With the launch of arguably its most important product since the orginal iPhone imminent (The Apple Vision Pro) it's easy to forget about some of the other projects in the works at Cupertino.
One of those is the Apple Car, which was reportedly first mooted by Steve Jobs as far back as 2008 and supposedly given the green light by Tim Cook in 2017. Code-named Project Titan was initially expected to debut around 2020, but things have been quiet for a while.
But now tipster Mark Gurman, writing in Bloomberg has some new information to share with the world. It seems the electric vehicle is still coming, but will look very different to the fully self-driving effort previously planned. Instead, Gurman believes that it will resemble something like a Tesla with a few self-driving assists like "lane centring and braking / accelerating support" but still very much needing an alert human driver.
That's not the only news Gurman shares, he doesn't expect the car to release for at least another 4 years (2028 for those who like maths). If this first vehicle manages to be released and proves a success then perhaps it will be seen as a useful stepping stone to genuine self-driving autonomous cars, but who knows where the competition will be at by 2028.
Of course, it's not like Apple has nothing else to be working on. The Vision Pro is a monumental moment for the company, while yearly refreshes to the iPhone range as well as new MacBooks, iPads and Airpods, plus a renewed focus on AI all require massive amounts of work.
Something that has me sitting up and paying attention however is the prospect of wearing the Vision Pro while driving the App Car. Imagine the driver getting real-time information like how fast nearby cars are going or even steering with just the headset's motion-capturing abilities. As for the passengers they could be watching films on giant virtual screens. Sounds like something from a sci-fi film, but it might not be too far away.
