Apple's AirPower Wireless Charger Is Facing Overheating Issues, Says Reports (cnbc.com) 120
Two separate reports are saying Apple's yet-to-be-released AirPower charger is facing overheating issues. The product, designed to simultaneously charge an iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods, was announced more than a year ago at Apple's 2017 iPhone event. Apple has yet to provide any additional information on AirPower, even during its iPhone event last week. The company even appears to have wiped all mention of it from its website. CNBC reports: Tech writer Sonny Dickson, who has a track record of accurately reporting on Apple, said over the weekend that Apple has struggled with heat management, which affects accuracy and charging speed. Dickson thinks it's unlikely Apple will make its end-of-year release deadline. Daring Fireball's John Gruber said something similar. Gruber said the charging pad, which uses a multi-coil design, is "getting too hot -- way too hot."
"There are engineers who looked at AirPower's design and said it could never work, thermally. ... I think they've either had to go completely back to the drawing board and start over with an entirely different design, or they've decided to give up and they just don't want to say so," Gruber said. Apple gave a broad timeline for AirPower's launch, saying it would go on sale in 2018. So it is still possible it can work out any issues before the end of the year.
"There are engineers who looked at AirPower's design and said it could never work, thermally. ... I think they've either had to go completely back to the drawing board and start over with an entirely different design, or they've decided to give up and they just don't want to say so," Gruber said. Apple gave a broad timeline for AirPower's launch, saying it would go on sale in 2018. So it is still possible it can work out any issues before the end of the year.
This highlights a critical issue within Apple. (Score:5, Insightful)
They have become so utterly fucking obsessed with building unservicable "thin" devices, that they literally cannot make a simple charging mat work properly- something numerous companies have already done.
Furthermore, their entire engineering department has to know exactly why this thing is failing- I'm willing to bet a few people said "uh, this isn't going to work" while they were building it, but for some reason they were forced to continue regardless. That means upper management is absolutely dead set on having the device fit inside some arbitrary physical volume, but the laws of physics aren't playing game so the device simply will not work.
Rather than making the device a bit bigger or even including a small cooling fan- they'd rather scrap it all together, because it doesn't fit into their current design philosophy of form over function.
Re:This highlights a critical issue within Apple. (Score:5, Insightful)
There is that, but I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of the smart engineers (both hardware and software) are slowly leaving apple to move on to more interesting things. There have been more fuckups than you'd expect from them in the last few years especially on the software side, and the level of innovation has been pretty much zero since jobs died.
Re:This highlights a critical issue within Apple. (Score:5, Insightful)
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I dunno but Apple has always had this issue, one only need to look at the ways their cables fray or their poor antennas in phones for years to realize at Apple design is the priority over function.
Actually, their engineers are good enough to do BOTH.
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So what's up with the shouting? Makes it sound like a lie.
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So what's up with the shouting? Makes it sound like a lie.
I use capitalization for EMPHASIS, not SHOUTING. I'm just too lazy to type in ridiculous HTML style tags, just because Slashdot is too lazy to implement a Rich Text Editor, like nearly EVERY other "Forum" site on the fucking PLANET.
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There is that, but I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of the smart engineers (both hardware and software) are slowly leaving apple to move on to more interesting things. There have been more fuckups than you'd expect from them in the last few years especially on the software side, and the level of innovation has been pretty much zero since jobs died.
Have you even BOTHERED to look at the innovation that IS there?
1. Most advanced facial recognition in a mobile device.
2. Smartwatch with built-in FDA-APPROVED ECG.
3. 64 bit Homegrown SoCs (with Homegrown GPUs) that are hands-down best-in-class.
4. Augmented Reality that isn't a joke.
5. Laptops with the most amount of I/O expandability on the Planet.
6. A mobile OS that specifically (and markedly!) IMPROVES the performance of OLDER Devices. ...and that's just off the top of my head. I'm sure I could spend a fe
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Have you even BOTHERED to look at the innovation that IS there?
1. Most advanced facial recognition in a mobile device.
2. Smartwatch with built-in FDA-APPROVED ECG.
I'll give you those two, though neither is something that I care about, even slightly. For me, the fingerprint readers were much easier to use (i.e. that's a step backwards, not forwards), and smartwatches are an expensive toy with minimal actual utility.
3. 64 bit Homegrown SoCs (with Homegrown GPUs) that are hands-down best-in-class.
4. Augmented Reality that isn't a joke.
Incremental improvements to the state of the art are not innovation.
5. Laptops with the most amount of I/O expandability on the Planet.
Are we talking about the laptops that have only USB-C and dropped all other I/O, including things that a lot of pros use, like the SD card slots, forcing people to put the reliability of t
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... and smartwatches are an expensive toy with minimal actual utility.
Tell that to Jason Perlow [zdnet.com]. That "minimal actual utility" device probably saved his life. My wife's heart problems are easy to monitor with the Apple Watch, too. It's not a full-blown ECG, but she can get a sense of the prolonged QT interval she has.
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Sure. For a certain subset of users, it is a useful feature. For the majority of users, it is basically an "oh, that's neat" thing. Those are the sorts of features that Apple usually drops after about three or four years, requiring you to buy a dongle if you want to keep it. :-)
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Have you even BOTHERED to look at the innovation that IS there?
1. Most advanced facial recognition in a mobile device.
2. Smartwatch with built-in FDA-APPROVED ECG.
I'll give you those two, though neither is something that I care about, even slightly. For me, the fingerprint readers were much easier to use (i.e. that's a step backwards, not forwards), and smartwatches are an expensive toy with minimal actual utility.
3. 64 bit Homegrown SoCs (with Homegrown GPUs) that are hands-down best-in-class.
4. Augmented Reality that isn't a joke.
Incremental improvements to the state of the art are not innovation.
5. Laptops with the most amount of I/O expandability on the Planet.
Are we talking about the laptops that have only USB-C and dropped all other I/O, including things that a lot of pros use, like the SD card slots, forcing people to put the reliability of their machines at risk by permanently carrying them around with a dock attached? I would argue that the only reason Apple has more "expandability" is because they've dropped nearly all actual I/O, resulting in a laptop that requires piles of clumsy dongles and crap just to be able to use it in ways that the old machines could do out of the box. If that's innovation, then I'd like a much *less* "innovative" Apple, thank you very much. If they innovate much more like that, I'm going to need a second laptop bag just to carry all the dongles. (I often have to use a setup involving a Thunderbolt-2-to-Thunderbolt adapter chained to a Thunderbolt-to-FireWire-800 adapter chained to a FireWire-800-to-FireWire-400 adapter. This is *not* pleasant.)
6. A mobile OS that specifically (and markedly!) IMPROVES the performance of OLDER Devices.
Again, minor incremental improvements, not innovation.
I honestly thought you were smart-enough to not fall for the "It doesn't matter to me; so it shouldn't matter to anyone." argument. But apparently not. Case in point: When the AppleWatch 4 came out a few days ago, even the generally Apple-Hating Slashdot crowd was complimenting Apple for the INNOVATION.
Same thing with FaceID: You like TouchID better; so everyone else should, too...
I have an iPhone 6, and although I haven't installed iOS 12 yet, I can tell you that the speed-improvements in iOS 11.4.1 are qu
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I honestly thought you were smart-enough to not fall for the "It doesn't matter to me; so it shouldn't matter to anyone." argument. But apparently not. Case in point: When the AppleWatch 4 came out a few days ago, even the generally Apple-Hating Slashdot crowd was complimenting Apple for the INNOVATION.
Same thing with FaceID: You like TouchID better; so everyone else should, too...
You'll note that I acknowledged that both of those are innovative. That doesn't change the fact that they aren't particularly interesting. In the case of Face ID, they had something that worked well, and replaced it with something that doesn't work nearly as well for a significant percentage of users, just so that they could eliminate that pesky physical button that messed with their notion of form over function. Forbes panned the iPhone X, using words like "suck" precisely because Face ID is so much wor
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I honestly thought you were smart-enough to not fall for the "It doesn't matter to me; so it shouldn't matter to anyone." argument. But apparently not. Case in point: When the AppleWatch 4 came out a few days ago, even the generally Apple-Hating Slashdot crowd was complimenting Apple for the INNOVATION.
Same thing with FaceID: You like TouchID better; so everyone else should, too...
You'll note that I acknowledged that both of those are innovative.
Barely! Some would even dare to call it "Damning with Faint Praise..."
That doesn't change the fact that they aren't particularly interesting. In the case of Face ID, they had something that worked well, and replaced it with something that doesn't work nearly as well for a significant percentage of users, just so that they could eliminate that pesky physical button that messed with their notion of form over function. Forbes panned the iPhone X, using words like "suck" precisely because Face ID is so much worse than what we had previously. I can guarantee that if you took a hundred random people who had never used either one and asked them to try both approaches, the overwhelming majority would prefer Touch ID, because you can unlock the device before you have to look at it.
In your NOT So Humble Opinion...
With Face ID, you have to actively pay attention to the device for several seconds *before* it is usable, which makes it an exceptionally bad user experience by comparison.
It may be SLIGHTLY slower (a few tenths of a second); but it is NO way "Several Seconds".
So although the technology might be innovative, it should have been as a way to augment Touch ID (e.g. for added security during payments), not replace it entirely.
But Everyone was wanting a "no chin" design, and Apple (WISELY!) nixed that terrible idea of putting the Finger sensor on the BACK. And at the time, no one had "Read through the screen" working yet (and still don't, really). So, what's a mother to do ?!?
As implemented, it was a mistake, and pretty much the only people who can't see that are Apple engineers and fanbois.
And the millions upon millions of users that seem to like it better
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I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of the smart engineers (both hardware and software) are slowly leaving apple to move on to more interesting things.
And to work in a less toxic environment. [fortune.com]
Re:This highlights a critical issue within Apple. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Really? Literally all my life apple have seemed focused on form over function; I remember nearly 20 years ago how Mac-zealots would claim that the single button mouse that apple used to ship with all devices was far better than 2+ button mice because having more than 2 buttons encouraged messy and inefficient design; then the same people acting like the release of the "mighty" mouse was the second coming of Jesus.
Back when Apple decided on the 1 button mouse, most people had never seen a computer mouse, and yes, there was PLENTY of research and focus-group-ing that showed that a 1 button mouse eliminated confusion.
How many times have you talked to an oldster, and had them ask "Is that a left-click or a right-click?" Maybe it doesn't happen so much nowadays; but in 1982, when Apple was showing the Lisa around, things were quite a bit different.
And BTW, MacOS (Classic) has fully supported at least 2-button (and maybe
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Rather incredible that Apple didn't catch this in beta testing. Clearly, it's bad RF engineering, but why couldn't they iterate the design?
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Rather incredible that Apple didn't catch this in beta testing.
Did you even RTFS ?
No, ToughLove is actually one of the more illiterate idiots on here.
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Apple products kill people. [wccftech.com]
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Apple products kill people. [wccftech.com]
What did he do? He sure as HELL didn't get that on the OUTPUT side! It only produces 24 VAC. Barely enough for a good tingle.
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RF engineer here. Apple doesn’t seem to be very good at RF engineering, which usually dictates function over form. The antenna gate was a mess, they have lousy antenna placement in their laptops, and now this.
So why don'tcha go to work for them and show 'em how it's done, genius?
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RF engineer here. Apple doesn’t seem to be very good at RF engineering, which usually dictates function over form. The antenna gate was a mess, they have lousy antenna placement in their laptops, and now this.
So why don'tcha go to work for them and show 'em how it's done, genius?
My guess? He'd rather work for a company that will actually listen to an engineer over a designer when they say a design choice will result in poor functionality. So, not Apple.
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RF engineer here. Apple doesn’t seem to be very good at RF engineering, which usually dictates function over form. The antenna gate was a mess, they have lousy antenna placement in their laptops, and now this.
So why don'tcha go to work for them and show 'em how it's done, genius?
My guess? He'd rather work for a company that will actually listen to an engineer over a designer when they say a design choice will result in poor functionality. So, not Apple.
And he needs YOU to "defend" him?
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I'm glad you're on their side.
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Rather incredible that Apple didn't catch this in beta testing. Clearly, it's bad RF engineering, but why couldn't they iterate the design?
Dumbass, it IS in Beta-Testing!!!
This WHOLE article is nothing more than FUD. We're literally talking about a product still in the DEVELOPMENT phase!!!
Anyone who has ever developed ANYTHING knows that there are challenges along the way. You work through them, or decide that the project isn't feasible. Period.
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Exactly. This is only about a product which was announced last year, but never came out. It's a year later and all mentions of it disappeared.
Why? Who the heck knows. Maybe Apple was working on it, and
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Exactly. This is only about a product which was announced last year, but never came out. It's a year later and all mentions of it disappeared.
Why? Who the heck knows. Maybe Apple was working on it, and decided that really, they can't sell the things at a premium over everyone else so why continue development? It's like their routers - they decided to abandon selling their routers and such because really, the market is saturated with hundreds of other routers.
Apple sells product in one of two ways. One, if it can offer such a differentiator that people want it (products like iPhone and iPod and Macs, for example), or if they see a market that's commodity but there's a niche Apple can fit in. WiFi Routers (back when they were rare) and monitors (when 24" and 30" monitors were basically nonexistent) are such markets. The problem is that the niche often fills in afterwards - WiFi routers and equipment are everywhere now and Apple's advantages are minimal. Ditto monitors - large monitors are common so why continue building into a niche that's filled in?
Looks like the charging pad may be a victim of everyone else doing the same thing.
That's a pretty accurate analysis, IMHO. Kudos!
But I STILL wish they'd stayed in the Router business; since they seem to be able to produce the most STABLE Routers on the Planet.
As for the Wireless charging pad, It's a big "meh" for me.
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A cooling fan for a charge pad? Many people want to put that next to their bed on the nightstand. You do not want a noisy fan there and at night in an otherwise silent room even the quietest fan is noisy
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You're not looking at the big picture! The fan will be modulated to produce the amazing, courageous iSoothe white noise for sleeping. It's a freaking miracle!
Earth to idiot:
Apple dropped the "i" prefix thing even BEFORE Jobs died.
Don'tcha think it's time to RETIRE that particular meme?
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You mean I cannot buy an iPad or iPhone or iMac any more? They are just called Pad, phone and Mac?
LOL, nice try!
If they were introduced today, they for SURE wouldn't have the "i" Prefix.
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And you know that - how?
Because they haven't named a new product "i" Anything since the iPad. That's nearly a DECADE ago.
AppleTV. No "i"
AppleWatch. No "i"
Plus, we haven't had an "i"Book since the switch to Intel. After that, it was all "MacBook" and "MacBook Pro".
Same thing with their Software Products. IIRC, the last "i" Software was iWork, WELL over 10 years ago.
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You're an iTard.
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You're an iTard.
I suppose that richly deserves the response:
"I know you are, but what am I?"
Maybe Apple should spin off divisions? (Score:2)
I wonder if Apple should consider spinning off divisions (similar to FileMaker), so the company can solely focus on gadgets. That way, Macs get a dedicated company with engineering teams keeping those products refreshed and up to date, as opposed to letting models languish for many years.
What would be nice is a spin-off company dedicated for everyday computing. In the past, one could have everything they worked on done by Apple, be it the router, printer, external hard drives, and so on. Apple also had a
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I wonder if Apple should consider spinning off divisions (similar to FileMaker), so the company can solely focus on gadgets. That way, Macs get a dedicated company with engineering teams keeping those products refreshed and up to date, as opposed to letting models languish for many years.
What would be nice is a spin-off company dedicated for everyday computing. In the past, one could have everything they worked on done by Apple, be it the router, printer, external hard drives, and so on. Apple also had applications, so for a lot of things, a user just needed one number to call should something break, no trying to figure out if it is the hardware/app vendor/OS vendor's fault. This company would focus on Macs, headless NAS devices, routers, printers, and stuff that may not be glitzy, but used at home or the office. It also would be more enterprise friendly, offering known product release cycles (given the NDA, of course). By separating it from Apple, it can be a predictable company. It may not have the crazy profits that iDevices have, but it would be something that will always bring in revenue, especially if Apple created (or rebranded) some cloud solutions for offsite backups, virtualization, mail, and directory services.
They are big enough to handle both simultaneously. Besides, like the CPU design center they just opened in Seattle(?), they just "spin off" their specific teams into another set of offices. MUCH better than ending up competing with yourself.
There MAY be more to this? (Score:2)
A while back, Apple bought out a wireless charging company, and for a while - they were registering patents on ways to wirelessly power all sorts of Apple products. (I recall one diagram showing a typical room with an iMac set up, where it looked like they were proposing making the iMac so it doubled as the wireless charging base for peripherals sitting near it. The keyboard, the mouse and your iPhone, for example, would all charge if they were in proximity of the iMac.)
So to go from experimenting with id
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The problem with AirPower is that it's not a "simple charging mat". It was introduced as being able to charge multiple devices, with different power requirements, in any alignment on it. No one has done that. Apparently it's extremely difficult to build.
This isn't a problem related to thinness. This is a problem related to fast-charging an iPhone, while slow-charging a headphone case, side-by-side.
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Samsung is the only company to ever have misconceived a product so badly that they had to recall it twice and it was banned from airlines.
Who said anything about samsung? If your best defence for a product is worse things have existed that's not a great position.
Just add a chiller (Score:1)
Apple-disciples are used to pay a lot. Just add a chiller to cool it and make the thing $1000 or so.
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Apple-disciples are used to pay a lot. Just add a chiller to cool it and make the thing $1000 or so.
Just because YOU are too poor to afford anything nice,doesn't mean that's the case with the rest of the world.
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Another way is to just unplug your Apple products, they make good paperweights. Everybody will be impressed with your Apple paperweights.
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Hahahahaha, fail.
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Hahahahaha, fail.
Yes. Yes, you are.
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And even more fail with a childish, playground level response. Impressive!
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And even more fail with a childish, playground level response. Impressive!
I figured he would at least UNDERSTAND that level of retort.
Why waste a perfectly-good erudite response on a blithering Hater?
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Why are you addressing me in the 3rd person? Do you think I am some kind of royalty?
I think you should cut back on the drugs...
Known Problem (Score:5, Informative)
I worked on a product some years ago that was using a competitor to the Qi standard. Our product had a receiver coil that captured the alternating magnetic field, rectified it, and delivered that bulk power to the Li-Ion charge circuit. Worked great, except when you realize that the entire device is immersed in this alternating magnetic field. Every conductor, and in particular every ferromagnetic component (screws, the metal housing of the Li-Ion cell, a metallic portion of the housing, everything) was heating up due to eddy currents. As a stopgap we ended up sticking a ferrite shield over the mat, to isolate only that area where we wanted the charge power to emit. That worked to limit the heating, mostly. But that made it not all that different from most wireless charging cradles before and since, where you have to align the product to the charger. Needing that alignment drastically reduced the utility of the wireless charging, which was one reason why we scrapped it.
Oh, and while we were delivering about 2 W of charge power to the Li-Ion battery, the mat was drawing about 18 W from the wall. Even when the device wasn't present and not charging, the mat drew 10 W. This experience has made me highly skeptical of the prospect of widespread wireless charging anytime soon.
Re:Known Problem (Score:4, Informative)
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I wonder how can be safe to have something like a radio frequency emitter strong enough to induce usable current in a coil (which is the operating principle of a transformer) leaning against a delicate electronic device (the cell phone).
Screw the phone, how safe can it be to have a 20W (ok, 18W in the GP) directional RF transmitter in your house, likely on your bedside stand, likely aimed exactly so it is irradiating you for 8 hours per day as you sleep? Not something I'd want.
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I wonder how can be safe to have something like a radio frequency emitter strong enough to induce usable current in a coil (which is the operating principle of a transformer) leaning against a delicate electronic device (the cell phone).
Screw the phone, how safe can it be to have a 20W (ok, 18W in the GP) directional RF transmitter in your house, likely on your bedside stand, likely aimed exactly so it is irradiating you for 8 hours per day as you sleep? Not something I'd want.
What I "like" are the people on here that say "I want WHOLE-ROOM Wireless Charging"(!!!) Sure, turn my bedroom into the INSIDE of a Microwave Oven. That will make me sleep peacefully...
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Exactly that. Among other things I am a professional electrician, and I wonder how can be safe to have something like a radio frequency emitter strong enough to induce usable current in a coil (which is the operating principle of a transformer) leaning against a delicate electronic device (the cell phone). It's such a risky operation where so much can go wrong that I'm impressed how they might want this rather than a simple cable connecting the cell to a conventional charger.
It is not RF in the sense that most people think of it. It is induction at a frequency between about 200 and 400 kHz.
Re: Known Problem (Score:3)
In addition to the issues you very eloquently described is also the problem of the process and mat heating up the handset. Lithium Ion batteries are particularly susceptible to heat and Apple doesnâ(TM)t need more people complaining about shortened battery life because their chargers are cooking their phones.
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In addition to the issues you very eloquently described is also the problem of the process and mat heating up the handset. Lithium Ion batteries are particularly susceptible to heat and Apple doesnâ(TM)t need more people complaining about shortened battery life because their chargers are cooking their phones.
I believe that is one of the issues that is making Apple rethink the current design.
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In this case, there were two reasons: 1) we wanted a 100% sealed case, no ports or anything, and 2) our target audience was the disabled community, who may not have the dexterity (or, in some cases, any hands at all) to make a cabled connection.
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In this case, there were two reasons: 1) we wanted a 100% sealed case, no ports or anything, and 2) our target audience was the disabled community, who may not have the dexterity (or, in some cases, any hands at all) to make a cabled connection.
Well, when you put it THAT way...
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It never made sense to me why you want to have a wireless charger that needs plugged in that delivers less power less efficiently than just plugging the wire into the phone and skipping a step.
Exactly.
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I won't be so bold as to crow "Oh, they should have seen this coming."
Their competitor's product (Samsung wireless charger) has quite a decent fan in the bottom.
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Oh, and while we were delivering about 2 W of charge power to the Li-Ion battery, the mat was drawing about 18 W from the wall. Even when the device wasn't present and not charging, the mat drew 10 W. This experience has made me highly skeptical of the prospect of widespread wireless charging anytime soon.
Exactly. There is CERTAINLY nothing "Green" about Wireless Charging!
In fact, I would imagine that Apple was dragged-into this simply because they were getting beat-up in the tech press because they didn't support it and their major competitors did (however poorly).
This is what happens (Score:1)
when apple actually tries to make things themselves. FAILURE.
apple should stick with what has always worked for them, wait until someone else does the difficult engineering part and real innovation. Then apple can come along and buy the company or steal their design and claim they invented it.
This had worked for apple so far; why change now.
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who cares if you need something that actually does computing work other then run a few browser tabs?
This is the target audience.
Engineer looked at x, said x could not be done (Score:2)
Statements like this should be disregarded. Do it or walk away, don't hamster your way out of it.
There are many times an employer has asked me to do something difficult, that I didn't want to do for other reasons (usually involving training my overseas buddies) and I happily said it couldn't be done, when I knew full well it could. My reasons for saying things might not relate to the efficacy of the thing, I just knew my bosses were too stupid to know the difference.
Things have either been done, or they hav
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The statement wasn't 'this can't be done', it was 'this design won't work'. There is a world of difference between those statements.
DUH! (Score:1)