At the 20th anniversary of the iconic D-conference which in the last decade has been known as the Recode conference, hosted Apple’s CEO Tim Cook, Steve Jobs’wife Laurene Powell Jobs and Sir Jonathan Ive, Apple’s former chief design officer. At the conference, which is now available on YouTube, Lauren Paul Jobs revealed that she appreciated the safety features of Tesla’s cars. The conference happened on the very day Apple launched the new iPhone 14 models at a hotel in Los Angeles.
Of course, when the Recode conference was still known as the AllThingsD Conference, Steve Jobs was interviewed famously three times by veteran technology journalists Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. In fact, Jobs gave his last interview before his death in 2011 October at the conference and in 2007 he sat down with Bill Gates for an iconic joint interview with Mossberg and Swisher. Swisher who is now hosting the conference hosted the trio who knew the mercurial Apple founder the most as they announced the Steve Jobs archive.
Swisher while reminiscing about how the late Apple founder would’ve reacted to the current landscape and the modern design challenges, in a tongue and cheek style asked Ive and Cook, “What would a car you design look like?”
Ive replied, “you know I can’t answer that” as till 2019 he was Apple’s chief design officer, and his new design firm LoveForm is said to be working not only on the Apple Car but also has a relationship with Ferrari. But Laurene Powell Jobs jumped in and even hinted that both Ive and Cook weren’t fans of how Tesla’s cars looked.
“I’m really not a car person. I love beautiful old ones that are no longer safe to drive, so I find my cars soulless. I would say I know [Tim and Jony] don’t like the design of Tesla but I appreciate the degree of safety it has. It’s really quite nice,” she said.
Jony Ive is known to be a big fan of cars and has a classic car collection of his own. Apple’s Project Titan is has been in the doldrums since 2015. It has seen many executive changes but now is run on a day-to-day basis by Kevin Lynch, Apple’s software chief for the Apple Watch and his team reports to John Giannandrea who is Apple’s senior vice president for AI and machine learning strategy.
Apple has been developing an autonomous electric car which is why Giannandrea’s expertise is crucial as he is one of the foremost experts in the space of AI which is critical for self-driving cars and used to be the head of Google Search before this role. Apple is not expected to launch the Apple Car project before 2025.
