I am disagreeing with the article. Of course, when designing/selling new train systems, a lot of showmanship and gadgetery are involved, but there are real shortcomings with current train systems which cause people to develop new technologies.
First of all: trains are great, there are many places where they perform admirably. Many cities have a great subway network, countries like France, Japan, Taiwan and now China have great high speed reail networks. So if there are transportation problems to solve, it should be a no-brainer to consider traditional train systems first.
However, there are shortcomings wiht traditional train systems, these new systems try to address. One big limitation for trains is, where to put the tracks. Inside cities, going underground usually is the only solution. With traditional rail, this is extremely expensive and also a slow process. In Munich, not log ago the digging for a new underground train line started - it is expected to take a whole decade and going to be quite expensive (which has delayed the project by another decade, as people were discussing costs). Outside of cities, rail is possible, but still faces problems to get the necessary ground. Noise is a further problems with trains. Finally, most traditional train systems are not operated autonomusly, so costs are too high for high frequencies and often enough there are just not enough drivers available.
These shortcomings create a lot of creativity to address them. The Boring companie tries to lower tunnel costs by making them less in diameter. Other systems try carts which run on or hang from stilts, reducing the space needed or allowing the train installations to go on top of existing roads.
Maglevs are still a huge topic. On the one side, they do allow higher speeds, as rails get mechanically challenging above 300kph. The only challenge for maglev is air resistance, there is no risk of derailing. Also, at any speed, maglevs are less noisy than rails, they can accelerate faster than rail and most importanly, go up much higher inclines. Maglev is therefore not only interesting for long-distance transportation, but also inside city regions, especially due to the lower noise and also because of autonomous operations. A good example is this maglev system: https://transportsystemboegl.com/
It is designed for city regions, fully autonomous and not just some technology concept, but ready-to-buy. It has been developed by a major construction company. That means, they won't just sell you some fancy technology, they are going to build the whole infrastructure for you ready to use. This is one of the two companies responsible for the quick building process at the Tesla Giga Berlin factory. They are basically factory producing the parts for industrial buildings and just assembling them on-site.
(Ironically Volkswagen is also building a new factory for electric cars in Bremen, Germany at the moment and it looks exactly like what Tesla is building, as they ordered the factory from the same company)