It’s fair to say that MagSafe is a much-loved part of the Apple ecosystem: ask owners of any of the best iPhones what they think of it, and you’ll likely get a unanimously positive response. The magnetic attachment system lets you wirelessly charge your iPhone, attach accessories to its back, connect it to stands and car phone holders, and a lot more.
Like all good Apple products, it’s incredibly simple to use, yet performs exceptionally well with admirable reliability. On the surface, it would seem to be a roaring success story for both Apple and its customers.
Yet despite all that, I can’t help but feel disappointed by MagSafe. Sure, it’s great at what it does, and it’s easy to understand why so many people love it, myself included. But when I think back to how it was first introduced to the world, I can’t escape the idea that it just hasn’t lived up to its potential. Far from being the revolutionary innovation it was hyped up to be, MagSafe feels so much more limited than it should be.
AirPower’s ambition
MagSafe is a brilliant idea, but it wasn’t Apple’s first attempt at a boundary-pushing wireless charger. That accolade goes to AirPower.
AirPower was an experimental wireless charger that introduced the idea that you could put any Apple device capable of wireless charging — including iPhones, Apple Watches, and AirPods cases — onto the pad, in any order and orientation, and they’d all juice up to full.
The trouble is that AirPower required a mass of overlapping charging coils on the inside, and this created far too much heat to be able to operate safely. Embarrassingly for Apple, the company had to cancel AirPower after publicly revealing it at one of its own events — a chastening lesson on revealing products before they're ready that Apple apparently has not fully learned (cough Apple Intelligence cough).
MagSafe, then, emerged from this milieu. It was essentially brought in because AirPower failed, but MagSafe was a much less aspirational project. Yet in lessening the scope, Apple was able to create a working product that has become highly popular among the firm’s fans.
But when you know that history, MagSafe’s drawbacks become more apparent. AirPower was undoubtedly the more ambitious device and would have had much more of that “Apple magic” if the engineers had managed to pull it off.
MagSafe still has some of that magic, but being able to drop your iPhone down anywhere on your charger and have it power up would have been a far stronger embodiment of the “it just works” philosophy. Sadly, that never became a reality.
We were promised more
MagSafe’s more conservative approach compared to AirPower isn’t the only way that I feel it’s falling short. When we listen to Apple’s own words, it becomes apparent that MagSafe could — and should — be so much more.
When the MagSafe charging system was first introduced to the world in October 2020, Apple promised a “robust and ever-expanding” ecosystem of MagSafe accessories. The company claimed that it was “enabling a whole new ecosystem for MagSafe” and that “We can’t wait to see the innovative ways that others will use MagSafe.”
Yet while there is some variety, the ideas that companies have come up with haven’t been as inspiring as I’d hoped. Almost everything falls into one of three camps: cases, charging peripherals, and small magnetic accessories (such as wallets and kickstands).
Worse, I can’t say that anything has really changed since MagSafe first launched over five years ago. The world of MagSafe accessories seemed to have settled into place almost as soon as the new standard arrived, and it's never really developed since then. That’s as true for third-party devices as it is for Apple’s own efforts.
However, there’s one thing that I’m hoping will shake things up a bit: the iPhone Ultra. Apple’s foldable phone is not just a new product — it’s a whole new form factor. And not only that, it’s a device that’s designed to be carried in your pocket yet is also one that folds out to a sizeable proportion in use. It’s set to become the largest iPhone ever in terms of dimensions, and that means there could be a whole lot of surface area for MagSafe accessories.
With more room to play with, device makers could get creative with what they can snap onto the back of the phone. No longer will they be limited to the narrow width of a standard iPhone; they'll instead have the iPhone Ultra’s wider form factor in their sights. Who knows? Maybe someone will be able to dream up a MagSafe peripheral that works when the phone is both folded and unfolded.
It’s this new device that could prompt the serious overhaul that MagSafe has been crying out for.
Really, I would have wanted to see more creative solutions far earlier in MagSafe’s lifetime. After all, we’ve had years of sluggish development and timid product ideas. But with the iPhone Ultra resetting expectations, this might be a golden opportunity for MagSafe to finally come into its own.
As they say, better late than never.
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