Apple’s long-delayed AirPower charging mat “is taking longer to make due to a series of technical hurdles, slowing the company’s wireless strategy and highlighting supply-chain challenges that have hampered product launches in recent years,” Mark Gurman reports for Bloomberg. “Since [it was announced in September 2017], AirPower hasn’t been publicly discussed by Apple. Company engineers have been toiling away to address problems. One challenge is making sure the charger doesn’t overheat. Another is the complexity of the circuitry, according to people familiar with the device’s development.”
“The AirPower charger is also more advanced than the current competition because it includes a custom Apple chip running a stripped down version of the iOS mobile operating system to conduct on-device power management and pairing with devices,” Gurman reports. “Apple didn’t say when in 2018 it would release AirPower, but engineers hoped to launch the charger by June. The aim now is to put it on sale before or in September, according to one of the people.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple really needs to STOP announcing products that are nowhere ready to be shipped. You cannot freeze the market effectively for a year and especially not after you’ve damaged your reputation by promising products and then repeatedly failing to deliver.
Nowadays, after years of unkept promises, product delays, and insufficient launch supplies, when Tim Cook’s Apple says a product is “coming soon,” we’re less likely to get excited and more likely to mutter, “yeah, right.”
Real artists ship. – Steve Jobs
SEE ALSO:
Under ‘operations genius’ Tim Cook, product delays and other problems are no longer unusual for Apple – November 20, 2017
Apple delays HomePod release to early 2018 – November 17, 2017
Apple CEO Tim Cook: The ‘operations genius’ who never has enough products to sell at launch – October 23, 2017
Apple reveals HomePod smart home music speaker – June 5, 2017
Apple is misplaying the hand Steve Jobs left them – November 30, 2016
Apple delays AirPod rollout – October 26, 2016
Apple delays release of watchOS 2 due to bug – September 16, 2015
Apple delays HomeKit launch until autumn – May 14, 2015
Apple delays production of 12.9-inch ‘iPad Pro’ in face of overwhelming iPhone 6/Plus demand – October 9, 2014
Tim Cook’s mea culpa: iMac launch should have been postponed – April 24, 2013
Obviously, Apple’s autumn iMac launch was badly botched – March 19, 2013
Apple is announcing products that are nowhere near ready to ship (and shipping buggier software) because, if they didn’t, it would be even more obvious than it already is that the attention, focus to detail, and innovation most people expect from Apple is and has been nowhere to be found in the last few years.
Like your purposeless teenager who doesn’t want to take out the trash, but promises he will soon, it is better – in the short-term – to promise something to keep mom and dad off your back (with false hope you will get your act together) as long as you can until the day of reckoning finally comes.
Something pro Mac Pro users who need more than what Apple has been delivering have had to live with. A betrayal of paying attention to your markets. A years wait seems like relative chump change next to a 6 year wait for a decent Mac Pro that we have yet to even see to even know if it was worth waiting for, and not simply switching platforms to one that DOES deliver from many sources now. (Just not with OS X onboard.)
Promises, promises indeed. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick…
ahh, f-it, sometime in 2020. Right on time!
Underpromising and overdelivering is very sexy, Tim. Please embrace it.
Pipeline Cook.
You people need to get a life. Last I looked September 2018 is still in 2018.
Sure people can, now that an actual ship date has been announced. My needs are already met with an Anker wireless charging unit.
A nebulous 2019 is the announced shipping date for the new Mac Pro too and it would be accurate if it was shipped on Dec. 31, 2019, however frustrating to long suffering buyers. Appreciate the empathy.
Schiller introduced the Qi charging mat in September 2017 and ads from Apple claimed it would be available in “early 2018”. It is officially summer and nobody I know considers June to be early in the year.
The big problem it was purported to solve is the ability to extract $XXX out of iOS gadget owners wallets so they all could be charged simultaneously when tossed onto one mat. Taking the extra fraction of a second docking/plugging their devices into their existing chargers which come for free with every device is just too hard for some people apparently. But as we know, Apple’s track record with battery management is a work in progress. However much resources Apple is dumping into iOS accessories like this which do not actually solve important problems is an embarrassment which the entire Mac lineup is an embarrassing obsolete mess.
The day Steve Jobs failed to deliver a promise, the 3 ghz power pc laptop, he fired an entire company (IBM) and moved to intel processors.
With Tim Cook, failing to deliver a product is just another Wednesday.
Yet another muffed product launch all courtesy of Pipeline. Apple has lost what has made is special through the past decades. Pipeline has turned Apple into a rather ordinary company. One that doesn’t even follow all that well, much less lead.
It’s never going to get better under the “leadership” of Pipeline. If Apple’s board wants better than what they are getting, then Pipeline has to go.
The year-long AirPower delay makes the months-long AirPods delay seem absolutely zippy in comparison.
“Unlike wireless chargers on the market today, the AirPower is designed to charge three devices simultaneously: an iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods with a still-to-be-released wireless charging case,”
Wireless charging mats are not new. Wonder what the AirPower does over its competition like the one below.
https://bgr.com/2017/12/13/apple-airpower-release-date-never-amazon-alternative/