Well, as I say, it's your choice (and AdamUK's) whether or not to believe that there are any e-passport exceptions in the post-1 April 2016 VWP world.

If the DHS publicity, the gov.uk advice and the travel media advice are all wrong, and it is still possible today to travel on the VWP using an old non-chipped British passport, I will be happy to come back to apologise.

I'm not sure why anyone should want an apology here unless it were to come directly from the USG about the confusion caused over this matter.

DHS Secretary still has a fair amount of authority to make some determinations in this area and play games with even signed laws. Congress either can't or didn't want to eradicate the US Admin's flexibility to use the VWP to get VWP countries (and others) to do as the USG wants them to do. [Part of that involves allowing for phased implementation or exceptions in some cases as DHS sees fit for the Admin.] The US VWP program really is a carrot and a stick for the US Admin to use as the US Admin sees fit, and the US Congress knows it too.

Perhaps with the move to (and expansion of) evisa regimes -- and the US VWP ESTA approach is now a borderline evisa regime -- perhaps the carrot and stick power of the US VWP will drop. For better or worse, we are a long ways away from that happening.

A practical example
 

Folks,

I seem to be able to confirm that there are still exceptions allowed to the ePassport rule. On Sunday (3rd April) I flew LHR to JFK (and then on to LAS) with an IOM passport issued in September 2006 that is machine readable, with a digital photo, but not chipped. I checked and my ESTA was still valid, up until the end of my current passport - Sept 2016.

This did cause some confusion - I was not allowed to check in on line but when I spoke to BAEC they confirmed that everything was okay - they had a record of my valid ESTA but the online system didn't cater for the exception to the date rule, and it would have to be overridden at LHR, which it duly was.

There was also no issue at JFK when I arrived.

So, on Friday I got information from the BA and US Government websites to say this was allowed, it was confirmed also by BAEC and in practise it happened - although with a little bit of manual work.

Cheers

Manx Flyer

Let me guess. Your British/Manx passport mentions the European Union?

It only does that still for British citizens and not for British subjects without British citizenship.