Forget the iTV, Steve Jobs wanted an iCar
Apple co-founder Steve Jobs apparently envisioned an Apple-made automobile as a future project ahead of his death.
Televisions weren't the only product late Steve Jobs wanted to revamp. According to one of Apple's current board members, Jobs was eyeing automobiles too.
That tidbit came during an interview with J. Crew CEO and Apple board member Mickey Drexler at Fast Company's Innovation Uncensored conference in New York last month. The outlet released a video of the interview late yesterday.
"Look at the car industry; it's a tragedy in America. Who is designing the cars?" Drexler said. "Steve's dream before he died was to design an iCar."
Drexler suggested that automobile "would've been probably 50 percent of the market," and that Jobs "never did design it."
The project joins a short list of others that did not come to fruition ahead of Jobs' death last October, but have since been revealed. Per a conversation noted in Walter Isaacson's biography of Jobs last year, the CEO and inventor was also eyeing a TV set, which Apple is rumored to still be working on. Jobs had also worked with French designer Philippe Starck to architect the interior design of a yacht, a project that has since been taken over by Jobs' wife.
Apple has historically been hands-off in developing any specific technologies for automobiles, though during the iPod's boom years the company dabbled in partnerships that more deeply integrated the device inside of automobiles. A more recent effort by Mercedes-Benz aims to integrate Siri, Apple's voice assistant for the iPhone 4S, in the company's A-Class cars.
Here's the snippet from the interview: