We just can’t let Apple rumors die, even if they’ll never be true

Welcome to our weekly roundup of all the Apple news you missed this week, in a handy bite-sized summary. We call it Apple Breakfast because we love it with a cup of coffee or tea in the morning, but it’s also cool if you want to read it over lunch or dinner.

The Rumors That Won’t Die

Some of Apple’s crueler fans used to laugh at poor old Gene Munster, the otherwise respected analyst who erases his writing book by predicting that over and over. this year Apple would finally launch a television. It was later revealed that Apple had indeed been working on that, but this probably wasn’t much comfort.

Even Munster isn’t hitting the drum for the iTelevision these days, but there are plenty of other long-running rumors that refuse to die. Such as the foldable iPhone, which we have been writing about since 2017 and which has been the subject of patent activity since 2011. According to the latest rumors, that device is still years away.

Or the Apple Car, which we know a team has been working on for a while but, oddly enough, may never lead to a real product, according to this week’s rumor from the CEO of Volkswagen. VW should know a thing or two about Apple sagas, negotiated a potential partnership with Steve Jobs back in 2007, and actually delivered the iBeetle in 2013.

The beauty of these rumours, whether you’re an analyst writing investor notes or an SEO-savvy web publication, is that they continue to drive clicks and pageviews for years and almost never require official correction. If Apple doesn’t announce the iPhotocopier at this fall’s launch event, you can just say it’s “delayed,” resulting, if you’re lucky, in a lot of social engagement from disappointed readers — and start happily predicting next spring. It is content without consequences.

Other than that, it’s pretty well established at this point that Apple’s R&D department is experimenting with many product designs that will never make it to public. Jobs once said that focus means saying no to a thousand ideas for every idea you go through, but the company’s engineers like to mess around with hundreds of nos before making that decision. You can reasonably argue that Apple is or has worked on almost every tech concept, and chances are you’re not wrong.

To be fair, it’s also worth bearing in mind that long-running rumors sometimes come true. The first iPhone prediction was written in 2002, five years before it came out, and the AirTag was the subject of years of speculation prior to launch. And who knows, maybe the Apple Car and the foldable iPhone will be added in the future.

But the most likely candidate is Apple’s long-rumored mixed-reality headset. Renowned analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who risked doing a Munster, predicted in 2019 that it would launch in 2020 and in 2021 that it would launch in 2022 – and now says it will be here in January 2023. But you’ll find that the last of those predictions is significantly more specific than the last, with Tim Cook himself dropping a strong hint this week that something is in the cards. The odds look good.

Again, who knows? When I look back on this column a year from now, I will probably quote it as a woefully erroneous prediction from the past. “But this year,” I add, “will be different…”

Trending: Top Stories of the Week

We have the . rated new MacBook Pro† Roman Loyola calls it a powerful tweener.

On what topic are here five charts that illustrate the brute force of Apple’s M2 chip†

iOS 16 includes dozens of new features, but will you actually use them? We’re rounding up five that will change the way you use your iPhone.

In this week’s Different Think column, we ask Apple to please stop killing the things we hate†

Apple’s latest competitors are: Nothing… literal.

Take a walk through the history of Mac OSfrom 1984’s System 0.97 to this year’s Ventura.

The rumor mill

The M2 roadmap is excitingbut the next stop may not be until 2023.

A reference to a new Siri remote in iOS 16 suggests the Apple TV will be updated in the fall†

Podcast of the week

Apple’s latest laptop is here, and there’s a lot to be excited about — isn’t it? The new meets the old in the new 13-inch M2 MacBook Pro, the subject of our discussion in this episode of the Macworld Podcast.

You can watch every episode of the Macworld Podcast on Spotify, Soundcloud, the Podcasts app or our own site.

Software updates, bugs and other issues

This is why you don’t have to worry about the Italian iPhone Hack†

The second iOS 16 developer beta has arrived: here’s how to get it. Among other things, it brings a messy solution to a message editing problem.

Google has announced security and interface updates for: Chrome on iPhone†

And with that, we’re done for this week. If you’d like to receive regular round-ups, sign up for our newsletters. You can also follow us on Twitter for breaking news stories. See you next Saturday, enjoy your weekend and stay Appley.