A new report from Bloomberg cites insiders with Apple as saying that the company is now shifting focus following the news that Apple Cars is dead. Instead, the company now has teams getting into personal robotics and engineers developing a robot to follow users around their homes. Unsurprisingly, an advanced tabletop device for moving displays around is a huge hit in their research as well.
While the company is not fully vested in the project yet, they still consider themselves to simply be in a research phase. Apple’s hardware engineering division, as well as their AI and machine-learning groups with John Giannandrea at the helm, are working diligently on it. Meanwhile, home products executives Matt Costello and Brian Lynch, are reportedly tasked with overseeing the hardware development.
Ever since Steve Jobs died, the company has been trying to innovate its next great idea. While they have come out with bigger phones and moved their innovation all in-house since his death, nothing has moved the needle like the iPod and iPhone did. While the Airpods helped make people care about Bluetooth earphones again, it was a re-launch of a Jobs innovation in 2007 and was borne out of necessity.
Consumers were furious with dongles after the headphone port was eliminated, and Airpods were a solution that continued the Maximal-Minimalist designs. Having the very least in the package but doing the absolute most with it. This was another choice handed down by Jobs before his death, and this stretch into home robotics seems to be another step in that direction.
Jobs had a simple wish for Apple: to make the company bigger than any other on the planet—not just in terms of being in a niche but in dominating it. From computers to portable music and then phones, he pushed the company to consistently evolve with the marketplace and to innovate always. Since his death, that has taken a backseat to seemingly trying to tread water and just keep the iPhone as the top product.
