MotorTrend: Apple Car Exclusive: Experts Look at What Could Be a Game-Changer

Kim Reynolds Words, Garrett DeBry Design, Roman Mistiuk Digital Model, Mind Over Eye RenderingApril 14, 2016

Exploring the Potential Impact of Apple’s Project Titan

The Apple Car and the Future of Self-Driving Vehicles

Hello.

It’s a moment we’ve all had with an Apple product. When the ordinary awkwardness between you and an electronic device becomes a relationship between you and a friend. Mine happened way back when I used an early Compaq computer. The keyboard clacked. You typed things that looked like C:>find /V into DOS. And stories extruded across a murky screen in a green, constipated font. Then a friend let me use this thing called a Macintosh while she was away. I slowly circled my right hand to get used to its strange, plastic clicker-box.

Suddenly, the screen blinked “Hello.” In script.

I’m not sure if I said hello back, but I might have. Encounter by encounter, Apple has woven a series of obtuse electronic tools into the fabric of our lives. How many times has somebody held up their iPhone and said, “This IS my life!” The automobile of today is a Compaq computer. And Apple knows it.

Steve Jobs knew it way back in 2008, too, when Apple was at an early iPhone crossroads. What to focus on next? An electric car reportedly shared the short list with the maturing multitouch smartphone. Given Cupertino’s less formidable, 2008-era resources, Jobs’ final pick proved insanely right: Its iPhone-fueled piggybank is now a brain-boggling, $216,000,000,000. That’s BILLLLion dollars, as Carl Sagan used to eccentrically over-pronounce it, stashed all around the world. What’s that mean to paycheck-to-Taco Bell types like us? It’s enough to purchase all the stock of GM, Ford, and Fiat Chrysler. Combined. And then buy Detroit again. Some of Apple’s shareholders have been clamoring for Cook and company to snap up Tesla with its loose change.

And sometimes, Apple has nonchalantly jangled that change. In late 2013, Elon Musk met with Apple’s head of acquisitions and later huddled with Jony Ive, Apple’s chief design officer, at a post-Oscars party. Adding to the warm visuals, Laurene Jobs returned her husband’s famously plateless Mercedes-Benz SL55 AMG, getting a Model S. But Musk doubts an Apple deal will advance his goal of creating a compelling mass-market EV. “I don’t currently see any scenario that would improve that probability,” he said.

Read more about our exclusive take on the Apple Car:

• Want to Enter the Auto Industry? Lie Down Until the Feeling Passes
• 13 Coolest Features of Our Apple Car
• Industry Insiders Opine on the Apple Car
• Beyond Apple Car: Can BMW Out-Tech, Out-Style, Out-Think Silicon Valley?
• Video: Tech, Design Experts Talk Apple Car on New “Wide Open Throttle”
• But Will You Love It?

This is a pretty interesting read, to continue on, follow this link;
http://www.motortrend.com/news/apple-car-exclusive/

Apple iPhone tech could halt phone use at the wheel

New patent reveals software that could stop people texting and using other apps at the wheel

by Chris Ebbs of www.autoexpress.co.uk

Apple has submitted a patent that could lock users out of their iPhones if it detects that they are driving.

The tech would prevent motorists from sending text messages or using apps while they’re behind the wheel.

The patent document claims the phone could work out if is moving by using a combination of GPS, the location of mobile masts and even the phone’s camera. It suggests that the smartphone wouldn’t need any extra software or modifications to carry out the function.

Plus, the document suggests the tech could be enhanced by a signal sent from the car, or its key, to tell the phone it’s being driven and lock the phone.

Some Android mobile apps already perform a similar function, but nothing’s been done so far for Apple devices. Plus these systems are also self-regulated so the driver has to ensure themselves that it has been switched on. Instead Apple's tech would work automatically when driving is detected.

The patent was submitted back in 2008, but has only just been published. The document also claims that it is 'doubtful' that the police are able to stop people from texting and driving as it is harder to spot and can be done on the drivers lap.

While making calls behind the wheel has dropped, sending and receiving messages continues to be a major problem. According to a recent survey by road charity Brake, three in 10 drivers admitted to sending or reading messages while driving. This rises to four in ten for drivers aged between 18 to 24 years old.

The charity also found the use of apps behind the wheel to be an increasing problem, with one in eight motorists admitting to using them while driving. 

Read more: http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/car-news/consumer-news/86764/apple-iphone-tech-could-halt-phone-use-at-the-wheel#ixzz30BlBkxe1

Apple’s Hiring Automotive Engineers, Is An ‘iCar’ Infotainment System Coming?

By Matt Hardigree

Apple is once again proving they're still the company Steve Jobs built. After years of saying "meh" to working with automakers on tighter integration of Apple products into automotive infotainment systems, there's evidence Apple is now hiring people to build a system for them that'll work with all their devices.

The in-car infotainment marketplace is primarily split between people who already have existing deals with Microsoft to use their Windows CE-based Windows Embedded Automotive 7 system (Ford SYNC, Kia UVO, Toyota Entune) and those that don't (GM and the Volkswagen Audi Group, to name just a couple).

Volkswagen's top executives did meet with Steve Jobs in 2007 to discuss ways the company could work together, but nothing has been publicly announced other than Apple products showing up in VW concept cars.

Given Microsoft's almost full-decade jump on Apple in the space it's not hard to believe somewhere deep in Cupertino there's been a group developing their own car audio integration solution for automakers or customers (the idea of Apple building its own car, however, is ludicrous... at least at this point).

But, a hint that Apple might be in the process of actually trying to build a version of whatever concept they might have developed comes via China Car Times, who noticed a head-hunter posting in the automotive section of LinkedIn in China.

The representative of Allegis-BN says Apple China is looking for someone who can fill the role of a Supplier Quality Engineer/New Product Integration supervisor with experience in CNC/die casting/stamping/plastic injection who knows Chinese manufacturing.

That could mean they're looking for the kind of person you'd need if you were trying to manufacture a device to fit into a car dashboard — or that the type of person who knows his way around a CNC machine in automotive applications could translate that skill to other non-automotive uses. This could even just be the consumer electronics juggernaut of cool trying to build a prototype of a previously-developed concept.

This is nowhere near definitive proof that Apple is entering the space, but it's certainly a big clue that they might be. And, since Apple is famously tight-lipped when it comes to discussion of future product until it's being boxed up and shipped out it's not like we're going to get official confirmation. For the moment we'll have to rely on rumors and clues like this one to determine the reality of an Apple in-car automotive infotainment system.

Well, unless someone in China ends up leaving a plastic-injected or CNC-cut prototype center console in a bar. And if they do, let me be the first to say we know what to do when that happens.

Source;
http://jalopnik.com/5889578/apples-hiring-automotive-engineers-is-an-icar-infotainment-system-coming

Steve Jobs: 'No big deal. Just three stories from my life' [Tribute to Steve Jobs]

Very powerful. To all those that dared to dream.... Rest in peace Steve Jobs....

Rumors DON'T Get Any HOTTER This! Will The iPhone 5 And 4s Obsolete SYNC And ALL Others?

If you take ALL of the Apple rumors over the last 5 years and balled them up, I don't think the totality would equal the hype about what's coming this Tuesday at 10AM PT, at the companies iPhone event.

SO many rumors and girations are flying faster across the intertubes than the Concorde in it's finest moment.

Will the iPhone 5 be introduced along with an iPhone 4s and cheaper pricing/plans?

Will the iPhone 5 have the rumored teardrop shape, larger screen, 4g, 8 megapixel camera, blah, blah, blah?

Will there be NO iPhone 5, only a 4S and cheaper 4's?

But the BIGGEST rumor which has us at AutoSpies.com so jacked up about is the speculation that they will introduce the most amazing voice technology interface in history born out of their acquisition of Siri.

Check out what Forbes had to say about it:

"The Siri voice control system allows users to instruct the iPhone to ‘send a text message to Jason Schwarz asking him meet me for lunch’. Think about this capability in terms of safety. We all know that too many drivers send and receive text messages, now they will be able to safely operate an iPhone in the car. The voice assistant adds a layer of intelligence as well. If I ask my iPhone to ‘call Dad’ it might ask me whether it should dial his home phone or his mobile. It is also able to perform Web based search functions such as ‘book a table for two at 9:00 tonight’ or ‘send a taxi to my house’. Siri worked with Citysearch, Opentable and Taxi Magic before the Apple acquisition"

If this is true then it's GAME OVER for Microsoft SYNC and ALL other in car voice interfaces and the Spies predict they will HAVE to license the Apple technology going forward.

We've always said that interactive voice to text and vice versa in the car is the KILLER app.

You see it all the time, people texting while driving and it's VERY dangerous.

And we're ALL guilty for doing it.

With this new technology, is press a button and say for example, 'TEXT 00R AND 009…then it records the message... 'Agent 00R and 009 are WAY less cool than 001' and the system converts you voice to text and send to the recipient. When a new text comes in, it reads it and then offers options.

But it's not like old one dimensional systems like dragon dictate.

This can do contextual stuff like 'find map to 90068' and 'send directions to 001JR'.

So not only should the auto manufacturers be worried but GOOGLE should be worried.

Because if its as good as we're told, the masses using smartphones will be using APPLE voice search vs. Google or whomever!

Here is a video simulation of how it could work from MacRumors:



Source;
http://www.autospies.com/news/Rumors-DON-T-Get-Any-HOTTER-This-Will-The-iPhone-5-And-4s-Obsolete-SYNC-And-ALL-Others-67047/