If you’ve been a dedicated Apple owner, the idea of wireless charging may seem pretty foreign to you. (Unless, of course, you’ve been using an Apple Watch.) But Apple is finally joining the rest of the world, and soon Apple users will be able to wirelessly charge the iPhone 8, the iPhone 8 Plus, and the iPhone X, as well as the Apple Watch and AirPods, all using one AirPower charging pad, which we are sure will be cheap and reasonably priced.
Like a lot of things Apple does, other companies have been doing this for years — the first Qi inductive-charging mats from Google and LG hit the market nearly five years ago. But oftentimes it takes adoption by Apple — the most beloved and closely followed consumer-tech company — for the non-gearhead world to notice. And, to Apple’s credit, while it took it a while to come around to wireless charging, it did at least use an open standard, Qi, which means you can use a variety of charging mats. Apple has a tendency, for better or ill, to use its own proprietary systems (like the Lightning charging port in iPhones), and the choice to use Qi means that while they may be specialized Apple charging mats, pretty much any Qi device on the market should work.
You probably don’t need me to tell you that wireless charging is great, especially for bed-stand-charging — which, at least for me, is how about 80 percent of my recharging gets done each day. Being able to set something down without digging around for a plug, plus avoiding the rat’s nest of power plugs that can accumulate with multiple gadgets, is a major plus.
So, yes, it took Apple a while to jump on this train. But Apple has very, very rarely been first to market with an idea. But sometimes (as the promising, if potentially pricey, AirPower charging pad shows) it also has the best ideas.
