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Apple Style Guide: March 2024 →

Hot off the presses, a new PDF from Apple, complete with this silliness:

Apple Vision Pro: Always use the full name. In general references, don’t use the with Apple Vision Pro. It’s OK to use another article or a possessive adjective: Adjust the fit of your Apple Vision Pro.

You put on and take off Apple Vision Pro. When you have it on, you’re wearing it.

And this:

Don’t refer to Apple Vision Pro as a headset. In most cases, use the product name; in
content where the name is repeated frequently, you can use device.

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A More Charitable Take on Apple’s Self-Driving Car Ambitions

I’m still reeling a bit from Bloomberg’s reporting on what Apple was hoping to achieve with its self-driving car project. Even though $1 billion a year isn’t much on Apple’s scale, it’s clear that a lot of time and energy went into this project over the last ten years.

Many of Apple’s ideas around the future of the car were just too far-fetched to ship anything in the near future. However, I think there are at least three benefits to what the company was working toward with Project Titan.

Consumer Safety

In the United States, car crashes are a leading non-natural cause of death for people up to the age of 54, and some 1.4 million people are killed on roadways around the world each year. Those numbers are staggering.

The promise of a self-driving future is that far fewer people will die in automobile accidents. Autonomous vehicles don’t fall asleep behind the wheel, get distracted by looking at their phones, run red lights, or drive while under the influence.

Reducing — or entirely eliminating — deaths caused by car crashes is a noble goal. It’s clear in both the “Bread Loaf” and “I-Beam” designs that Mark Gurman and Drake Bennett reported on that this was at the heart of Apple’s work.

Better Cities

Some people pitch their vision of the future as one defined by robotaxis. Hail a car, hop in, and the computer will take you where you need to go, without human intervention or interaction. While I think that is an exciting possibility, it seems to me that it is merely a stepping stone toward something bigger.

If cars are autonomously delivering people to work, school, and more, people can begin to rethink infrastructure on a broader level. Mass transit could become more easily accessible to everyone, with cities like mine embracing it for the first time in a meaningful way. It may start with replacing human-driven vehicles with computer-controlled ones, but it doesn’t have to stop there.

Services

Lastly, we come to services. I am sure Apple wants to be a player in the robotaxi future comes, if it comes to fruition, but the opportunities are more fundamental than that. A car that doesn’t need a driver can become anything ranging from a mobile office to a rolling movie theater. Apple already offers services — and devices — that serve those markets, and could continue to expand its ecosystem in new and interesting ways.

Granted, this more of a benefit to Apple than society, but I’m sure folks at the company were thinking about what they could do.

Ahead of its Time

As I wrote earlier today, much of what Apple was hoping to accomplish with its car project was just out of reach of what is possible today. Honestly, if Apple couldn’t pull this off, I am not sure who else can at this point. Part of me feels disappointed at that, but it doesn’t mean Apple’s work here was completely in vain. I have no doubt their work in some of the areas required to build a self-driving car will (or already have) proved to be beneficial to products like the iPhone or Vision Pro.

Should Apple have pulled the plug on the car project years ago? Probably, but sometimes barely-kept-secret projects are not just about the destination.

Apple’s Car Project Was Far More Bonkers than We Ever Knew →

For a decade, we’ve all wondered what an Apple-designed car would be like. Thanks to Mark Gurman and Drake Bennett, we now have an idea:

Around the beginning of 2020, Apple Inc.’s top executives gathered at a former Chrysler testing track in Wittmann, Arizona, to try out the latest incarnation of the car the technology giant had been trying for years to make. The prototype, a white minivan with rounded sides, an all-glass roof, sliding doors and whitewall tires, was designed to comfortably seat four people and inspired by the classic flower-power Volkswagen microbus. The design was referred to within Apple, not always affectionately, as the Bread Loaf. The plan was for the vehicle to hit the market some five years later with a giant TV screen, a powerful audio system and windows that adjusted their own tint. The cabin would have club seating like a private plane, and passengers would be able to turn some of the seats into recliners and footrests.

The Bread Loaf, so far, sounds very much like something Jony Ive would be into, at least in terms of looks… but then things get weird:

Most important, the Bread Loaf would have what’s known in the industry as Level 5 autonomy, driving entirely on its own using a revolutionary onboard computer, a new operating system and cloud software developed in-house. There would be no steering wheel and no pedals, just a video-game-style controller or iPhone app for driving at low speed as a backup. Alternately, if the car found itself in a situation that it was unable to navigate, passengers would phone in to an Apple command center and ask to be driven remotely.

I read that last part about four times before it truly sank in. Pushing self-driving technology forward was clearly important to Apple, but this sounds like the company was reaching for pure science fiction, with a 1-800 number as a safety net.

According to this reporting, Tim Cook and Jeff Williams rode in the Bread Loaf and liked where things were heading, but after Doug Field left Apple for Ford, things got weirder still:

Under Field’s successor, Kevin Lynch, who also runs Apple’s smartwatch software group, the car’s design continued to evolve. It had become pod-shaped, with curved glass sides that doubled as gull-wing doors, and the company considered including ramps that would automatically fold out to make heavy cargo easier to load. The front and the back were identical, and the only windows were on the sides, a design choice with potentially dire consequences in the event that a human needed to do any driving. (Front and rear windows were later added.) Some people on the project called it the I-Beam.

It’s clear Apple thought it could pull off self-driving at a level that no one on Earth has been able to do so. It’s also clear that there was a staggering lack of decisive decision making concerning how the technology should be turned into a product.

There’s inherent tension in product design. If people can’t imagine the future, they can’t build it. With the car project, Apple’s dreams seem to have been too big, and its vast resources let work carry on far too long.

True self-driving cars will be here one day, and maybe Apple’s work will make them possible sooner than otherwise possible. However, at the end the day, companies like Apple have to ship products. It seems that someone at Apple finally remembered that real artists ship.

Update: Don’t miss my follow-up post discussing this in more detail.

14-inch M3 MacBook Pro to Receive Multi-Monitor Support →

Zac Hall, writing at 9to5Mac:

Apple introduced the M3 MacBook Air with a headlining new feature. For the first time, the Apple silicon MacBook Air will be able to simultaneously drive two external monitors. The only compromise is that the MacBook Air lid must be closed. Still, that’s a big win for users who appreciate portability on-the-go and large displays at the office.

The new feature also raises an interesting question: will the M3 MacBook Pro that was introduced in October also gain multi-display support in the same way? It shares the same version of Apple silicon and has Pro in the name, after all.

It turns out the answer is yes! Apple has confirmed to 9to5Mac that a software update for the 14-inch MacBook Pro will gain the ability to drive two external displays with the lid closed. The feature will work identically to how it works with the new M3 MacBook Air.

No details yet on which software update, although macOS Sonoma 14.4 is still in developer and public beta. The M3 MacBook Air in 13- and 15-inch sizes hits stores on Friday.