This week: Apple might be eyeing 2020 for their first car, but you can catch our most wanted features and price expectations right now. Plus: Cupertino pay massive bonuses to poach top talent; the insane acceleration of Tesla’s new electric car; the new and notable from iOS 8.3 beta; Toyota says “no thanks” to CarPlay; and finally, your listener questions, answered!

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Full show notes ahead!

Forget Comcast, ZTE takes the cake with the most blatant Apple-ripoff-of-the-month award. The Chinese company’s latest handset, the Blade S6, is clearly… inspired by the iPhone.

While it doesn’t have the identical chamfered edges of Samsung’s upcoming phone, it does copy the most iconic part of every Apple product.

Didn’t get your invite to the exclusive Apple Watch event on March 9? Apple’s still going to let everyone in on the action with a livestream of the event from the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

Apple posted a link to the live stream for the March 9th event on it’s homepage today. The keynote kicks off at 10AM PDT, when it’s expect that Apple will announce all the details about Apple Watch.

We’re still waiting for the release of iOS 8.2 but Apple just pushed out the second beta build of iOS 8.3 to developers.

The software update was made available this morning in the iOS Dev Center. Along with iOS 8.3 beta 2, Apple released beta build 2 of Xcode 6.3, which includes Swift 1.2. There’s also a new pre-release version of Apple TV beta for the third-generation Apple TV.

The iOS 8.3 beta 2 release notes don’t mention any new features, but we’ll tell you about all the goodies we find as soon as it’s installed on our iPhones. In the meantime, check out our feature on the new additions in iOS 8.3 beta 1, which included a new emoji layout, CarPlay features, two-factor authentication for Google, and Apple Pay support for China. Or use  the direct download links below to jump into iOS 8.3 beta 2:

The mysterious Apple minivans roaming the roads in California, Florida and elsewhere are generally assumed to be self-driving cars, but they are not. They are almost undoubtedly collecting data for maps.

They are “almost certainly a mapping vehicle,” said Paul Godsmark, chief technology officer with the Canadian Automated Vehicles Centre of Excellence, who examined photos of the mystery vehicles at Cult of Mac’s request.

While most people are excited about the possibility that Apple might build a car to take on Tesla, former CEO of General Motors, Dan Akerson, has some warning words for Tim Cook: namely that Apple should steer clear of getting into the automotive industry.

“If I were an Apple shareholder, I wouldn’t be very happy,” Akerson told Bloomberg. “I would be highly suspect of the long-term prospect of getting into a low-margin, heavy-manufacturing.”

Well, if anyone would know, it’s the ex-head of beleaguered GM.

As rumors of an Apple car start to gain speed, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster has run the figures to find out what kind of business proposition automobiles could be for a company that tends to steer clear of small or low-margin markets.

His verdict? If Apple cars were even a “moderate success,” Tim Cook and pals could be looking at an extra $50 billion per year in revenues. To put that figure in context, it would be an increase of 23 percent on top of the already impressive cash-generating machine that was Apple in 2015.

Remind us to remortgage our homes to buy AAPL stock!

This week: The iCar rumors are swirling. Is Apple preparing to give Tesla a run for its money? Plus: The industries we want Apple to conquer next; why we need Cupertino to get into the space game; college kids love iPhones more than sexy time; we tell you our favorite packs for toting about your Apple and DSLR gear; and stay tuned to the end for our new segment, “Cross the Streams,” where we’ll cover the shows we can’t stop binge-watching.

Our thanks to Varidesk for support this episode. With models starting at just $275, Varidesk is the highest-quality, least-expensive way that we know of to get started with a standing desk. And you should absolutely check them out, because moving to a standing desk will change your life.

Full show notes ahead!

Johann Jungwirth is a new Apple employee with one of the world’s most unbelievable job titles.

Until the middle of last year, Jungwirth headed up the big Mercedes-Benz R&D facility in Silicon Valley that, among other things, is responsible for the futuristic self-driving car you see below. (The astonishing Mercedes F 015 is very real, BTW).

Jungwirth was hired by Apple last September and given the title of “Director of Mac Systems Engineering,” according to his LinkedIn page. The title appears to be total hogwash. Jungwirth spent his entire 20-year career working on connected cars, not computers.

Apple is famous for obfuscating about its new hires to throw off competitors and journalists, and the company is reportedly working on a top-secret electric car. If Apple is interested in the stuff Jungwirth has worked on, it’s going to be a wild ride.

If you’re a Pinterest user with an eye on app discovery, Apple has the perfect deal for you. The companies have partnered to create “App Pins,” allowing users to install iOS apps without having to leave the Pinterest app.

App Pins work like regular pins on Pinterest’s virtual pinboard, only with the added functionality of an “Install” button next to the regular “Pin it,” alongside an extra “view this on the App Store” option. App Pins can be spotted by way of a small “App Store” badge that incorporates Apple’s logo.

“We can be a really powerful service for app discovery, which is a problem that still really hasn’t been solved,” Pinterest co-founder Evan Sharp told The New York Times. “Our specialty is really connecting people to the things they want to do.”