This is actually insane to me. Like bonkers, even. The MBA types are surely the source of that idea. From a brand perspective, the only car that ever truly made sense for Apple to make was something at least resembling a supercar. They could have made do with a Telsa Model S kind of car perhaps, but I'm shocked that a brand-conscious company like Apple thought a bus was the best bet as an initial product.
First impressions are vitally important. In my opinion, a car brand can go from making high performance cars to more "practical" vehicles once they've established their brand, but not the other way around. Slapping an Apple badge on a Corolla isn't going to work. Steve Jobs said it best, paraphrasing "We want to build computers that customers would want to lick.". If Apple wants to be a legitimate car company that enthusiasts like, they'd have to build a car those people would lick. Not a bus...
Everything Apple makes is ultimately still meant to be practical. I feel like the Apple car would be more like "Corolla, but very high end, and 3x the price" rather than a supercar.
Why a supercar? The apple watch (except the v1 "edition") was never going to compete with luxury watches. Airpods Max are in the higher end of consumer headphones, but a downright bargain compared to "luxury" headphones. Apple doing a lux-lite iteration of a common consumer good makes way more sense.
I agree with your thoughts about the bus, but I started thinking about how many car brands started out selling practical cars, and now have, if not supercars, very high end sports cars - it's a lot of them. It's also kind of how Apple has done stuff in the past. They've marketed their "lesser" products by also making sexy, "pro" products. They could have easily done the same here. Release a practical, functional, Apple product, stuffed with Apple's attention to detail, followed up with the supercar. The keynote would look just like any Macbook lineup update, with the $20k model saved for the end.
My long held feeling: A fleet of autonomous busses traveling predetermined inter/intra-city routes. Think, greyhound replacement. They were never going to be operated by humans.
A bus achieves what with some morality the profit other manufacturers seek via in-car purchases. GM, Rivian, and Tesla don’t want CarPlay for that reason.
A bus network would provide recurring revenue for the actual thing a vehicle is for, instead of DLC headlight patterns.
This is actually insane to me. Like bonkers, even. The MBA types are surely the source of that idea. From a brand perspective, the only car that ever truly made sense for Apple to make was something at least resembling a supercar. They could have made do with a Telsa Model S kind of car perhaps, but I'm shocked that a brand-conscious company like Apple thought a bus was the best bet as an initial product.
First impressions are vitally important. In my opinion, a car brand can go from making high performance cars to more "practical" vehicles once they've established their brand, but not the other way around. Slapping an Apple badge on a Corolla isn't going to work. Steve Jobs said it best, paraphrasing "We want to build computers that customers would want to lick.". If Apple wants to be a legitimate car company that enthusiasts like, they'd have to build a car those people would lick. Not a bus...