CarPlay proves that Apple is serious about getting into the car business. But regarding the company's intent on branching out into grander vehicular ventures such as the autonomous Apple Car, all we have are rumors. Until today, that is.
Apple SVP Jeff Williams didn't come right out and confirm anything (WWDC 2015 is much too close to spoil any surprises right now), but he offered a snippet that could be telling about Apple's future on the road at Recode's Code Conference.
Williams was asked about what Apple plans to do with its surplus of cash on-hand, to which he replied: "The car is the ultimate mobile device."
He also noted the company is "exploring a lot of different markets."
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He's sort of right, at least when you think about how the automobile is just as central to day-to-day living for some as the smartphone is for most. But does this sentence said publicly by an Apple exec with the word "car" in it mean anything?
Maybe Apple will be pushing CarPlay, its in-dash version of iOS, extra hard, or maybe the company is finalizing its own driverless vehicle. Maybe we've just fallen off the deep end.
If Apple does have an autonomous vehicle of its own coming out, it has a bit of catching up to do with Google, which just wrapped up an eight month-long trial of its driverless vehicles and plans to do more testing this summer on public California roads.
Apple CarPlay and Google's Android Auto are already bumping their heads together for in-dash domination. You'd better believe the companies will also be duking it out with driverless vehicles, or something more, at some point in the future.
Whether WWDC 2015 will bring along anything new in the way of announcements behind the wheel is anyone's guess. Until then, we'll take whatever teasing nugget of information we can get.
