Apple Once Considered Building a Car

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pple and Samsung are in court, fighting about patents and copyrights, and one piece of testimony has perked up our ears.

Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing, said that before developing a smartphone—the now ubiquitous iPhone—Apple had been considering other projects, such as a camera or a car.

Could an Apple car had design elements from the iPad and iPhone? We'll never know.

It's unclear whether Apple would've designed a car from scratch or simply served as a supplier—perhaps providing a smartphone-like dashboard—but Schiller's relative throwaway comment shows that Apple was and is interested in all sorts of areas of design.

We'd love to see an "iCar" someday, as long as the dash doesn't light up with push notifications and we don't need a protective case for the body and a screen cover for the windshield.

On second thought, maybe Apple should stick with smartphones and tablets.

[Sources: Autoblog, The Unofficial Apple Weblog]