We Built the Product Apple Gave Up On... – Transcript

00:00For the past two months I have been building a desk To understand what it does we need to go back to an Apple event nine years ago In 2017 I had just started college when Apple showed its wireless charging pad AirPower The best part was simple put your phone on it and it would charge this idea hit me right away If you have used a round wireless charger you know the phone has to be put right in the center Move it a little and it will not charge Sometimes I put my phone on the charger and went to sleep Then I woke up for class

00:28and found it was still at 5% AirPower would not have this problem But Apple said it would not go on sale until the next year So I waited and waited and waited until the ninth “next year” I already had a job and it was still not out Then I searched online And guess what?

00:45Apple had already canceled it in 2019 To make up for those wasted nine years I decided to build my own AirPower And mine had to be even better Apple’s idea was to charge your phone anywhere on the pad So I wanted to build an AirPower the size of a desk You would only need to put your phone on the desk and it would charge You could even use it as a normal work desk The idea behind AirPower is easy to understand This is a wireless charging coil Put your phone above it and it will charge With enough coils to cover the whole pad

01:14your phone can charge anywhere on it But covering a whole desk would need 600 charging coils That would be too expens... I mean… It would be very bad for the environment Actually there is a smarter way to solve this Instead of using hundreds of coils why not let one coil travel across the whole desk?

01:30There is a type of wireless charger that can track your phone You put your phone on the pad and the coil moves under it to charge it We only needed to bring this idea to a desk So I built a simple round prototype A camera hangs above it When someone puts a phone on the desk the camera sends its position to the motors The motors then move the coil under the phone and charge it It sounds like a perfect plan Let’s see how well it works

02:09It works perfectly Except for three very serious problems First the motors are too slow Though they may still be faster than I make videos Second there are too many moving wires inside the desk They look messy and can get caught on other parts The biggest problem is that the desk is just too boring So I decided to spend big and give it a feature One month later the new desk was ready First I replaced the motors so the coil could move faster To manage the moving wires I made this A double-ended cable reel It connects to the motor

02:38When the motor moves out it pulls the cable from the reel When the motor moves back the reel quietly returns under the desk This cable system took me a whole week to build I was so happy when it finally worked Then I found out that something called a linear slide exists It has no moving wires and is much faster Anyway we managed the wires perfectly As long as you do not look under the desk So how do we make the desk less boring?

03:00Let’s put a phone on it I turned the desktop into a transparent screen Whenever you place your phone on the desk our little ferry cat of light and power moves under it It then summons mysterious electric power from the cyber world to charge your phone Once one device is full the desk looks for the next device it can charge And starts charging it When there is nothing left the coil returns under the keyboard I also put a receiver coil inside the keyboard

03:30So it can charge wirelessly too Some of you may ask But hey your desk only has one coil Can it charge three devices at once like AirPower I do not know Can you use one straw to drink from three cups Of course When the desk finds several devices the coil quickly moves between them If the coil moves faster than the devices can notice then from our view it is charging all three at once I just made all of that up I also put two fixed coils in the corners You can charge extra devices there There is also a Mac mini inside the desk You can connect a monitor

04:00and use it as a computer Besides charging animations and normal information the screen has three special features At the start of each day you can set a few tasks Every time you finish a task a new dot lights up You will see what these dots do at the end of the video For the second feature I added standing desk legs I also changed their control system If the camera sees that you have been sitting for an hour and the desk is still down the whole desk lights up Then the charging cat comes out and reminds you to move A raise button also appears on the desk Tap it

04:29and the desk rises to my saved height Another health feature moves my cup in front of me every hour It reminds me to drink more water To make this work I added an electromagnet under the coil Finally when your phone is charging a Focus Mode button appears Press it, and the desk lights up A 25-minute timer appears under your phone It reminds you to focus for 25 minutes If you pick up your phone before the timer ends the desk will refuse to charge it when you put it back I added this because I want to stay focused while I work

04:58And stop checking my phone all the time Finally after nine years I have my own AirPower Pro Max Ultra Plus It can charge your devices It can remind you what you need to do today It cares about your health It can help you use your phone less And most importantly whenever you finish a day of work it says Okay everyone That's all for this video thank you for watching see you next time