Oh, what could have been.
Back in the spring of 2019, Apple did something it almost never does and canceled the AirPower wireless charging mat after it had been officially unveiled two years prior. Now, someone has their hands on a (somewhat) working version of this rare blemish on Apple’s hardware track record.
Giulio Zompetti, an Italian collector of Apple prototypes, was able to acquire a prototype AirPower mat from China, according to The Verge. In photos Zompetti provided to the publication, it’s evident the unfinished wireless charging mat lacks the materials that would have coated the outside of the product had it actually shipped as intended. So you can see all kinds of internal charging coils.
Zompetti also posted a video to Twitter showing a phone charging on the device.
Zompetti told The Verge that the AirPower mat doesn’t even work with a standard-issue iPhone, instead requiring specialized iPhone prototypes to charge anything. He also said he hasn’t run into the heating problems that reportedly caused Apple to kill the project entirely, but can’t rule out their existence. Zompetti has a history with this sort of thing, coming across prototype Apple Watches a few years ago.
Apple’s cancellation of AirPower was noteworthy not necessarily because we were all super jazzed about it, but because it’s exceedingly rare for Apple to kill something after it’s been revealed publicly. Between 2017 and spring 2019, we kept expecting AirPower to show up at every Apple event, only to scratch our heads every time it didn’t. Personally, I’ll take credit for seeing things how they actually were before Apple made the news official.
Still, it’s cool to see a partially working version of the star-crossed charging mat. There aren’t many tech companies more heavily scrutinized than Apple and, for the sake of historic preservation, it’s cool that even its biggest blunders are able to survive out in the wild like this.
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