Dan Riccio, Apple’s senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering, in a statement to TechCrunch:
After much effort, we’ve concluded AirPower will not achieve our high standards and we have cancelled the project. We apologize 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
In all my years following Apple, I think this is the only product that I’ve seen them outright cancel before it sees the light of day. And it kind of stinks. I’ve been holding off buying any wireless chargers for my iPhone and even spent the extra $40 on the AirPods with wireless charging case last week. All because I was expecting Apple to eventually ship AirPower. But apparently that day will never come.
It seems a bit odd that Apple spent all this time on AirPower — first announcing it in Fall 2017 — and have nothing to show for it. I had even started to think that Apple might have made some major changes to the product’s design, scaling back their overly ambitious initial idea. Maybe AirPower would only be capable of charging two devices at a time or they’d drop support for existing Apple Watches — announcing a Qi-compatible Watch this Fall. Or maybe it would be even more drastic than that and AirPower would only charge a single device at a time.
If wireless charging truly is the future, you’d think Apple would want to make their own wireless chargers to sell alongside the iPhone. But I guess, like wireless routers, Apple is willing to give that market away to others. At least for now.
This cancelation has encouraged me to move on, though. I’ve finally ordered a wireless charger for my bedside table that I plan to use with my iPhone and AirPods. If you’re curious, I’ve ordered the Nomad Base Station Hub Edition. It’s not the fancier one with the built-in Apple Watch charger, but I don’t think that one will fit very well on my bedside table because of the placement of the Watch charger. Not to mention that version is backordered until nearly May.
