It’s been an interesting and unusually busy week thus far for Apple. In the span of a few days, Apple unveiled a brand new iPad Air and iPad Mini along with a revamped iMac lineup. What’s more, there are now rumblings that Apple may release a refreshed iPod Touch later in the week. With Apple seemingly on a hardware release binge, there’s a good chance the company is getting some of its relatively minor hardware announcements out of the way before its special event next week.
Though Apple’s special media event — which will kick off next Monday — will reportedly focus on media related endeavors, there is also a chance we might see some new hardware in the form of AirPods 2 and, believe it or not, the long-delayed AirPower charging mat Apple originally unveiled all the way back in September of 2018.
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With rumors of an AirPower release swirling about, the latest tidbit comes to us courtesy of Guilherme Rambo of 9to5Mac who, upon diving into the latest iOS 12.2 beta, unearthed some data strings which suggest AirPower may become a shipping product sooner rather than later.
Specifically, Rambo notes that there have been “significant changes” to the iOS code responsible for wireless charging duties.
“These changes,” Rambo notes, “strongly suggest Apple is getting ready to finally ship AirPower to consumers.”
As exciting as that is, it’s worth noting that we’ve seen quite a bit of conflicting information regarding the release of AirPower. Though we’ve seen reports pointing to a release sometime during the first half of the year, a recent report from Digitimes (which has a somewhat spotty record when it comes to Apple rumors) claims that AirPower might not ship until the latter half of 2019.
All in all, the upside to all of this AirPower speculation is that Apple hasn’t cancelled the product as previously rumored. If you recall, Apple encountered a number of challenging technical hurdles as it sought to bring AirPower to market and reportedly contemplated axing the product altogether. Currently, it stands to reason that the release of AirPower is an inevitability, with the only question centering on when as opposed to if.
