Apple announced a new iPhone in car integration system and named it Car Play.
Vlad Sanov reported for The Verge
As was rumored on Friday, Apple is today finally ready to launch a new iPhone integration setup for car infotainment systems. Calling it CarPlay, the Cupertino company claims it’s “designed from the ground up to provide drivers with an incredible experience using their iPhone in the car.” CarPlay is built primarily around the use of Siri voice commands and prompts, providing an “eyes-free” experience where you can respond to incoming calls, dictate text messages, or access your music library. It’s also predictive, claiming to know where you’ll most likely want to go based upon addresses found in your email, texts, contacts, and calendars. Apple’s Maps are also an integral part of the service, which was previewed back in June of last year
The first cars to support CarPlay will debut at the Geneva Motor Show this week, coming from Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz, and Volvo. They’ll be followed by a very broad range of carmakers: Nissan, Peugeot, Jaguar Land Rover, BMW, and General Motors are among the big names promising to integrate CarPay into their forthcoming vehicles.
This is another new product launch where Apple has decided to launch without securing the .com. Carplay.com is owned by an individual in New York and the domain just shows a Go Daddy parked page. The domain has been registered since 2000.
Apple address for Carplay is currently https://www.apple.com/ios/carplay/
Well, I am pretty sure they will register the SLD “carplay” as soon as “.apple” is ready to go.
Why strengthening the “brand” of another company (like VeriSign)?
That is the flipside Alexander I agree, they more than likely will have a Carplay.apple. Maybe even Carplay.app as well down the road.
Even if they want to emphasize the Apple brand with Carplay.apple, surely they know that they’ll leak traffic to CarPlay.com.
By now, I would have thought that major companies would have written what in military jargon are termed “Standard Operating Procedures”. If Step 73 is “Announce Brand Name for New Product to the Public”, then Step 72 (at the latest) ought to have been “Acquire Matching .COM for Brand Name”.
Big organizations seldom work at optimum efficiency, though. They’ve got money to burn; so why bother thinking ahead on small things like 5 or 6-figure domain purchases?
Even if they were to acquire CarPlay.com, they’d likely just forward it to:
http://www.apple.com/carplay/
That’s what they do with iTunes.com, Mac.com, iPhone.com… etc. … after all.
They don’t even own iPad.com.
As I’ve noted before, it doesn’t appear that they care that much about being ‘domain name specific’. Everyone knows just to go to Apple.com for anything Apple related. From there it’s just a top menu bar click away to get to the product you want.
Interesting.
Dangerous to assume “everyone knows” where to go, however. For my part, I had never bothered to go to Apple.com until you mentioned that “everyone” knew to do so. And I’m writing from a MacBook Pro. So they may not be able to rely on 100% of their customers.
I thought everyone goes to, Google.com.
@Joseph Peterson
Sorry Joseph for my wording. Yes, you’re right, there are some people who have absolutely no idea where to find large well-known companies and their products on the Internet. For them, as Louise implies, there is Google, where if you type in iPad, iPhone, MacBook Pro, or some other Apple product, the first thing that shows up is Apple’s site.
My point was that Apple doesn’t brand their products with their own domain names. If they do own a product’s domain name, like iPhone.com for example, it simply gets forwarded to Apple’s site.
And Apple doesn’t seem to care about domain names they don’t own, like the undeveloped iPad.com site. Although maybe they should, since certain people who are unaware that they could go to Apple’s site, yes, even those who own MacBook Pros, will surely become thoroughly confused. And that would be sad.
@Grim,
Yes, I was “thoroughly confused” and “unaware that [I] could go to Apple’s site”. In fact, as you say, I ” have absolutely no idea where to find large well-known companies and their products on the Internet”. Marvelous to converse with somebody who represents my viewpoint so faithfully!
Contrary to what you say, “if you type in iPad, iPhone, MacBook Pro, or some other Apple product, the first thing that shows up is” NOT “Apple’s site”. Apple’s site is “first” only in the increasingly trivial sense that it is Google’s #1 ranking organic search result. In point of fact, the “first thing that shows up” will be one of 11 paid ad listings. In the case of an “iPad” search, that would be BestBuy.com … followed by a PPC AdWords spot by Apple itself.
If Apple is content to perpetually send customers to Google and then bid against Best Buy and other retailers to recover its own traffic for “iPad” searches, then I guess they’ve got a winning strategy. No need to provide customers a shortcut to iPad.com, since it would only directly forward them to Apple’s main site. Much better to pay extra to send that traffic to Google and then rent space from Google in return!
@Joseph Peterson
You’re funny. In a crazy nitpicky kind of way. I like that.
@Grim,
Nitpickers.org is an $8 closeout at the moment. Perhaps I should found an institution and have myself committed. ; )
Good job I own applecarplay.com
@peteavey
Yes, because it’s always a great idea to register domain names that infringe on trademarks… good job.