on the road, and its engine noise was causing the walls to vibrate. I thought, i could put some kind of capicitor on the wall positioned to exploit the vibration, and charge my phone with that. Brilliant i thought. I got to work immediatly on the invention. And then realised that running a noisy tractor outside everytime i charge my phone, is going to cost me significantly more money than using the supplied usb charging cable and adapter.

maxxxxx 8y ago
Look at some Rube Goldberg machines. You probably can replace the tractor with a few cows and a hamster. This makes less noise.

esemor 8y ago

I (an Apple fan) do not consider this a failure. I love it when companies take chances and go all in on pushing the envelope. Great products do emerge from these sorts of products.

nikofeyn 8y ago
it is a failure by definition. i don’t see the point of letting your love of a company aid in changing the definitions of words and meaning of concepts. and i personally feel this failure is an indication that their product line isn’t as streamlined and consistent as they market it or they’d like it to be. because this is a wireless charger, which has already existed on the market for many years. so why did the airpower fail or why is it so different from the others? well, for one, it was trying to charge three different types of devices, which probably complicated their solution. and their response is typical apple. it seems they actually couldn’t make it work at all or pass standards, not this idea that they have every going good but it doesn’t meet their “high quality standards”.

Razengan 8y ago

Ideal, possibly inevitable, future: Every device, including the cybernetic implants in our bodies, is constantly charged wirelessly at all times (over-the-air, with no contact required with any pads etc.) Made possible by the etherspace we just discovered, with no harmful implications until it attracts eldritch entities from the far realms.

lordnacho 8y ago

If it's hard to make an interlocking loop design, why not startwhere everyone else is, put out the product, and then iterate to where you want to get to?

chx 8y ago

What finally killed AirPower? Obviously the imminent release of the uBeam chargers which are going to obsolete these induction chargers overnight!

jackpeterfletch 8y ago

One major benefit that I've come to appreciate is that it can't break. My S8 usb-c stopped working about a year ago. Wouldn't have considered a wireless charger before then.

nickflood 8y ago
Writing this just in case it might help. My S8+ had started to lose contact with the charging cable as well within about a year. I thought it was wearing out because I never had any other phone's connector be clogged up, but it really was pocket lint that jammed into the connector. Once I cleaned it with the needle it was like new and very grippy. Since then I've had another friend make the same assumption and "fix" his port like that, so do give it a try if your port does not "hold" the cable as it should.

PunksATawnyFill 8y ago

Wireless charging is a dumb gimmick anyway. You still have to put the device on a mat, which is connected to power by, yep, A WIRE. So you might as well plop the device in a dock, and get more-efficient charging and no space wasted inside the device for inductors.

bibyte 8y ago

Why did they have to cancel it entirely ? They could have just use a small number of coils just like every other wireless charger.

two2two 8y ago

I would love for this all to be one elaborate April Fool's joke and it becomes available on Monday. On a more technical note, this was a bit surprising to read: "'No one looks at [Electro-Magnetic Interference] until the end.' The FCC rules for wireless charging devices like AirPower are quite strict, and limit exposure at 20 cm (8 in) above the device to 50 mW/cm^2." Depending at which point was "the end" of the AirPower development cycle, Apple either spent many many months attempting to remedy the problem with small enough breakthroughs to keep the marketing parade going, or Apple discovered something severe last minute. The issues discussed in this article, I would think, were well enough known for some time--still making this a perplexing story.

anotheryou 8y ago

Why can't they cycle through coils one by one and see where the biggest drain is? I mean: 1. Cycle through coils until you discover a drain. (From two (or more) overlapping coils which both show drain, pick just the one with the biggest drain.) 2. Assume that's where a device to be charged is (or aligns best to a coil). 3. Give power only to the this best-fitting coil (one per device) 4. Pause charging for a few ms every 500ms to repeat at (1.) As they have full control over the receiving hardware they could also easily hide the small pauses in charging when a "search cycle" happens.

HocusLocus 8y ago

The Inverse Square Law strikes again! Tesla, for all his brilliance, was similarly math-challenged.