iCar - page 2

Jony Ive and his infamous design team aren’t simply creating the Apple products you use and love, their influence is reshaping Apple itself. On this episode, we look back at Jony’s humble start, and examine how Sir Ive and team became the powerful core of the world’s greatest company. Plus, we bet you just can’t wait to get behind the wheel of your very own Apple-made … minivan? We’ll fill you in on the latest Apple car rumors.

Our thanks to Sanebox.com for supporting this episode. Sanebox’s algorithms learn which emails you want to see and puts the rest into a daily digest you can review and delete with one click. See how accurate it is with a free trial.

Full show notes ahead!

We get slammed 24/7 with new Apple rumors. Some are accurate, most are not. To give you a clue about what’s really coming out of Cupertino in the future, we’re busting out our rumor debunker each week to blow up the nonsense.

This week the Apple Car rumors have revved into fourth gear as a tsunami of reports from various outlets have claimed that not only is the iCar project real, but Apple is trying to get it onto highways by the end of the decade. While everyone’s focusing on the iCar, don’t forget about Apple Watch though. The rumor mill spit out five juicy rumors this week covering everything from pricing to customization.

Take a look at this week’s electrifying Apple rumors see which one’s are destined to come true:

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!

File this under “unbelievable,” but according to reports from the Bay Area, multiple black vans owned by Apple have been spotted driving around San Francisco with a fancy camera array on top that may indicate the company is developing a self-driving car.

The vehicles have also been spotted in Brooklyn and could be designed to create a competitor to Google Street View. But after looking at the camera array, which is much different than Street View cars, some experts are convinced it’s a self-driving car prototype.

Get a look at the vans in the video below:

Tesla’s stock soared earlier this week when rumors surfaced that Apple and Tesla executives had talks about the iPhone giant acquiring the electric car maker.

Apple considered making an iCar before inventing the iPhone, and they’ve lost prized engineers to the automaker, but it’s unclear how a merger would  benefit the two companies, especially Tesla.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Elon Musk, CEO and co-founder of Telsa, confirmed the two companies have been talking about something, but fanboys shouldn’t get their hopes up on a merger happening:

Tesla Motors announced this afternoon that it has managed to snatch up Doug Field who has been serving as Apple’s Vice President of Mac Hardware Engineering for the past five years. Field is joining the Tesla as its new Vice President of Vehicle Programs and will be responsible for developing new electric vehicles for the company.

Before joining Apple in 2008 to help make the new MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and iMac, Field worked at Segway for nine years, but he actually started off his engineering career at Ford Motor Company. Elon Musk released the following statement regarding the company’s newest addition:

Using your iPhone while driving is a huge no-no unless you want to die in a fiery crash of metal and flesh. Rather than putting all of its hopes behind Siri though, Apple has dreams of replacing all of your dashboard controls with a touchscreen interface.

According the the U.S. patent filing No. 8,482,535, Apple has developed a concept that would replace the analog controls of car dashboard with tactile and touch screen controls so you can keep your eyes on the road while adjusting temperature or changing the radio station.

Here’s how Apple described its dashboard to the USPTO: 

Ah, the iCar. We’ve been waiting for Apple to make a real one for years, ever since they transformed a Porsche into one way back in 1980. And we know Steve Jobs was game.

So the promise that Volkswagen is preparing an iBeetle might, at first, seem of interest to Apple fans and auto enthusiasts. But don’t get too excited, because the iBeetle is lame.

For the last two decades of his life, Steve Jobs was a Mercedes man, through and through. But in the 80s, Steve Jobs was a Porsche man. He gave one as an award to the salesman who sold the most Macs in the United States. And in 1980, Apple even sponsored a Porsche to race in the 24 Hours of Le Mans sports car endurance race.

The visionary co-founder of Apple, Steve Jobs, may have been dead for a year today, but the fruits of his incredible imagination, indefatigable quest for perfection and keen design eye are still ripening and shaking from the tree of the company that he created. The recently released iPhone 5 and new Lightning Connectors were  approved by him before he died,  the upcoming iPad mini was greenlit personally by Steve, and Apple’s upcoming roadmap for the next couple of years will probably be filled with projects that he personally oversaw.

Some of Steve Jobs’s last unrealized products loom larger than others, though. Here are the five incredible products from Steve Jobs that we still haven’t seen.

Interesting factoids and stories about late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs have been constantly surfacing since his death in October of last year. Biographer Walter Isaacson revealed that Jobs had “finally cracked” a standalone Apple TV set, and many “lost” interviews and anecdotes with Jobs have made headlines over the last several months.

One of Jobs’ more interesting closet skeletons is the fact that he dreamed of designing an iCar before he died.