To understand the 2022 date, you have to understand what the W3C currently means by "Recommendation."

From here http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/FAQ:

For a spec to become a REC today, it requires two 100% complete and fully interoperable implementations, which is proven by each successfully passing literally thousands of test cases (20,000 tests for the whole spec would probably be a conservative estimate)

The candidate recommendation phase, which WHATWG expects to happen next year is a much more relevant date. That aside I do wonder if this level of effort isn't just wasted pedantry.

Ian is not saying people should wait until 2022. That quote is taken out of context.

He was saying that it is useful well before it is an official recommendation. He is a member of the WHAT-WG and Apple was one of the founding members so what he's saying is pretty much in lock-step with apple and the webkit team.

Sure, I agree that 2022 sounds absurdly conservative estimate. By then all browsers will support at least HTML8 :-P

But my point was that giving impression that one company already has it all ready is stretching the truth as HTML5 is still a moving target.

Many browsers still do not support full css2 support. Why should we expect full css3 support? Thats why the 2022 seems so far away. It states FULL support not partial like most all browsers currently do.