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Strong agree. I think even having to make compromises of their aesthetic minimalism and platonic form to something as pedestrian as “aerodynamics” would pain Apple’s hardware designers (the ones whose output we’ve seen, anyway). I almost think they would prefer a car to be a perfect sphere or cube or something. Or a big symmetrical blob with all the wheels carefully hidden underneath.

> ...or even just looks (i.e. fake chrome bits, spoilers and vents that don't do anything etc.)

Yes, and such decisions exemplify the horrible taste of many car designs, designers, and possibly buyers.

The attempt at the Personas eye display on the front of the Vision Pro strikes me as extravangantly whimsical and daring. An insane amount of effort and money went into this feature. Perhaps it will win users and perhaps it will be abandonned in later models but it's quite the unexpected feature.

Having used VR for years, I found it kind of brilliant. It’s clear Apple wants to make an AR display, not a VR headset, and they pulled off a convincing attempt with todays technology.

>- Apple design in general has lost a lot of it's soul. They used to be more fun and whimsy, just look at iMac designs of the past. The Cyber truck, love it or hate it, is not boring. Everything apple sells is a glass and metal slab, or as close as possible to it.

The Cybertruck is also a glass and metal slab.

a fun and whimsical one.

Not so much for pedestrians and bicyclists, or people using other forms of travel that don’t involve being inside a tank-like vehicle.

That's not the point I was making. I was only stating that the Cyber Truck's design isn't boring, and that today's Apple seems incapable of designing something exciting.

It is unusual, but in a remarkably boring way.

A prop from a 1980s sci-fi "b movie"

Yes, this is precisely why I love the design so much. I've been waiting for an "edgy" non-smooth car since the '88 Sentra...and here it finally is. Thank you Elon and Tesla, yall remain the only car maker with a sense of humor.

People seem quite excited by the new goggles.

I disagree. To me it's edgy and depressing. So it's pretty subjective.

To me, it looks edgy for edginess' sake. In comparison, the Canoo vehicles look like they were actually designed with purpose.

AFAIK Cybertruck is edgy due to manufacturing constraints on the body?

Canoo looks like the cars Apple actually would have created.

> I'm not sure what Apple could've brought to the table in regards to making an electric car

I, for instance, would love a minimalistic, self driving, electric car that just works. With wireless charging - no cables. That I can just hop in, say “Hey Siri, take me to target,” and it announces the current weather in Taipei; provided by the Weather Channel.

I don't know - maybe a really thin aluminum car would be easier to park or something;)

I agree with your points, but wanted to point out that the most recent iMac lineup is a bit fun and whimsy! It comes in seven different colors, and while metal it does give off a little bit of that iMac G3 feeling.

Jony Ive left Apple in 2019, but I think we're still in his era of design philosophy, will be interesting to see where Apple evolves in terms of hardware design over the next 10 to 20 years.

> I'm not sure what Apple could've brought to the table in regards to making an electric car.

At this point Apple dont need to make any thing special in order for it to sell. Lv4 / Lv5 AVs ( autonomous vehicles ) is basically lots of computer on a battery moving around. The key problem here is Lv 5 AV, as we should have all learned in 2024 it doesn't exists. Not even close. All the promise about we would be there in 2016..... 2024 hasn't been true.

Without AVs, and hence without the needs of all the computing power, there isn't anything in a Car that is adjacent to Apple's core strength.

> Apple design in general has lost a lot of it's soul.

I would argue it is not just their design, but Apple itself. Again It is Tim Cook's Apple now. Not Steve Job's Apple.

Another big untapped thing in the autonomous vehicle space is having a strong remote teleop game— basically when you hit roadwork or snow or whatever other unforeseen condition, an operator elsewhere can seamlessly take over, either in full (literally driving your car) or in part ("choose that lane, avoid that obstacle").

Starsky Robotics understood this but AFAICT the lesson hasn't really sunk in across the industry; the big money is still chasing a mythical computer-only Lv5 solution.

Anyway, I don't think Apple would be the right company to pull off that kind of thing either, all of which is to further reinforce that trying to make an electric, autonomous car was always an odd choice for them.

I’m not so sure the comfort criticism is fair with Vision Pro.

They seem to think the amount of computer power in this first product is a kind of MVP for their vision of VR/AR.

Given this amount of compute with today’s technology, using metal is a hard requirement for long term comfort.

Plastic doesn’t conduct heat well. Using metal lets you conduct some of the heat away from the face.

I haven’t used AVP myself, but I’ve seen others comment that they find Quest gets hotter, despite having less compute power.

Perhaps future iterations will use titanium and/or piezo fans to reduce weight while keeping thermals manageable. But I don’t expect them to move to plastics.

By 'less' minimalistic than Tesla, assume you meant you believe Apple would be even 'more' minimalistic. But I always imagined Apple would be able to be the Tesla without the Musk tradeoffs. That is yes, certainly far minimal than typical cars, but less minimal than Tesla who seemed to think it would be cool to have door handles retrack, and other missing common features, because they seemed cool. But then he never took enough feedback to others to realize while cool, not practical. Apple I believe would have been able to pull back and find a better balance I believe. And if they did overstep, they would be less stubborn in pulling back in a following version than Musk.

Though the market of cars from makers like Lucid and other premium options means Apple can only differentiate so much. And people critize every tiny detail of things the size of watch or a phone, imagine a car. The abilities for people to criticize things would be endless. And the fact that cars crash, no matter how well designed, and there would be an endless number of people finding creative ways to exploit any vulnerabilities to make it look as dangerous as possible. The risk for Apple seems unbelievable vs the gain.

Where is with AI, that intertwines everything they already do, with far more manageable risks. I'm very doubtful on their AI prospects, but certainly would prefer to see Titan level budgets spent towards AI. I'm looking at you Siri!

I don’t hate the Apple Watch, but I was pretty seriously disappointed at how it looked when it came out. Great! They made a watch look like my phone, cool

I still prefer the look of the galaxy watch classic

It's funny that of all things Apple's watches are square and Android watches are round. It feels like it should be the other way around.

I own (and prefer) a Garmin smartwatch but I actually think Apple got it right with the square screen.

A round display suits analogue watch faces but square is better for utility.

E.g. map reading or lots of data fields during exercise. Where you want more display given size of wrist real estate.

Ironically Garmin used to make a square screen Epix but switched to round.

Given the geometry of a wrist, you can comfortably fit a bigger usable display on a square watch face than a round one.

Not really - watches are historically round because of roundrel clock faces. A square is a better form factor for literally everything else that an Apple Watch does. So it is the Apple move to shape the watch to perform best at 95% of its tasks, and a Google move to shape the watch to perform best with a subset of available watch faces.

This isn't even new. Casio etc have designed digital square watches for decades because they don't need to be round without clock arms.

Historically, men's wristwatches were round and ladies' watches were square. I'm not sure why other than that humans will gender-code anything.

Do not get me started on the gender coding of children’s clothes and accessories. Judging by pictures of me and my little brother in the 80s, and comparing that to the clothes for sale now, manufacturers spent the past 40 years learning how to avoid making anything that would be purchased for a girl being suitable to be handed down to her little brother.

Women’s watches were smaller and were more likely to be integrated with the watch band. That tended to square off the case. The actual watch face was still based on hands moving in a circle.

Men’s watches when they are integrated with the bands also tend to be squarish.

If anything Apple has been bringing buttons back, or innovating on them. Touch Bar was reverted to buttons. The iPhone Pro replaced a switch with a haptic feedback button (many Android phones simply have no equivalent button or switch.) Vision Pro got the “Digital Crown” from the Watch, which has that and a button rather than just a touchscreen.

My guess is an Apple Car would have nice buttons and switches rather than the atrocious touch-screen-only setup many cars have.

All my examples are current, and the list would've been much longer if it included their obsession with thinness on their previous set of laptops and phones.

Anyway, I was trying to illustrate that Apple's obsession with minimalism has resulted in a very sterile and boring design language that wouldn't necessarily translate to success in the car world. Vehicles are considered very personal expressions of taste (Which is subjective, I know).

Shiny chrome bits and fake air intakes etc. are added because consumers want them. Car companies do everything in their power to shave a penny here and there, yet time and time again they add these in because that's what consumers generally like. High-end cars are littered with shiny bits, bodywork creases, and even crystal (BMW). Stuff like this is the antithesis of good design at contemporary Apple.

Even the iPhone 1.0/2.0 had a fake chrome rim, and their old Macs had clear plastic and pin stripes!

I'm not saying fake chrome bits etc. are good/bad design, I'm saying consumers have spoken, and the most boring cars are all at the low-end with even lower margins. Teslas seem to be as minimal as the general consumer is willing to tolerate, and even they have something relatively exotic with the Cyber Truck.

Apple's current aesthetic isn't suited towards high-end cars, and they haven't proven otherwise with recent releases. I know some would love a minimal Apple car, but it would still be a very niche, expensive, and not very profitable proposition.

> Vehicles are considered very personal expressions of taste...

And yet virtually every car is now a shade of grey and only people who truly care about cars can tell them apart?

https://www.consumerreports.org/consumerist/a-brief-history-...

Sure, but the color and design of something are different things? Apple still sells iPads/iPhones/iPads in various colors, but there’re literally all a variation of a featureless slab. Back when Apple made translucent devices, it wasn’t just color, but their interior arrangement and texture (pin stripes behind the translucent plastic).

Car color is also somewhat pragmatic for several reasons not involving design: A lot cars sold are just low end appliances that are great at taking people from point A to B as cheaply as possible. A gray toyota corola is a perfect example of this and has great resale value. Speaking from experience, some colors hold up better over time than others (clear coat peeling), especially silver and white.

The iPhone has no consistent "back" button/gesture.

You honestly believe Tesla is minimalistic? I see it as bloatware. I have to click through three dialogs to open my glovebox? How many servos and sensors are necessary to make the flush door handle pop out? And still not work in cold weather? I have multiple layers of menus to stare at dialogs to tell me how to basically use the car? Come on.

The execution perhaps falls short, but Tesla aims to build exactly the same car that Apple would aim to make.

Elon wanted to sell to Apple in the Model 3 early days. Who knows what would have happened if Apple were interested.

You don't like their mice? My Magic Mouse is the single most comfortable mouse I've ever had, and the only one that doesn't give me wrist or finger pain after a day's work. I've tried dozens from Logitech and Microsoft and SteelSeries and Razer, including ergo ones and track balls and track pads, but keep coming back to the Magic Mouse for its simple comforts.

Similarly, the Airpod Pros are so incredibly comfortable it's hard to imagine going back to anything else. (Even though I have an Android and it doesn't support all the features, just basic Bluetooth.)

It's not always that great though, of course. My M2 MacBook Pro is so much heavier than my old ThinkPad, and its keyboard is much much worse. The touchpad has terrible palm rejection and keeps jumping the cursor around. Overall I still love the machine but mostly use it docked.

I do miss the old iMacs, but the new ones are gorgeous and elegant in their own way. It was the first time I was tempted by a desktop in a looooong while.

I've used my Magic Mouse exactly 5 times. It forces me to both "arch" my hand because of the shape (too flat), and hover over the buttons to not accidentally trigger the gestures. For me, it's like the most uncomfortable mouse ever made, and I've ended up with cramps every single time I've used it.

It's amazing to me how they were able to make both the best trackpad and the worst mouse ever.

To each their own I guess but it's very weird to me that someone could consider the Magic Mouse comfortable, maybe something to do with the size of hands?

Good point. I have tiny hands and they're perfectly supportive for me, contouring perfectly in my palm. I did turn off all the gestures aside from scrolling, though.

Being able to left click by pushing the entire top down (two fingers) is what really saved me. No other mouse I know does that.