Random Thoughts – Randocity!

While I realize that this “news” is a little old at this point (announced March 29th), the intention of this article is not to report on this announcement, but to write an analysis of this announcement’s ramifications to Apple. Let’s explore.

Think Different

Apple used this slogan for a time when it was touting its innovative approach to the creation of its devices and systems. However, Apple has pretty much abandoned this slogan after Steve Jobs’s passing.

Since the loss of Jobs, Apple’s innovation has waned, which has left industry pundits with a conundrum. Do these Apple expert journalists continue to be fanboys for this brand and “love everything Apple” or do they finally drop that pretext and begin reporting the realities of the brand?

I’ve never been an Apple “fanboy” in the sense that I “automatically love everything Apple”. There are too many legitimate journalists and social media influencers who already follow that trend. However, I won’t name any names, iJustine. Whoops. If you’re another of these people, you know who you are.

Think The Same

In recent years, Apple has been trailing its competition with its phone and other tech ideas. Ideas that have already been done, sometimes better than Apple. For example, the iPhone X is an iPhone version of the Galaxy Note 8. The Note 8 released months earlier than the iPhone X. The wired EarPods were simply Apple’s version of a similar Bose earbud. And… the AirPower would simply have been an Apple version of a Qi Wireless charging mat.

As you can see, Apple’s most recent innovations aren’t innovations at all. Even the AirPods, while wireless, are not new. While they do sound pretty good, they leave some to be desired for long wear-ability and comfort. They also take way too long to connect, when they decide to connect at all (at least the gen 1 AirPods). These are iterations of products that have already existed on the market.

The iPhone 1 demonstrates actual innovation. No one had created a smart phone like the iPhone when it came to exist. Sure, some handsets had limited apps and a few had a touch screen, but Apple took the handheld phone to a whole new level. The first iPad was also quite innovative. No other tablet was on the market at the time and offered something never before seen. Just look at the tablet market today!

Unfortunately, the innovation that was once so prevalent at Apple has evaporated after Jobs’s untimely death.

Qi

Inductive wireless charging is nothing new. It’s been a staple technology in Braun’s wireless toothbrushes since the early 90s. It was simply the next logical step to bring inductive charging to mobile devices. Samsung did that with its own Qi wireless charging mats (and by backing the Qi standard). These mats and phones were introduced in 2008.

With the introduction of the iPhone X model in November of 2017 (and other Apple phone models released that same year), Apple finally added induction charging to its handsets. That’s 9 years after Qi became a thing. That’s 9 years after Samsung had it on their handsets. There’s nothing at all innovative about wireless charging on an Apple device. Yes, it may have been a “most requested” feature, but it certainly was not innovative or even new. If anything, Apple decided it was time to fill a technology gap on their mobile devices… while with earlier phones they had refused to fill that gap. We won’t get into the whys of it all (ahem… Samsung).

With its iPhone X announcement, Apple also announced a new product called AirPower. This product would be a rival inductive charging mat to already existing Qi charging mats. The primary iterative difference between AirPower and the existing Qi charger bases is that the AirPower would output more power to wireless charge the iPhone much faster… perhaps even faster than a Lightning cable. We’ll never know now. The AirPower announcement also showed 3 devices charging simultaneous, including an AirPods case.

Unfortunately, Apple wasn’t able to release this product at the same time as the iPhone X. Apple announced they would release this charging mat sometime in mid-late 2018. This release date came and went without an announcement or release. By the end of March 2019 (nearly a year and a half after Phil Schiller announced it to the public), Apple officially pulled the plug on the AirPower product.

Everyone reading this announcement should take it as a sign of problems within Apple. And… here we are at the crux and analysis portions of this article.

The Apple Bites

With the cancellation of the AirPower, this signifies a substantial problem brewing within Apple’s infinite circle. If the engineers of what seems to be a relatively simple device cannot even manage to design and build a functional wireless charging base, a technology that’s been in use since the 1990s and in use in the mobile phone market for over 10 years now, how can we trust Apple to provide innovative, functional products going into the future?

This cancellation is a big, big deal to Apple’s reputation. If Apple cannot build a reasonably simplistic device after nearly a year and a half, what does this say about Apple’s current engineers on the whole?

Assuming Apple’s internal engineers were actually incapable of producing this product in-house, Apple could have farmed the product design out to a third party company (i.e., Samsung or Belkin) and had that third party design and build the product to Apple’s specs. It doesn’t seem that this product should have died on the vine, let alone be abandoned.

Instead of outright abandoning the product, Apple should have brought it to market in a different way. As I said, outright cancelling the product signifies much deeper problems within Apple. This is actually one of the first times I’ve actually seen Apple publicly announce a vapor product and then cancel said vapor product (albeit, over a year later). It’s a completely surprising, disappointing, unusual and highly unprecedented move by Apple… especially considering Apple’s new devices that desperately rely on this unreleased device. I guess this is why Apple has always been so secretive about product announcements in the past. If you cancel an unannounced product, no one knows. When you cancel a publicly announced product, it tarnishes your reputation… particularly when a functional product already exists on the market from other manufacturers (and competitors) and when the product is rather simplistic in nature. That’s a huge blow to Apple’s “innovative” reputation.

AirPods 2

The AirPower cancellation is also particularly disappointing and disheartening on the heels of the announcement of the AirPods 2 wireless charging case. The lack of the AirPower mat is a significant blow to one of the biggest features of the newest generation of AirPods. Effectively, without AirPower, the AirPods 2 are basically the same as the AirPods gen 1 except that the AirPods 2 offer a better “Hey Siri” support (and a better placed LED charge light).

The one feature that many people really looked forward to on the AirPods is basically unavailable. Sure, you can charge the AirPods 2 on a standard Qi wireless charger, but at a much slower rate than via the Lightning port. You don’t want to be sitting around waiting on a slow Qi charger to get the AirPods case fully charged. No, you’re going to plug it in to make sure you can walk out the door with a fully charged AirPods case. The case already charges slowly enough on a Lightning cable. There’s no reason to make it charge even slower by using a Qi charger. That’s the sole reason for the AirPower to exist.. to charge at much faster rates. Without AirPower, the reason to charge wirelessly has more-or-less evaporated.

Of course, you can also buy a wireless case for the AirPods gen 1, but what’s the point in that? With the AirPower cancelled, you have to invest in a Qi charger and live with its very slow charge speed for Apple’s brutal $80 price tag. No thanks. Even then, you don’t get any other benefit out of placing your AirPods gen 1 earbuds into a gen 2 wireless charging case for that $80. You might as well invest that $80 into a new set of AirPods gen 2, even though the Airpods 2 cost $199 (with wireless charging case) versus $159 for the gen 1 AirPods (without charging case).

Of course, in Apple’s typical form, they also offers the AirPods 2 without a wireless charging case for $159, the same price as the AirPods gen 1. But this is all diversionary minutiae.

Analysis

Apple’s level of innovations have been both flagging and lagging for several years. With the AirPower cancellation, it should now be crystal clear to not only journalists and analysts alike, but also to Apple’s fanboys that Apple’s luster has officially worn off. Apple’s once strong “reality distortion field” is now a distant memory.

Even the iPhone X isn’t fairing well in terms of durability of design just slightly over a year after its introduction. I’ve seen several people report FaceID failing over time, as well as other hardware problems on this phone model. A premium model phone at a premium price tag should hold up longer than this. Arguably, the iPhone X is one of Apple’s ugliest phones ever made, with that stupid unsightly “notch” covering up a portion of that expensive OLED screen.

It seems the iPhone 8 design (based on the iPhone 7 case design) is fairing much better than the iPhone X. Even the iPhone 7, which Apple still sells, holds up better. That should also be an indication of Apple’s current practical level of design. Of course, the problems showing in the iPhone X could be because there are more iPhone Xs in circulation than iPhone 8s. Still, the iPhone X is appearing more often in repair shops than the iPhone 8. That says something about the build quality and durability (or lack thereof) of the iPhone X’s design for that premium price tag.

Apple now needs to pull a rabbit out of a hat very soon to prove they still have the chops to not only innovate AND provide high quality goods, but be the first to the table with a new product idea or forever hold their peace and become an underdog in the tech industry. That doesn’t mean Apple won’t continue to sell product. It doesn’t mean Apple won’t design product. However, it does mean that the “fanboy” mentality that so many had previously adopted towards Apple’s products should finally evaporate, just as has Apple’s innovation. Before the AirPower cancellation announcement, we only had a hunch that Apple’s design wasn’t up to par. With the cancellation of the AirPower, we finally have confirmation.

Eventually, everyone must take off their rose colored glasses and see things as they really are at Apple. And with this article, I hope we’re finally to that point.

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