Did You Catch the Shot Apple CEO Tim Cook Seemed to Take at a Major Car Dealer While Unveiling New Products?

Apple CEO Tim Cook stunned audiences Monday as he introduced the company's latest products, including AppleWatch – but not for all the reasons you might expect.

Cook appeared to take a shot at the world's largest automaker, Toyota, for not agreeing to equip some of its newest vehicles with one of Apple's latest products, CarPlay.

CarPlay (Image source: Apple)

CarPlay will allow iPhone users to essentially turn the dashboards of their cars into their device screens. Cook said that "every major car brand has committed to delivering CarPlay." That assertion, however, just isn't true.

Toyota has so far refused to go along with Apple's plans to install CarPlay in any of its models, noting that it prefers to use its own technology in its vehicles, Jalopnik reported.

"We may all eventually wind up there, but right now we prefer to use our in-house proprietary platforms for those kinds of functions," John Hanson, Toyota  advanced technology communications manager, said.

But the world's largest automaker isn't just giving Apple the cold shoulder, at least for now. The Japanese manufacturer has also refused to install a similar product from Google, called Android Auto.

Google and Apple, among other Silicon Valley giants, have become fixated within the past few years on somehow breaking into the auto industry. Both companies have been testing driverless cars and reports suggesting a potential merger between Apple and Tesla have also surfaced.

The new CarPlay and Android Auto technology will work by transferring mobile icons from mobile devices to car dashboards. The mobile devices screens will then become dark, encouraging drivers to focus less on what's happening online and more on what's happening on the road in front of them.

“We looked at what people do with their phones in the car, and it was scary,” Andrew Brenner, a project manager for Google’s Android Auto team, told the New York Times. “You want to say to them, ‘Yikes, no, don’t do that.’" Brenner added the goal is to provide technology that is "very glance-able, something that can be seen and done quickly.”

Ferrari and Mercedes-Benz are the only automakers currently shipping cars installed with CarPlay, but as Apple's Cook assured on Monday, more than 40 car models will make the software available by the end of 2015.

It's not clear when Google will debut its new Android Auto technology. Its website says only that it is "coming soon."

(H/T: Jalopnik)

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