Development has reportedly once again halted on Apple’s own multi-device wireless charger. This is part of the complicated saga of AirPower, which was publicly announced, publicly canceled, allegedly resumed, and is now allegedly canceled yet again.
The latest unconfirmed report comes from serial leaker Jon Prosser via Twitter. He said on Monday, “All AirPower prototyping / testing has been removed from the schedule for 2021. Sources doubt that it’ll ever be picked back up again.”
All AirPower prototyping / testing has been removed from the schedule for 2021.
Sources doubt that it’ll ever be picked back up again.
Seems like once again, AirPower is dead.
— Jon Prosser (@jon_prosser) October 26, 2020
Prosser runs Front Page Tech on YouTube, and has made some high-profile predictions. He currently has an 86% accuracy rate on AppleTrack.
AirPower canceled: Déjà vu all over again
Apple unveiled AirPower with much fanfare at its iPhone X keynote in September 2017. Then Cupertino said nothing more about it for almost two years.
The next official mention came when the company admitted defeat on the product in March 2019. Dan Riccio, Apple’s SVP of hardware engineering, said at the time, “We’ve concluded AirPower will not achieve our high standards and we have canceled the project.”
But in early 2020, Prosser said the project had been revived. Other sources, including Bloomberg and analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, talked this year about Apple working on a wireless charger. It’s possible some of these leaks were actually about the Apple MagSafe Charger unveiled October 13. Designed primarily for the iPhone 12 lineup, the new MagSafe Charger adds magnets for easy alignment.
However, the MagSafe Charger works for a single device. AirPower was going to be an advanced charger that could juice up an iPhone, Apple Watch and AirPods case together on the same mat.
Apparently, we’ll never know.
