By John Moltz
February 17, 2023 2:00 PM PT
This Week in Apple: Delayed gratification
The Air might be getting bigger up here, this Mastodon deal keeps getting better and better, and the Apple headset get kicked down the road (disclaimer: kicking an Apple headset down the road will void your warranty).
Serious Air time
How big can a MacBook Air get before it’s no longer able to achieve lift? Asking for a rumored 15-inch Air, possibly coming as soon as April.
15-Inch MacBook Air Rumored to Launch in April as Display Production Begins
15-Inch MacBook Air Will Reportedly Have M2 Chip
Speaking personally, I’m happy with my 13-inch Air and, if anything, a return of an 11-inch Air would be more likely to tempt me. Still, this is a smart move by Apple. Plenty of non-pro users want more screen real estate.
It you’re a fan of smaller laptops, however, you can hang your hat on still other rumors that have the company returning to the 12-inch form factor.
“Apple May Still Be Planning to Reintroduce 12-Inch MacBook”
I wouldn’t use a hat you particularly like all that much, though.
In 2022, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said that he hadn’t heard of any plans for a new 12-inch MacBook model. Display analyst Ross Young similarly expressed “skepticism” about Apple launching new MacBooks with display sizes below 13-inches.
Presumably such a device would be another one-port wonder like the previous 12-inch MacBook (although probably with a MagSafe port) but such a device has more the… air… of Jony Ive than today’s Apple.
From Musk to dawn
Let us rejoice, for Tapbots has released a beta for Ivory for the Mac, rounding out the Mastodon user experience on Apple platforms for those lucky enough to click the TestFlight link fast enough.
Further, when the beta for iOS 16.4 was released, Mastodon aficionados were treated to another pleasant surprise: Apple has added rich content previews for Mastodon posts to the upcoming operating system release. So, pretty soon Mastodon will be a full-fledged replacement for whatever the name of that social media site we used to use was.
Look at our little pachyderm! All grown up!
OH, MY GOD, RUN! IT’S STAMPEDING!
Meanwhile, on that other site, sentient mid-life crisis Elon Musk has had quite the week. First he fired an engineer for the high crime and misdemeanor of informing him that his reach on the site he spent $44 billion to buy is dropping. Not to worry, Muskstanistas, your very stable genius reacted quickly by ordering changes to the algorithm so his tweets will now get shoved into peoples’ timelines like ground organ meats into a sausage casing.
Problem fixed.
Things are going equally well for the dullest edgelord in the drawer at his other company as Tesla has fired dozens of workers in retaliation for trying to unionize. Free speech is super cool when it’s about harassing people and stuff but not when it’s about collective bargaining. Important distinction. Also great news for Musk is that the company has had to issue a recall for hundreds of thousands of vehicles because… let me just pretend to put on my reading glasses here… they might kill a whole bunch of people.
“Tesla recalls 362,758 vehicles, says Full Self-Driving Beta software may cause crashes”
“May cause crashes” is not a great side-effect to have to list at the end of a car commercial. Ideally you wouldn’t be listing any side effects because it’s a car commercial.
It might be slightly less bad if Musk hadn’t claimed for years that fully autonomous driving that would be safer than humans was just around the corner. A corner his company’s cars apparently couldn’t navigate, causing them to crash through a guardrail and explode dramatically over Reality Gulch. Earlier this year, the SEC decided to investigate these claims, so this hasn’t been a great start to 2023 for Musk.
Headset headwinds
As a long time follower of Apple rumors, this is one of my favorite tropes: that thing that Apple hasn’t even announced yet is “delayed”.
“Apple Delays Debut of AR/VR Headset Until June”
Based on a report by Mark Gurman, the device has experienced another “setback”, which is probably just as well because I only got about $1.24 out of the couch cushions and $100 for my paper route, leaving me a little shy of the $3,000 it’s supposed to cost.
It’s still mind-bending to try to imagine the kind of causality loop that results from delaying something that doesn’t have a release date yet. Likewise I must sadly announce the delay of me winning the Lotto. I had expected it to be this week but there was an unfortunate setback.
I didn’t win.
That was the setback.
Are there internal dates that Apple has to get these things out? Sure. But the reason it doesn’t announce them to the world and say “The Apple Car will be available on March 1st, 2025! Put it on your calendar!” is because stuff happens. Anyone’s who’s worked in project management knows there’s a reason OmniPlan and MS Project exist, and that’s to help you manage changes in deadlines.
But take it from applecarfan69 on Reddit, the Apple Car is totally coming on March 1st, 2025.
Unless it gets delayed.
[John Moltz is a Six Colors contributor. You can find him on Mastodon at Mastodon.social/@moltz and he sells items with references you might get on Cotton Bureau.]