Tech YouTuber Luke Miani managed to get his hands on three Apple AirPower prototypes, and demonstrate them working – albeit briefly! The 91Tech channel has done the same.
The videos provide a very graphic demonstration of why Apple was forced to very publicly abandon the project …
The AirPower story
First announced in September 2017 for delivery in early 2018, it was more than a year after the promised date that Apple had to finally admit defeat. AirPower wasn’t just delayed, it wasn’t pining for Cupertino, it was officially non-existent.
We’re unlikely to ever know the full story behind why Apple promised a product that it was, in the end, unable to deliver. What we can safely conclude is that it worked in a lab setting, at which point Apple decided it was ok to announce it, but was later overcome by practical problems in real-life use.
A number of reports suggested that overheating was the problem, but that’s something you would have thought would be discovered early in testing.
Another theory is that having so many coils meant the company was unable to keep RF exposure below FCC limits. That strikes me as more plausible, as it’s something that likely wouldn’t have come to light until further down the development road.
But whatever the truth, it left Apple in the hugely embarrassing position of having announced a product, with considerable fanfare; to have promoted it on its website; to have included references to it in other products; to have delayed its second-gen AirPods as a result… and then ultimately have to admit that it had officially given up.
AirPower prototypes
This isn’t the first time someone has got their hands on an AirPower prototype – we first saw one two years ago.
“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,” said Dan Riccio, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Engineering.
DongleBook Pro got its hands on three prototypes, which it lent to Miani. One was a very early version, dating back to a year before Apple announced the product. That one had 16 coils – and associated electronics for each. A second is a later one, with 22 coils.
The video uploaded to bilibili showing a detailed teardown of the alleged AirPower’s multiple layers.
In the video, we get a look at what appear to be 14 wireless charging coils in total, tightly packed and layered across the surface area of the device that was aiming to charge Apple devices anywhere you placed them on the mat.
Another interesting aspect of the design is the keyboard-esque metal frame segmenting the dense amount of electronics packed into the wireless charger.
The site put a teaser video online:
This was followed by the full video on Miani’s site, which you can watch below. Sadly, the prototypes work only for a second before powering off and having to be rebooted.
In what appears to be coordinated uploads, 91Tech has also posted a similar video – but they don’t manage to get it working.
