Is the Apple AirPower wireless charger late because of other than technical issues?

A lot of noise was made about a minor device charger that Apple had previewed last year but still has not been marketed afterwards. But there is a much more obvious reason why AirPower never shows up, a problem that Steve Jobs himself has encountered on several occasions.

Is AirPower a big deal?

Last year, alongside the iPhone X and the new Apple Series 3 cell, Apple introduced AirPower in preview: an induction charger that can charge a new phone, a new watch and a new case charging station for AirPod. Why did Apple introduce a product that was not ready to ship yet?

It is rare for Apple to present something that is not ready to be sold immediately, or at least in the coming weeks. Notable exceptions include the first Apple TV that debuted a few months before commercialization, just as Apple introduced another entirely new product on the original iPhone. And this iPhone has not been marketed for almost six months, end of June 2007.

Since then, Apple has typically introduced new iPhones only when they were ready to sell. The secret and enthusiasm for the new technological features are an important factor in Apple's sales cycle. If Apple announced or defined new technologies well in advance, its competitors would have much more time to submit their own copies. Siri, FaceTime, Touch ID and Animoji are all examples of wow-tech that helped sell new iPhones, as they were exclusive to new devices now available for sale.

Despite the minor fanfare, AirPower was not exactly an extremely attractive new product with the ability to boost new sales of Apple Watch 3 or iPhone 8 and iPhone X. In fact, its preview failed to materialize than buying AirPods, waiting for the new version with an inductive charging box.

So, in the great genius of the retrospective, it is quite indisputable to say that Apple should not have lost its keynote 2017 when talking about a product that is not yet ready to exit.

Why, given that Apple Watch 3 has already introduced the key feature of cellular data, and that the iPhone 8 and X offer many new features beyond their new support for Qi induction charging?

It seems that Apple has been trying to make the induction charging of Qi more attractive, as it has been working to integrate this new feature with its two new iPhones. In fact, Qi's support required a re-shaping of the iPhone case, involving a glass bottom and a new shell edge architecture, which resulted in a heavier and more fragile device.

The induction charging is pretty nice, but last year she was not really ready. Apple phones, launched a year ago, could initially support very slowly the induction charging of 5 watts, up to a low focus of 7.5 watts via a subsequent software update.

It's much slower than using a standard iPad charger, and far worse than taking advantage of their new USB-PD support, which allows you to use a new one. MacBook or a similar USB-C adapter with a special Lightning cable. rate.

The new USB-PD fast charging feature of the new iPhones from last year is particularly noteworthy for how quickly it turns on a phone that is nearly dead in 30 minutes, or almost 85% in about 120 minutes. By using induction charging or the slow 5 W USB block, Apple still ships its new phones, it takes about 120 minutes to reach 50%. Once you have exceeded 85%, the loading speed gradually decreases.

The wireless charging of Apple in 2017 was not really very fast, but it is potentially handy if you have a charger in your kitchen, on your desk, integrated with your favorite coffee, installed in your car or at the bedside of the patient. to charge your phone here and there incrementally without having to use a cable.

The problem was that existing pads could only charge one device. With AirPower, Apple pointed out that its future hardware would solve this problem, which would make it easier to charge multiple wireless devices that Apple customers carry and carry. It has not arrived yet.

Since it is now a year later and Apple has mentioned the product on its website, it appears that the product has been discontinued. And, Apple does not say anything to AppleInsider or any other place we have seen about it, even after several requests.

At the very least, Apple does not want to talk about it anymore. And for good reason: the induction charging did not change the deal because it seemed to come back a year or two later, while Samsung presented it as an exclusive feature and that Ikea sold pads designed to be installed in its furniture.

Is AirPower delayed?

There is another reason why Apple may not want to talk about AirPower: the new AirPods have still not been launched, so draw more attention to a product still unfinished or in waiting would only worsen sales.

Apple has a clear idea of ​​what consumers really think about Qi billing because it sells third-party chargers in its stores. If it was very popular, Apple could have changed gears and released a wireless charging pad easier.

The reality is that no one really seems to be asking for a pad to charge their iPhone and its Series 3 Watch because the phone can be charged a lot faster with a cable, and the new watches do not really need to be charged. to be removed. and charged throughout the day – and previous models that were not going to support AirPower).

Since Apple has improved the induction charging speed of its new iPhone XS and XR 2018 models, it is still possible that Apple is only asking to introduce AirPower alongside its new AirPods, so that everyone is excited by this novelty. buy. It could also appear further in the future, once induction charging reaches the point where it could replace Lightening, resulting in wireless mobile devices without port.

All this happened before

Recall another time Apple announced a new feature designed to sell iPhones that took much longer to release than expected: the White iPhone 4. After being announced in June 2010, Apple has struggled to develop a white glass back for the new model.

During all this time, all the discussions on the White option only blocked some sales, as buyers were eagerly awaiting its sale for nearly a year, in April 2011.

It may be that Apple has mentioned AirPower simply to silence conversations about a product that is not ready yet. However, it is also possible that AirPower has been canceled, for a reason that no one seems to have considered. In part, it's because Apple does not like talking about this dark secret. This reason: the challenges of intellectual property.

Despite protests from experts who wondered aloud why Apple had announced a new feature if there was a risk that this was not really the case, and the presumption that it never happened previously, this has already happened.

All this happened before, twice as much

Beyond the white iPhone 4, Apple announced something that it had never ended up shipping, with radically framed features like important technology announcements during a Keynote event .

The first was the announcement, at WWDC 2010, that the new FaceTime feature introduced as part of iOS 4 on iPhone 4 was based on standard protocols and that Apple's technology for video conferencing would be open to third parties. create cross-platform interoperable products. This has never been shipped afterwards, and Apple has finally stopped talking about it. It was eight years ago. It's pretty clear today, FaceTime will never be open.

The second example came later in the year when iOS 4.2 was released when AirPrint was released, a new feature for iOS and Mac that allowed Apple's mobile devices (finally!) To print, using a much simpler system that does not require drivers. complex printer settings and printer setup.

For new printers, hardware manufacturers only had to support Apple's new AirPrint protocol. For existing printers, Apple planned to allow Macs to share them with iOS devices so that any iPhone or iPad could print through the shared printer using AirPrint, even if the printer had been conceived and invented. However, this feature was later extracted from Mac OS beta versions and never delivered to consumers.

Strong indirect evidence indicates that both cancellations were caused by intellectual property issues. In other words, someone has taken legal action to charge royalties or stop the deployment of new technologies to preserve their existing sales.

In the case of AirPrint, we know that it worked because we tested it in beta versions. The problem was not that Apple could not make it work, it was that it could not sell or even give it away as a non-technical feature.

And that's because it seems to be largely due to the fact that a printer manufacturer (which I think is HP) has blocked AirPrint support for existing printers to encourage shoppers to buy new printers specifically to use AirPrint. HP is actually partnering with Apple to launch AirPrint on its new models, as it sees this technology as a help to new sales. But legacy support of sharing existing printers (including printers not manufactured by HP) on new iOS devices was only a threat to the already stagnant demand for old paper copies. Digital information.

Apple was forced to withdraw its previously completed AirPrint share of Mac OS, but was not proud of it and offered no explanation. There has been no public lawsuit exposing the details of an argument. Apple also wanted to remain on good terms with all its printing partners, who wanted to support AirPrint. Initially, only HP did it.

Another example: ZFS

Although it was never announced by Jobs, or even publicly touted as a future feature for Macs, rumors began to circulate in 2007 regarding Apple to turn HFS + Macs into a new advanced file system developed by Sun: ZFS. A marketing manager at Sun even announced prematurely the prediction that Macs would go to ZFS as the default file system.

Over the next two years, Apple provided support for reading and writing ZFS volumes on Mac. However, in 2009, all these features were removed. The reason: Oracle acquired Sun and already had its own advanced file system project.

In addition, Sun's ZFS file system was attacked by NetApp in a patent lawsuit, which accused ZFS of violating its WAFL-related storage patents.

Apple is a better innovator than the litigator

At about the same time, Apple also decided that if it continued to deal with other companies (and patent trolls) attacking each new technology, it would also launch an offensive against Google's Android license holders who: were copying more and more of Apple's patented work. After being sued by Nokia in 2009, he filed a lawsuit against Motorola in 2010, sued Samsung and then entered into a patent agreement with HTC in 2012.

As a result, Apple has been for years considered a brutal patent enforcement agent trying to use litigation rather than the court of public opinion and open the markets to compete on the merits of its technology. It was, of course, incredibly misleading because Motorola, Samsung, Nokia and many other companies publicly sued Apple over different IPs, even as companies like Qualcomm used their market power to enforce uncompetitive and blatant monetization of their intellectual property. , directly subvert open markets and competitive innovation.

It seems that HP killed a key feature of AirPrint once Jobs introduced it, making it impossible to publish. (Note that third parties provided software tools that reactivated legacy printer sharing support as being compatible with AirPrint, but that these companies were small enough to avoid potential risks and rewards). track them down and threaten legal action.

The idea that Apple was forced to kill the share of AirPlay over IP is reinforced by the case of FaceTime, on which Apple was publicly sued by the patent troll VirnetX, resulting in damages and Apple's requirement to modify its offense architecture.

FaceTime's original design was intended to allow direct video conferencing between customers. However, this was subsequently modified to require an authentication step with an Apple client-side encryption certificate (which only Apple can provide and that it can revoke), thus preventing others Third-party clients (or older jailbroken versions of iOS) log in with FaceTime users.

As in the case of AirPrint, the true story of FaceTime was never told, because no one was interested in saying it. Apple did not want to remove the curtains from its development process or detail the operation of FaceTime because there was no value. He was also not interested in looking for pity for being beaten during a trial in East Texas, which was giving more money to VirnetX for supposedly inventing VPN connections.

Ironically, in the years when cruelty and most members of the tech media have criticized Apple for "pleading, not innovating in the market," Apple was really successful by innovating and winning in the court of public opinion.

In intellectual property litigation, Apple was largely simply expelling some sharks while being forced to pay hundreds of millions to various bogus "inventors" who claimed to have invented some of Apple's ideas on the subject. market. in a mobile market where everyone was overwhelmingly incompetent in deploying the innovations that everyone wanted to buy.

Microsoft, Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, Google, Palm, Dell, Sony, HP, Amazon and Facebook have all overcome their difficulties and efforts to beat Apple's iPhone or iPad.

Yet, there was only one company struggling with "the inability to innovate," even as companies filing a lawsuit against Apple were portrayed as offended giants who deserved huge gains because Apple was very litigious and did not compete. basis of its technology. The gap is deep.

Will AirPower ever arrive?

Is AirPower the latest example of an Apple technology grounded due to intellectual property litigation?

Given the patented minefield surrounding the "wireless" induction charging (Samsung has already been involved in a patent prosecution with a former partner, related to the implementation of wireless charging), there could be several reasons for that.

Apple's new contributions to solving some of the problems of existing induction charging chargers by supporting multiple competing devices and determining the prioritization of charging could most likely be repressed by d & # 39; other people having invented the idea of ​​using multiple reels induction power transfer concept, making it impossible or just too expensive to release it and defend it in court.

Samsung has already tried to block iPhone sales in the US based on the idea that Apple had acquired $ 11.72 in chips from a company that was paying for Samsung licenses, but Samsung wanted more money for copyrights ($ 16! sort of case to be returned after trampling Apple's patent portfolio to forge the iPhone.

Imagine if the courts had sided with Samsung even momentarily, and delayed the sales of iPhones until the case was resolved. The competitive landscape would have been drastically altered, defeating all the work done by Apple in favor of a specious legal claim on patents that have never been violated in the first place.

That's basically what happened to the promise of "open" FaceTime, where it was not the core technology of Apple that was questioned, but rather an automatic VPN configuration used to prevent its open deployment and prevent Apple from sharing it widely.

With the introduction of FaceTime in 2010, the mobile industry was also changing dramatically, resulting in the effective disappearance of all potential holders of FaceTime-compatible technologies (Palm, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Java ME). disdain for Apple and little interest in publishing videoconferences compatible with or defined by Apple – which Google thought at the time that it would quickly collapse.

Several years later, Google would now like to be compatible with iMessage and FaceTime. He struggles to work with Microsoft to bring PC connectivity to Android and Samsung to introduce the chat that works between providers and platforms like Apple does. Google's efforts to launch a FaceTime competitor have been fragmented and inefficient on iOS.

Conversely, Apple has no interest in FaceTime's value reaching Google's platforms, in part because its efforts are interrupted by patent trolls until the sharing is no longer advantageous. .

It is certainly possible that the problem that brakes AirPower is not a technical problem, but simply problems of intellectual property. While Apple excels in the first case, the second is less a question of pure competence and more a question of negotiation or legal wrangling that depends on the rationality of the negotiators, or even members of the jury, without a real understanding of the problems.

In other words, a crapshoot, where the odds are against the engineers.

It may be that Apple can solve all the problems that prevent AirPower and could possibly release the product during the year with the new AirPods and maybe even the Qi-Charge iPads. But if this is not the case, the most likely reason is simply a legal puzzle, which has already occurred and is likely to reoccur as long as patents block innovation and reward investment. speculative rather than protecting and promoting inventions.