According to TechCrunch, Apple has canceled the AirPower, citing difficulty meeting its own high standards for the product.
“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 in an emailed statement today.”
The AirPower has faced numerous obstacles ever since it was announced back in September 2017. Ever since then, customers have been waiting and speculating the release date. Some even thought it would be available by the March event this year. The issues faced by Apple were related to overheating and complexity of the circuitry.
A redittor on r/Apple who work in the wireless power space added his opinion, commenting that Apple’s aim for 32 coils is nearly impossible to achieve.
The AirPower mat was rumored to have in the range of 32 coils to allow for total x/y freedom. It’s a bit hard to explain just how complicated that is. The magnetics and coil selection algorithms are super complicated. By comparison, the most number of coils that I have personally seen is 5 and that was a nightmare.
Source: Reddit
If you were holding out for the AirPower, these are perhaps some alternatives you can consider: