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Comment by jbigelow76 | Hacker News Reader

It is a slimy move to wait a week after the wireless charging Airpods were released before announcing this.

Slimey? Really? Slimey is opening a factory along side a river and then dumping the waste chemicals in the river while touting the number of jobs added to the local economy.

In Apple's case, they announced a product early, turns out they couldn't deliver on it. No harm, no foul... okay maybe reputational foul, but nothing of real consequence.

The lather the Apple tech pundit crowd has worked itself up over the Airpower nonsense (you can't call it anything more than that at this point) is bewildering. If Apple would have delivered I probably would have bought it, my stuff still charges the legacy way, I'll probably buy more Apple stuff in the future, the world moves on.

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Honestly, I was never excited about wireless charging.

Then, on a whim when I ordered my Pixel 3, I put the stand in my cart. I didn't even realize it was wireless. I just like the nice look of a well-thought-out phone stand, and the feel of it in the dark when I read myself to sleep.

I then remembered that I replaced my old Pixel because the port had problems. Less wear on the ports is important.

Wireless is a huge deal for devices that require frequent charging.

Wireless is a huge deal for devices that require frequent charging.

I won’t argue with that, I just can’t square the lack of “Apple branded” wireless charging as a pain point.

To the point of less wear. My iPhone 5’s Lightening port still works just fine but the phone itself needs replacing. My perfectly usable iPad Air however now has a Lightening port which is so worn out that I need to engage in a voodoo ritual of supporting the cable with a matchbox to ensure sufficient contact and _just_ the right angle to get it charging... then walk away carefully so as to not disturb the tech spirits.

I’ve warmed significantly to wireless charging just because of that, and the lowered charging speed wouldn’t be a problem since I could leave devices overnight on the AirPower mat. I was especially excited about the proposed design of AirPower because precise placement wasn’t needed. I could easily imagine that making it much more handy than precisely aligning everything in the dark when putting away my iPad.

Apple explicitly marketed AirPower support as a main feature of the next generation of AirPods. To a lot of people on Twitter, it was THE main feature of AirPods 2.

Saying "hey, buy the new version of AirPods at a $50 premium because it's compatible with this new thing that's about to come out" and then fumbling on that product you just marketed to drive sales of AirPods isn't kosher.

Wireless charging is still supported though, that’s the mind boggling part. Nobody says “Ok I bought this wireless charging pad what am I going to do with it now?”

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