It happened to me. The Uber app assured me that a driver was on the way, then it was late, then it canceled, and not a single driver was available within the area.

This was at 6a to catch an 8a flight in a Bay Area town that’s 35 min from SFO.

Uber and Lyft are now exactly like cab companies, the only difference being that their “credit card machine works”

Private car services work remarkably well if you’re done with Uber, Lyft, or taxis not showing up.

Uber, once the taxi killer, soon the exact swap-in replacement :)

just like online streaming promised to replace the tv, now more and more a drop-in replace for it in a (not so) different distribution technology.

Yeah, it removed the linear time constraints but it's just a TV.

They want the time constraints back too. So many streaming services these days still have shows that air episodes at regular times rather than a while season at once. They also drop content regularly, offer to steam content for limited times, or only provide recent episodes.

They can't wait to back to the point where they can dictate people's schedules and induce FOMO in their customers. They just have to condition us slowly into accepting it after netflix spoiled us.

Well the main thing with taxis is that getting any ride to show up on demand is a shitshow, whereas with ubers you just have to wait 5-10 minutes (at least in my area).

Except when you reserve an Uber and it never shows up, as I literally just described.