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Thousands of engineers put Apple self-driving car in high gear

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Here's how Apple Car might eliminate blind spots
With so many people working on the Apple self-driving car, it's amazing that the best visuals we have are artists' concept renderings like this one.
Image: Aristomenis Tsirbas/Freelancer

Apple stays quiet about it, but the company is clearly developing a self-driving car. And this week the world was given a glimpse inside this project, showing that it’s much larger than many had previously thought.

The FBI arrested a former employee on Apple’s autonomous car design team for allegedly downloading proprietary information and attempting take it to a rival car company in China. The resulting documentation reveals the number of employees on the project.

iPhone 7 rumors, hands-on with Apple Music and Apple News, screaming deals and more

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iPhone 7 will have more tiny design changes you won’t notice.
iPhone 7 will have more tiny design changes you won’t notice.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

This week’s Cult of Mac Magazine has loads in store for your weekend wind-down. Following our coverage of WWDC 2016 the previous week, we’ve got more iPhone 7 rumors for you including the possibility of a dual-lense camera.

And, discover the news changes and design overhauls iOS 10 brings to the Apple Music and Apple News apps. Plus, screaming terrific deals on the G-BOOM Bluetooth speaker, and the opportunity to get five years of unlimited cloud storage for just $29 per month.

Finally, the CultCast expounds on all those iPhone 7 leaks!

All this, and much much more, in Cult of Mac Magazine, free for you right now.

Here are this week’s top stories.

Kia pledges to fully automate all vehicles by 2030

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Kia's concept for a fully autonomous car, which we'll all NOT be driving in 2030. Plus, we'll all be living in gleaming Sky Discs.
Kia's concept for a fully autonomous car, which we'll all NOT be driving in 2030. Plus, we'll all be living in gleaming Sky Discs.
Photo: Kia

Cult of Mac CES 2016 full coverage LAS VEGAS — It’s not gadgets that are making the news here at CES 2016, but cars.

For example, at a press event this afternoon the Korean car giant Kia said all of its cars will be fully autonomous by 2030. Not just its high-end vehicles — all the cars it makes. And that’s just 14 years away.

That means you be able to curl up in the back and sleep while the robot drives — or not be in the car at all. It’ll drive itself to the airport to pick you up.

Kia is joined by dozens of other companies with futuristic visions of the car. Both Detroit and Silicon Valley are here at CES 2016 to talk up future cars, which are mostly electric and autonomous. It includes Ford, VW, Toyota and lots of others.

It’s all good news for Apple, which is widely believed to be working on its own car.

Apple snaps up company with expertise in GPS and self-driving cars

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TomTom will continue to power Apple Maps.
New acquisition could be a major part of Apple's future roadmap. No pun intended.
Photo: Apple

Apple has confirmed its acquisition of Coherent Navigation, a GPS company with expertise in mapping and self-driving vehicles.

Founded in 2008, Coherent Navigation is one of the leading companies behind what is known as High Integrity GPS or — appropriately enough for Apple — iGPS. Unlike regular GPS, which is accurate only within meters, iGPS’ high level of accuracy means it can provide geographic positioning data within centimeters.