Let’s talk about dates.
As Indiana Jones famously said: “You eat ‘em!” He was not, however, talking about calendar dates, which is what the Macalope is talking about, so he doesn’t know why he brought that up. Also, some of those dates were later poisoned. So forget the Macalope brought that up.
Recently, there was a bit of a kerfuffle—a to-do, if you will—a happening, but not the dumb kind involving killer plants. A different dumb kind involving Apple rumors. There were rumors that Apple was planning an event for March 23 in which it would announce new iPads and the long-rumored AirTags, which have been so long-rumored the Macalope will only believe they are real when he sees them. And possibly not even then.
Fool me 12 times, Apple.
Now, not only was this event rumored, but the rumor mongers were so sure it was happening that several said it was “confirmed” and one even said it was so confirmed that he’d shave his eyebrows off if it didn’t happen.
Guess what happened?!
Well, a big ship got stuck in the Suez Canal for days, but there was no Apple event on the 23rd. That is not a thing that happened. The eyebrow shaving is a thing that happened, however. Because integrity in the Apple rumor biz means actually shaving the body parts you said you’d shave.
Now, the Macalope has heard hints that Apple may indeed have actually planned to have an event on the 23rd and postponed it for one reason or another. But such are the vicissitudes of betting your facial hair that Apple events are “confirmed”. They’re not really confirmed until the invitations go out.
IDG
People like to razz Apple about products that didn’t ship or shipped “late” when a release date was never publicly announced. But Apple’s internal dates are not promises. If an editor asks the Macalope how many words his column is going to be and the Macalope thinks to himself, “800,” but then he also thinks to himself, “On the other hand, writing takes time and there are many good shows on TV to watch these days. Such as the historically incorrect space show and the show with the birdman and the man who stares. Perhaps 600 is enough words.” So he says to the editor, “600,” and the editor says, “Great!” That does not mean The Macalope missed the word count of 800 by only writing 600.
See how that works?
Apple has certainly missed announced dates before. It missed more than one release date for OS X versions in the 2000s and more recently in 2017 it announced that the AirPower charging mat would be coming the next year and not only did that not happen but the company scrapped the whole project two years later. (Side note: While Apple apparently couldn’t pull off a “place up to three devices anywhere” charging mat, Xiaomi apparently has, albeit three years later. Of course, it’s possible that Xiaomi doesn’t care quite as much as Apple does about how hot the mat gets, but it’s almost certain that at $90 it’s substantially cheaper than what Apple was going to charge. At that price, you could probably buy two and just move your devices back and forth to keep the mats cool.)
There’s missing a date and then there’s missing a date and flipping the whole table over.
Wait, was Apple possibly expecting something to be delivered somewhere on that cargo ship, thus necessitating moving the event? Well, the Macalope’s not betting his eyebrows on it. Even with the amount of excess fur he’s got.
In addition to being a mythical beast, the Macalope is not an employee of Macworld. As a result, the Macalope is always free to criticize any media organization. Even ours.
