Apple car ambitions are where the rubber never meets the road

One of the shining tenets of the Apple rumor mill is that timing is not your problem, it’s Apple’s. If you say Apple will release something in the third week of January in 1997 and it doesn’t release it until summer of 2032, that’s not because you were wrong about a date, it’s because the product was “delayed”. Yes, Apple screwed up somehow and “missed” the release date that came from your uncle who totally works at Apple. You will be proven 100 percent correct when Apple does finally release something, anything, that remotely looks like the thing you said they were going to release years ago.

Now that we have absolved the rumor mill of any and all wrongdoing, let’s look at a couple of examples of how Apple has totally blown it yet again.

First off, more than one pundit predicted that Apple would announce its AR headset this summer. And why not?! We were roundly told for years that Apple was “behind” on this technology. Get with it, Apple! The Macalope can’t shake a stick without hitting someone on the street wearing headsets from Meta, Samsung and Brand Z Headsets Inc. He can’t stop himself! That’s why there are several restraining orders against him.

Now Apple is expected to announce an offering some time early in 2023, but that’s going to be some high-priced device ordinary Joes with Classic Macs for heads certainly won’t be able to afford. A more affordable option won’t ship until 2025 at the earliest. Even if Apple’s headset is only “delayed” about a year, it’s not really going to arrive for a while.

But, Macalope, you say, what about how far behind Apple is on self-driving cars?

OMG, SO BEHIND!

As you may recall, it was just seven years ago that pundits were claiming Apple would be selling self-driving cars by 2020. Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but that didn’t happen. Possibly their expectations were skewed by credulously listening to the guy who said he was going to buy Twitter and then trash talked the company until the share price went down then manufactured a reason to not buy Twitter about how his company was perpetually just months from shipping self-driving cars.

2016: ”Two years until self-driving cars are on the road – is Elon Musk right?” Somewhere Ian Betteridge looked up suddenly from enjoying a bowl of soup, though he did not know why.

2017: ”Elon Musk: All New Cars Will Be Self-Driving in 10 Years”, in which he said “that the first level four autonomous cars from Tesla will arrive by the end of this year.” They did not.

2019: ”Musk predicts the self-driving Tesla is just around the corner.” If that was true in 2019, then you should have run for cover before it came careening around that corner, mowing down everyone in its path. The very genius father of who knows how many knew who was standing in the way of progress, though, that’s for sure.

Elon Musk says he’s certain that Tesla cars will be ready to drive themselves by the end of the year — if only regulators would allow it.

Stupid regulators! Making sure my robot cars don’t run over random children who may or may not be mine!

Wait, is this why he’s so hot on making cars that drive themselves? So he doesn’t have to drive 50 kids to swim practice?

Anyway, the point is no one should have been listening to him. It was patently obvious self-driving cars were years away, and they still are. Particularly Apple’s.

“Inside Apple’s Eight-Year Struggle to Build a Self-Driving Car”

According to The Information, one of Apple’s test vehicles nearly hit a jogger earlier this year after first misidentifying them as a stationary object. (No word yet on whether the jogger was one of Elon Musk’s children.) And this is not the only incidence of Apple’s self-driving software struggling when the rubber meets the road.

So, let’s not be in a rush to get these new products, shall we? No matter who’s telling us they’re just around the corner.