If you’re not familiar, Apple announced at its September 2017 iPhone event that it would be releasing a product called “AirPower,” which allows iPhone, Apple Watch and AirPods to simultaneously charge wirelessly. According to Apple, it was expected to arrive in 2018, though it never did. It is quite a rare miss for the tech company, as it typically has a good track record of following through on its product announcements.
Throughout each of its events this year – including one in March where it announced new iPads, a developer conference in June, the annual iPhone event in September and a Mac event in October – Apple failed to mention AirPower or its status overall.
CNBC attempted to reach out to Apple at the iPhone launch in September regarding the product and if it planned to speak about AirPower publicly, but a representative said, “the day’s events were only focused on the products discussed on stage — the iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max and iPhone XR — and not other devices.”
Apple mysteriously began to pull all mention of AirPower from its website following the September 2018 iPhone event. Meanwhile, plugged-in Apple writer John Gruber suggested AirPower was “facing overheating problems,” which may have resulted in being “scrubbed.”
“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 at the time.
It seems probable that AirPower is canceled or indefinitely delayed until the company can fix these overheating issues. An Apple spokesperson was not immediately available to comment.