In what feels like an early April Fool’s joke, it seems that Apple has cancelled its upcoming AirPower wireless charging mat. Unfortunately, for those who were looking forward to it, it is no joke as the company has since officially confirmed that they have cancelled the production of the accessory.
In a statement made to TechCrunch, Dan Riccio, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Engineering said, “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.”
If you’re shocked at this piece of news, you’re not alone. This is because just last week, a new image of the AirPower was discovered hidden in Apple’s website. The accessory was once again pictured on the packaging of the second-gen AirPods, with rumors that it might even be launched this week, but that clearly will not be coming to pass.
It is also a bit unprecedented for Apple because the company has never cancelled a product after it has been officially announced, making this a very rare instance. There have been reports in the past that Apple could be looking to shelve the project due to various hardware issues, but then it started to look like the company had managed to figure out a way around them.
While it is disappointing, we’re sure that in the long run, it will pay off since it would be better to cancel a subpar product than to release one and get inundated with hardware issues. Apple has been exploring wireless charging ideas in the past from what we can tell of its various patents, so this is definitely not the last we’ve seen from the company.
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