After Apple released the iPod there were rumors the company was working on a phone. (They were working on a tablet, but it became a phone). After the iPhone, there were rumors they were working on a tablet. After the iPad, rumors they were working on TV or a watch. Now that the Apple Watchis on deck, rumors have shifted to an Apple Car. For Apple and for those fascinated by Apple, the reason is the same — humans want to cross seas and climb mountains. The minute we have something we immediately want to know what's next.
I've mentioned before that Apple is filled with incredibly smart people and, as a company, they make exceedingly logical decisions. In other words, if a writer on a website can theorize that it would make sense for Apple to think about TVs or cars or cameras or whatever, chances are several of those incredibly smart people have already thought about, and perhaps even investigated the potential, of doing just that. To do anything else would be negligent.
Not everything Apple thinks about leads to investigation, not every investigation goes into prototype, and not every prototype goes into production. It takes a lot of work to generate those "thousand nos for every yes".
When it comes to cars, Apple has been thinking about them for years. From The New York Times:
In a meeting in his office before he died, Steven P. Jobs, Apple's co-founder and former chief executive, told John Markoff of The New York Times that if he had more energy, he would have liked to take on Detroit with an Apple car.
Steve Jobs passed away in 2011. In 2013 Apple announced CarPlay, part of their systematic decoupling of interface and device, and a way to give iPhone owners a better experience beyond the confines of a single product. Apple is still actively working with the auto industry on developing CarPlay, and given the other technologies they're releasing, it's not hard to imagine how far future versions could go.
Some of the recent rumors sound, in part, like they're conflating ongoing work on CarPlay with work on an actual car, but consider this — if you ran Apple, would you be at least thinking about making your own car hardware? Would you think it worth investigating?
Apple has several hundred employees working secretly toward creating an Apple-branded electric vehicle, according to people familiar with the matter. They said the project, code-named "Titan," has an initial design of a vehicle that resembles a minivan, one of these people said.
Just like with the phone and tablet and watch, there'll no doubt be a ton of conflated and conflicted rumors about an Apple Car — Car? — for months and years to come. The only thing for certain is, just like there was a phone and tablet and now a watch, unless Tim Cook and company decide to drop the mic and "Apple out!", there will be something next.
There will be products they believe they can bring to market to solve real problems and provide great experiences and, of course, increase the value of Apple's other products and ultimately, Apple itself.
Maybe that something next will be an Apple Car, or maybe it'll be another service like Apple Pay, or a hybrid, or something that's yet to be so much as rumored.
The only questions right are — will a car make it onto that incredibly short, incredibly focused product list, and when?
Apple announced the iPhone 6 Plus at their 2014 iPhone event alongside the 4.7" iPhone 6. The iPhone 6 Plus features a 5.5" screen with a resolution of 1920 by 1080 and 401 pixels per inch. Apple is calling the display a Retina HD display. Other staple features of the iPhone 6 Plus include OIS (optical image stabilization), a 64-bit A8 coprocessor alongside a new M8 motion co-processor, and more.
The iPhone 6 Plus does not feature a sapphire crystal display as several sources originally indicated. However, both the iPhone 6 Plus and the iPhone 6 come with ion-strengthened displays, which should increase the overall durability. The iPhone 6 Plus display itself not only has a higher ppi, but also a drastically improved contrast ratio of 1300:1. The iPhone 6's ratio will come in at 1400:1. In comparison, the iPhone 5s' contrast ratio is 800:1. Both displays also feature dual-domain pixels which should provide wider and better viewing angles.
Since the iPhone 6 Plus features such a large display, Apple has introduced two new features called Reachability and Display Zoom. These two accessibility features will bring an all new experience to using a smartphone with a larger display.
Customers will be able to buy the iPhone 6 Plus in-store on Friday, September 19th. Pre-orders will begin on September 12th. The iPhone 6 Plus comes in gold, space gray, and silver with capacity options of 16 GB, 64 GB, and 128 GB. Pricing starts at $299 on contract for a 16GB model. Each storage capacity jump will entail a $100 price increase. Pricing and availability can vary slightly from country to country, so be sure to check with your local carriers to verify.
