One of the things I personally found most fascinating about the late, great Steve Jobs was his dogmatic approach to everything that he did. Unfazed by skepticism, he took visions and ideas, remained vigorously dedicated to them, and while some were relatively hit-and-miss, the company he co-founded with Steve Wozniak has produced some of the most iconic and era-defining devices and innovations ever seen.
Since his unfortunate early succumbing to pancreatic cancer back in October, many startling revelations about Jobs have been made public – largely thanks to his biography by Walter Isaacson, and various interviews from those who knew him well – including of course, Microsoft’s former CEO Bill Gates.
He claimed to have “cracked” the connected TV market with a conceptual product which has yet to be revealed – if indeed it ever is – along with the photography market. Whilst the latter is thriving thanks to the iPhone 4S’s sharp 8-megapixel snapper, we would presume that when Jobs had his big Eureka moment, he wasn’t talking about a marginal improvement of the rear-facing camera.
Nonetheless, certainly eclipsing the above, Steve Jobs wanted to build a fully-fledged automobile, according to Apple board member Mickey Drexler. Speaking at Fast Company’s Innovation Uncensored conference this week, Drexler, who is also CEO of J. Crew, noted that Jobs wanted to build an “iCar”.
Drexler described the idea as “Steve’s dream”, and even went as far as to estimate that the iCar would have cornered around “50% of the market.” As far-fetched and ambitious an idea as it sounds, as fans of Apple and all things geeky, we cannot help but dream as to exactly how Jobs would have gone about creating an Apple-branded car.
Of course, it would undoubtedly have included seamless integration with music, streaming content and apps, and we would also presume Siri would’ve played an integral part in helping drivers perform basic functions, such as making calls, or switching on the demisters.
When it comes to automobiles, Apple’s thin and light motif wouldn’t necessarily help, and although the fruit company has done a good job in several markets, creating a car would certainly up the ante on any of its prior achievements.
Although we’ll never see what Jobs had in mind, that doesn’t mean those resident designers *cough* cannot use their imaginations to impress us once again.
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