April 22, 2013: The world gets its first Apple car. Well, kind of. In reality, the iBeetle is a collaboration with German automaker Volkswagen that offers a car “stylistically linked” to Apple.
This means Apple-inspired colors, a built-in docking station for your iPhone, and a special app that lets you control the car’s features.
Following the shutdown of the Apple Car project, the Cupertino giant is laying off more than 600 employees. Many other affected employees worked on developing micro LED displays for the Apple Watch and future products.
The laid-off employees worked in and around Santa Clara, near Apple’s California headquarters.
Teams in Cupertino are working on Apple personal home robotic devices, including a mobile robot and a table-top device with a moving display, according to a new report.
These early efforts toward Apple robots could constitute future revenue sources now that the Project Titan car sits on the scrap heap.
A smartphone giant just came out with its first car. No, Apple hasn’t about-faced on its plans to scrap its decade-long Project Titan car program. Instead, Chinese tech behemoth Xiaomi unveiled a sporty electric vehicle Thursday it hopes will rival those made by Porsche and Tesla. It’s the Xiaomi SU7 EV series.
This week on Cult of Mac’s podcast: Surprise! Apple drops new MacBook Airs with M3 chips inside. The new laptops’ specs and first benchmarks make the performance boost sound quite impressive indeed. But what should we expect next for the MacBook, and when should we expect it?
Join us for a titillating conversation about the current state (and future) of Apple’s laptops.
Also on The CultCast:
Apple launched the M3 MacBook Airs with amazing specs, but nothing but a press release. Sounds like it’s about to do the same with new iPads. There’s a lot to look forward to if you’re a fan of Apple tablets.
An inside look at the canceled Apple car project offers fascinating details about crazy prototypes, dashed dreams and crushing indecision.
How cool would a MacBook with a folding 20-inch screen be?
The European Union demands a cool 1.8 billion euros from Apple over its dealings with Spotify. Sounds like a shakedown!
iOS 17.4 brings some useful new features to your iPhone, and Griffin tells us all about the best ones.
Listen to this week’s episode of The CultCast in the Podcasts app or your favorite podcast app. (Be sure to subscribe and leave us a review if you like it!) Or watch the video live stream, embedded below.
The history of the Apple car is littered with wild prototypes, astonishing hubris and a deadly dose of crippling indecision, according to a damning report that offers the best picture yet of the secretive Project Titan.
It sounds like many Apple employees — and even key execs — viewed the self-driving car project as a doomed effort nearly from the start.
“The big arc was poor leadership that let the program linger, while everyone else in Apple was cringing,” said an anonymous Apple executive who worked on Project Titan.
If you want to know how a massive research and development project can crash and burn, this new behind-the-scenes account of Project Titan will show you how. It’s filled with gory details of unachievable goals, chaotic management, bad decisions (and sometimes no decisions at all).
This week on Cult of Mac’s podcast: Apple pulled the plug on Project Titan, its not-so-secret, decade-long effort to build a self-driving electric car. After spending a reported $10 billion on R&D, the moonshot Apple car project winds up canceled — in favor of generative AI!
Let’s just say we have some opinions.
Also on The CultCast:
Apple’s FineWoven iPhone cases don’t seem to hold up so well. In fact, a high-profile journo says hers is “browning like a rotten banana.” What gives?
Apple Arcade’s shifting mission means kids will be winners (but indie devs will be losers).
Waiting for a second-gen Vision Pro that will be lighter, brighter and less expensive? You might want to rethink that plan.
Listen to this week’s episode of The CultCast in the Podcasts app or your favorite podcast app. (Be sure to subscribe and leave us a review if you like it!) Or watch the video live stream, embedded below.
Apple pulled the plug Tuesday on the doomed Project Titan, its decade-long attempt at building a self-driving electric car. The company reportedly will reassign software engineers from the autonomous vehicle project to work on generative AI.
Some of my colleagues here at Cult of Mac find the Apple car cancellation depressing and sad. And, yes, it was always fun imagining what an Apple car would be like. However, Apple’s now-abandoned car strategy is already being executed at the peak of what’s possible by every other automaker. And whereas OpenAI, Google and Facebook clearly aren’t remotely interested in waiting for an ethical solution to their many, many problems, I think Apple has the best chance of bringing about positive change in this field.
Apple’s reported cancellation of its electric car project strikes me as one of the most demoralizing decisions the company has ever made. And I’m not sure which is worse, the Apple car cancellation, or the revelation of how Cupertino plans to reroute most of Project Titan’s brainpower.
The long-rumored Apple car was never a done deal, obviously. But it stood out as a moonshot project capable of transforming transportation and improving our everyday lives.
Now we find out that Apple won’t be going to the moon. Instead, Cupertino might be taking a me-too detour to Gibberish City.
This week on Cult of Mac’s podcast: Vision Pro preorders didn’t exactly go smoothly last week. In our post-mortem, we discuss what went right, what went wrong, and why we can’t wait to finally get our hands on Apple’s headset.
Also on The CultCast:
Apple plans to radically change the App Store … for Europeans.
An update on new iPads and new Macs that seem poised to pop out of Tim Cook’s magic pipeline.
The Apple car is still on the road to release. However, it might arrive a little later (and a lot less amazing) than we were led to believe.
Listen to this week’s episode of The CultCast in the Podcasts app or your favorite podcast app. (Be sure to subscribe and leave us a review if you like it!) Or watch the video live stream, embedded below.
Apple still plans to put a car on the road, but the release date for the Apple car is sometime in 2028, according to a new report.
Designers had to slam the brakes on hopes for full self-driving capabilities. The electric vehicle allegedly will offer some driver-assistance capabilities but these will fall far short of full autonomy. Still, with the downgraded feature set, the product has a better chance of hitting its deadline than before.
This week on Cult of Mac’s podcast: After nearly a week with Apple’s new hardware, we’re serving up our first hands-on impressions. Is the iPhone 15 Pro Max too big — and/or too hot — to handle? Is Apple Watch Ultra 2 worth the upgrade? What about Apple Watch Series 9?
And seriously, Apple … you call that pink?
Also on The CultCast:
Griffin runs us through some of the coolest new features in macOS Sonoma.
OMG we’ve already got iPhone 16 rumors.
And we wrap up with a couple of big fat bummers from our favorite source of Apple insider info and tech haikus.
Listen to this week’s episode of The CultCast in the Podcasts app or your favorite podcast app. (Be sure to subscribe and leave us a review if you like it!) Or watch the video live stream, embedded below.
An Apple employee was recently indicted for allegedly transferring trade secrets about self-driving car technology to a Chinese company. This marks the third such incident.
The cases seem quite similar: Chinese companies hire the workers, who then get caught attempting to bring Apple’s proprietary information with them when they leave the United States.
Apple’s plan for a completely autonomous vehicle has gone back onto the drawing board, according to a reliable source. The company supposedly is still prepping an electric car but the self-driving capabilities much more limited.
The Apple car could reach customers in about four years.
Although Apple has yet to even admit it’s working on a self-driving electric vehicle, plenty of people want to buy a car from Cupertino. Almost a third of recent car buyers say they’d consider an Apple car. And that includes more than half of Tesla owners.
It seems clear that if the Mac-maker can transform itself into an automaker, it could have a real hit on its hands.
This week on Cult of Mac’s podcast: Apple’s electric self-driving car project apparently just landed a bigwig from Lamborghini. Does this mean the hiding-in-plain-sight Apple car is back on track?
Also on The CultCast:
Why we didn’t see an M1 Mac Pro — and why we never will.
Saudi Arabia’s crazy glass building sounds unbelievable.
Anker makes GaN charging even faster and more efficient.
The EU’s new Digital Markets Act could bring big changes for Apple and the App Store.
Listen to this week’s episode of The CultCast in the Podcasts app or your favorite podcast app. (Be sure to subscribe and leave us a review if you like it!) Or watch the video livestream, embedded below.
A former Lamborghini executive recently joined Apple to lead design of the company’s long-rumored self-driving car, according to a new report Wednesday.
As Apple works toward releasing an electric vehicle before the end of this decade, the addition of Luigi Taraborrelli, who worked for the fabled Italian automaker for 20 years, could accelerate the project.
You’ll never get behind the wheel of an Apple car. That’s because the Mac-maker’s plan is a fully autonomous vehicle, according to a trove of information about the upcoming car that came to light Monday. That means no steering wheel and no brake pedal.
But Apple does not yet have a car that’s capable of reliably driving itself. And at least one high-level exec sounds skeptical that it ever will.
Accelerating work on its self-driving electric vehicle project, Apple recruited veteran Ford engineer and executive Desi Ujkashevic to join the team.
The move comes after various stalls and road bumps in Cupertino’s secretive Project Titan in recent years, including Ford luring away Apple car chief Doug Field last year.
The group at Apple developing a self-driving electric car has been “dissolved for some time,” according to a reliable source of insider information. But the project supposedly hasn’t been canceled — it’s undergoing a reorganization.
This is likely a reflection of the many difficulties Apple has run into with this very complex project.
Apple will use autopilot chips built by a South Korean firm in its first self-driving car, according to a new report.
The two companies joined forces around a year ago and are said to be working on a chipset package that is likely to include a CPU, GPU, memory and imaging interface to “oversee AI computations.”
This week on Cult of Mac’s podcast: iOS 15.4 packs a punch with some fun and useful new features. It’s still just a beta, but it will give us lots of new emoji for our critical, high-level communications when it goes live. Plus, the beta includes a convenient new way to unlock your iPhone while wearing a face mask — just in time for the end of the pandemic! 🤞
Also on The CultCast:
An Apple event in March looks quite likely.
Mini-LED iMac Pro might be delayed.
An Apple car patent sheds light on an advanced sunroof.
How to download Wordle, just in case The New York Times screws up the popular game.
Donkey talk!
Listen to this week’s episode of The CultCast in the Podcasts app or your favorite podcast app. (Be sure to subscribe and leave us a review if you like it!) Or watch the video livestream, embedded below (down by the headlines and donkey links).
The rumored Apple Car may not be on the verge of rolling off the assembly line, but someday a version of it may have sunroof glass that you can darken or lighten with the touch of a button or with a Siri command.
That’s according to a patent the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) granted Apple this week for a sunroof with variable-opacity glass. That means a driver could adjust its transparency.
Two monumental events happened this week. Apple became the first U.S. company to be worth an astonishing $3 trillion. And a day later came the official end of BlackBerry — a series of phones that once dominated the market.
The collapse of BlackBerry is proof that today’s winners aren‘t inevitably tomorrow’s. While in the coming years Apple could become the first company to reach $4 trillion, it also could start down a path that ends in failure.
Here’s some of what Apple will do so it doesn’t end up like BlackBerry.