Apple explores home robotics as potential 'next big thing'
bloomberg.comI know being late to the game and doing the tech "right" in terms of design and usability is kinda Apple's thing, but lately it seems like they have been only picking areas that weren't successful for a reason, like insurmountable technical difficulties or lack of customer interest, and no amount of Apple's design or marketing magic can fix that. See – self driving, AR/VR, smart speakers, folding phones, now home robotics. I know for a fact that they have been hiring a bunch of engineers from Google's Everyday Robots division (which shut down last year), but I really can't see why the same people will be successful under a new corporate overlord.
One thing about Apple is things can make sense for them to explore that don't make sense for others to. They have a big enough ecosystem, enough cash to do R&D on an idea for decades, and a culture of killing things that aren't good enough that make them an ideal place to determine whether ideas are a conceptual dead end versus just haven't been executed well enough (or tied to the right ecosystem to make them work).
Foldables make sense for Apple to explore because even if it's ~5% likely to be able to be productized, the return is measured in the tens of billions.
Smart speakers were comparatively cheap and are probably profitable, so even if they're not a huge market they made sense.
AR/VR remains to be seen. Meta's still learning how to build hardware and operating systems and still learning how to sell actual products, so they're probably not the right ones to test concept risk when they already have so much execution risk. They also don't have the leverage or insertion point that Apple does if e.g. AR/VR turns into an alternative to computers & iPhones instead of an alternative to consoles. It may also be that Vision Pro is just a prelude to AR that ship in ~2035 but lays so much groundwork that nobody stands a chance at competing by the time the tech is ready, letting Apple secure the next trillion dollar product.
Cars were expensive and cancelled, that's the one that required Apple to stretch the most in terms of both brand and execution.
In your Google example, remember they invented transformers and yet did nothing with them. Any failure in Google's robotics efforts are likely due to Google having an absolutely horrible record of shipping and standing behind products. I wouldn't trust a Google robot because I wouldn't trust a Google product.
Yup, Google has the attention span of a gnat. I've used Pixel Phones for years, and I wouldn't be even slightly surprised to see that entire product line dropped tomorrow. I'm very glad to see Apple's Vision Pro, because I believe that if it succeeds it will be wonderful, and if it fails it means the AR/VR product category will never (well, not for a very long time at least) be anything but an unimportant niche product, as it is now.
I wonder if it is because of how its promotion package works. A middle manager thinks up of a product and executes in it. It launches, the manager get a promotion, and then it gets kill for not getting enough users. By then the manager got their pay raise and no longer needs the project.
> One thing about Apple is things can make sense for them to explore that don't make sense for others to. They have a big enough ecosystem, enough cash to do R&D on an idea for decades, and a culture of killing things that aren't good enough that make them an ideal place to determine whether ideas are a conceptual dead end versus just haven't been executed well enough (or tied to the right ecosystem to make them work).
While Apple can do this, it isn't their typical mode of operation. For instance, they tend to accuhire companies specifically around getting an execution-oriented team for particular product areas, like developer tools (TestFlight) or weather (Dark Sky) or assistants (Siri).
This does mean building compelling product demos can determine how long a feature-under development can get extended.
> Foldables make sense for Apple to explore because even if it's ~5% likely to be able to be productized, the return is measured in the tens of billions.
Foldables make sense for Apple to explore also because even if foldable phones are a bad idea (and I kinda suspect they are), they make tons of other devices in different form factors which may have an entirely different set of trade-offs for flexible/foldable displays.
Agree foldables are a good way to do product discovery!
Yeah small M&A is great for advancing/derisking R&D for a given part or tech. They also embed / work closely with manufacturing partners. Nevertheless they're also doing a lot on their own R&D work; a bunch of Vision Pro stuff is homegrown and there's always new potential techs we never see that show up in patent applications showing their R&D is moving along at a healthy clip, e.g. this radar based tracking system from two days ago [1].
I think folks like Google and Meta talk a lot more about their R&D where Apple is very tight lipped, since part of Apple's magic is the part of R&D that's figuring out how to take janky half-working parts, polish them relentlessly, and combine the right ones together into something that makes sense as a product.
[1] https://www.patentlyapple.com/2024/04/apple-wins-patent-for-...
> They have a big enough ecosystem, enough cash to do R&D on an idea for decades
They can but do they? For all their flightiness on products, the company that actually does this is Google. They've poured money into very long term, questionable return projects at a rate Apple doesn't seem willing to do
They just shut down their car project that spent $10,000,000,000 over 10 years. That’s $1,000,000,000 a year, $1 Billion dollars a year for 10 years on an ultimately shuttered project.
> They can but do they?
Yes, they do.
Apple is beholden to normal shareholders; Google is owned by Brin and Page, and the only reason it does those weird projects is they like them.
Not playing everywhere is an existential risk. Because IT is so integrative, if anyone gets a huge leg up in any sector, Apple risks getting shut out in a lot of other sectors.
Spatial Computing/iVision is, for example, a claim in vr. It gives them some exposure to the market, some ability to extend & integrate their existing application/computing ecosystem into this medium. Ditto for all the other pieces; they're all integrative. Smart speakers work with airplay. iWatch works with iPhone works with iOS. The close integration lets them rebuff innovation in any other field: no one small can come along and build the next VR headset or the best watch to compete with Apple in any of these sectors, because no one can integrate like Apple. No one else has all the products. You have to have complete over the horizon horizontal control to keep your intense market power, and Apple is invested above all in there never being a chink in that armor, in making sure they can completely dictate the shape of all products by producing & owning all the products themselves. This is Apple.
Hence, Apple has to dabble everywhere. It maintains the most, it prevents real competition from forming, and it earns them a couple % revenue here and there to boot.
Expressing an entirely different brand of cynicism, I'd also ask: where else could Apple look to expand into? None of these sectors has been a runaway success. But it's not like Apple's missing the boat on some massive new tech that a huge new Total Addressable Market. It's been absent from Crypto and AI but generally it's just expanding wherever there's any opportunity, and why not when you have the cash & when any sector could become huge?
That's true, _and_ I think there's a tendency to think that Steve Jobs only launched things he knew were immediate hits – when products that look influential in retrospect, like iPods and the MacBook Air, took a few years to really take off.
For what it's worth, I don't know whether we'll ever know all of the Jobs-era skunkworks projects that were shut down before they ever saw the limelight. The lid on the rumors was much tighter back then.
Because they Need to do R&D and spend some money on this category. They also have way too much cash with Execs having very little idea of where Apple should be heading. Tim Cook has zero product understanding. That means he has to rely on engineers. Most of the original product people that were with Apple ( the design team ) has all left Apple. So what makes a successful company more successful? The sales and marketing people.
A substantial fraction of households that can afford Apple devices likely owns several of them. So if Apple wants to multiply their revenue, they need to create products with wide appeal with margins (in raw numbers -- not just percentages) comparable to their current offerings i.e. margins of $1000+ per household. That might help understand the kind of products they are pursuing.
Apple is uniquely situated (cash surplus, deep tech + manufacturing expertise, consumer product + marketing expertise) to take on such multi-year product-oriented R&D. Even if one out of N (serious) attempts pays off, the scale of success will justify the amortized ROI.
I also can't imagine a home robotics use case that I would get excited over. Can anyone think of anything? I would guess any new product would be more complex, less efficient, and a security risk. It'll be cool and trendy for a few months and then die off. Just like the Alexa and Google speakers that can tell you the weather or adjust your lights...is it REALLY that useful outside of entertaining your nieces and nephews? My guess is that they'll make some revenue from collecting user data and selling it to data brokers or something.
Edit: someone below said laundry folding robot. I'd see that as useful.
The company that builds a robot that can do household chores will be very, very rich.
I want a bot that can do laundry (load washer, load dryer, fold, put away), do the dishes (rinse, put in dishwasher, put clean dishes away, wash pots & pans), vacuum floors, dust, clean up messes, empty garbage bins, take out the trash, mow my lawn, trim bushes, clean tables, mop floors, make meals, cleans toilets and sinks and bathrooms.
Currently myself and my wife split these duties, and kids help a bit. But it's still a ton of work for us. I would love to offload all that and more to a robot.
Exactly. And add one more thing: Help with the care of the elderly and invalids.
As it happens, I turned sixty-seven today. While I am in good shape now, it's reasonable to assume that I might need personal care at some point in the not too distant future. A humanoid robot assistant that could handle many of those tasks would be great.
I have no idea when or whether that will become possible, though.
If there was a smallish vehicle (thing? I'm thinking johnny #5) that could:
hold and carry things you give it (without spilling), and carry then set them down where you ask.
or pick things up from the ground for you.
Then that would probably be a great help for lots of older people.
I'm not that old myself, but I've seen lots of older people who are otherwise self-sufficient struggle with some of these things as mobility starts to suffer.
If it could also talk to you and give sass back, then that would also be a bonus.
Pretty much this. We pay a cleaning service for the privilege to vacuum and dust.
A robot that does it for me that I can buy for $15k and last a decade? Id be all over it.
Robots can already vacuum and mop floors pretty decently for <$2k.
No one is building a robot to dust your antique china collection anytime soon.
Meh those robots don't do a good job with young children . The amount of debris they have to work around isn't worth it.
Maids will be cheaper than robots for at least a decade
I don't want to pay someone to clean up my messes. That is not the kind of relationship I want to have with another human. But I'd happily pay for a machine that did it.
I understand that this is coming from a place of privilege, but I was raised with regular maid service cleaning our home as a child and it's just something you learn to live with. You pick up after yourself for the easy things like throwing out garbage and picking up your clothes on the floor so the maids can do the heavy work like deep cleaning everything that's not in the way. And it's not necessarily unaffordable for biweekly cleaning.
You don't hire a maid service to clean up after you, you do it because they do a better job at all the stuff you really don't want to.
You would literally be making the same argument for any other breakthrough tech:
Why invent a dishwasher? You can have someone do it! Why have automated elevators? You can have someone do it! Why have automated farming systems? You can hire cheap Mexicans to do it!
We like to invent technologies to help make people's lives easier.
That person doesn't have a better job available to them though, so without that job, you're sentencing them to destitution, which seems like a worse outcome for them. Fortunately you don't have to see it though.
Are you willing to pay for privacy as a premium?
I don't think whatever Silicon Valley cooks up will be more private than a human who has fallible memory
Human-sized robots (arguably needed for some of the tasks you list, being able to walk stairs, etc.) will be creepy due to how physically imposing they’ll be, and with a risk of being dangerous due to how massive they’ll need to be. For example falling over due to malfunction/collision/tripping, and potentially crushing a small child. I don’t see such a product happening for home use.
If a robot is adept at washing dishes and folding laundry, it suggests our technology is good enough that they should have a decent shot at remaining upright indefinitely, or falling gracefully and righting themselves afterwards.
Perhaps the entire kitchen sink could be redesigned with robotic dish washing in mind. No bipedal Boston Dynamics style robot washing your dishes and taking out the trash - just two arms built into the sink with automated drains and soap dispensing to wash dishes, put them in a rack, and do nothing else. I'd pay quite a bit for that.
How is that different than a dishwasher? The problem is collecting the dishes and putting them away, not washing them. Unless you’re imagining something to scrub pots and pans?
I think that in reality, most people do a very light pre-wash of many dishes, before loading them into the dishwasher. I know I do. I'd be happier if I could just stick the plates in the sink, and come back an hour later to find the dishes, pots, pans and utensils drying in a rack.
Can just be a pair of hands and a camera on extendable/retractable wires, with a wheeled base. Probably much cheaper than making a humanoid.
Self driving cars seem tame in comparison.
I don't think so. To my knowledge, nobody has ever been killed by a Roomba. The robot problem is a lot less scary if there are essentially no life-and-death consequences for random innocent bystanders.
a robot arm capable of doing the dishes is also capable enough to manipulate a knife (commonly found in kitchens) in a stabbing motion. Not intentionally, of course, but the sci-fi story of this going bad writes itself. That doesn't mean we shouldn't do it, I'll be the first in line to buy a robot arm sink dishwasher, but robotics is dangerous, even when not piloting a several ton vehicle down the road.
I'm shocked by your comment. Everyone that doesn't enjoy cleaning, cooking, doing laundry, mowing the lawn, or taking out the trash would LOVE a home robot that really works.
Of course, these are very hard problems to take on -- much harder than a "smart" light switch -- but the market is absolutely there.
We are far, far away from any of the remaining tedious parts of those things being done competently by a robot.> Everyone that doesn't enjoy cleaning, cooking, doing laundry, mowing the lawn, or taking out the trash would LOVE a home robot that really works.- Dishes: dishwashers already do the majority of the labor intensive part.
- Laundry: the washer already does the labor intensive part.
- Mowing: if you don't trust robot cars, you shouldn't trust a moving robot with blades attached.
- Taking out the trash: I don't see buying a multi-thousand dollar robot to save me the 20 seconds it takes to walk the garbage out.
Even robot vacuums are kinda terrible.
Traversing a rectangle of grass at 2mph in a backyard is absurdly simpler than self-driving cars on open roads, and the absolute worst-case is something like a foot or pet injury.
There are multiple companies that already sell automatic lawn mowers in the $1000+ range. Some you bury a boundary wire around the target area, others figure it out with cameras.
Unless it is not a rectangle and there trees randomly in the way and wife's flowers on the sides.
Robot vacuums are great! They have limitations but they work really well within that envelope in my experience.
How far is "far far away" to you? The recent robot demos (linked below) make me thing it's not that far off. I think within my lifetime, certainly. Within the decade, at most. I expect someone to announce something concrete within a couple of years.
Are those supposed to convince me that spending thousands on a robot will make my life measurably better?
Because they're not; the exact opposite in fact. That Spot missing the shoe on the first grab, being loud, and taking up more space than a German Shepard (without the floofy companionship) is case in point how far away we are.
I not sure why you think I'm trying to convince you that you should spend any of your money on something you don't want.
Upvote for robot vaccums - even value ones are pretty good these days (imo)
If they were invented today, dishwashers would be the same product but be called dish-washing robots. It's essentially what they are. Being mobile isn't essential to robotness.
AI Powered Robotic Cleansing Assistants ...
Breakthrough technology.
Thank you for being the voice of reason:)
Sure I'd like a personal robot butler to walk the dog and a dozen other annoying tasks, but apple isn't going to figure that out short of AGI or a quantum leap forward in more traditional approaches. What we're going to get is something like the Roomba, which was already useless in my tight house. I can't imagine too many things that would be relatively achievable that I would care about.
I guess I wasn't very clear above lol.
Everything that can be automated, should be automated
Food prep.
There are already products for infants that will prep baby food. It’s harder to do something more complicated than that. Meal kit type meals that take grocery store ingredients as an input would likely do well with the well to do 30+ crowd that is in the middle of having kids and home remodels and is upset at how much delivery restaurant food they eat.
I’m definitely not projecting ;).
I think there’s likely a market for just the iBabyFood maker let along coming closer to an automated chef that’s “smarter” than buying a meal kit.
My experience with smart vacuums is that the more “AI” they add to them the worse they get. I’ve switched brands a few times and have always preferred the dumber models. I’m sure old iPhone tech and some computer vision know how would make a “Roomba killer” possible but I don’t know how many people are going to by the Beats by Dre Vacuum. Maybe a lot?
As things become more solarized a cross “platform” energy management system would be useful. Load controllers exist but often they’re tied to solar batteries or EVSEs. In my case I could avoid the cost of a panel update if there was a good system for load control that also wouldn’t upset my family. I.e. if they need to handle a transfer switch they will not be happy. More like, “if I’m running the jacuzzi and it’s winter, gate the AC but not the heat pump. If it’s summer gate the heat pump Aux heat but not the heat pump itself”
Most load controllers are focused on making a generator or battery run critical loads and don’t really work for larger more electrified homes on 200A panels.
I don't personally find them exciting but robotic vacuum cleaners are pretty popular, I guess they could make an expensive one of those and be successful.
I imagine an ageing population with social isolation might be the golden ticket for this kind of work.
>I also can't imagine a home robotics use case that I would get excited over.
Well, there's always the all-in-one washer/dryer combo which also does auto-foldi...
>Edit: someone below said laundry folding robot. I'd see that as useful.
I mean there is the automated chef kitchen machine the size of a large fridge which cooks dozens of meals which all intersect with the unit-prepared ingredients. Essentially a compact home version of what you'll all soon be seeing at fast food joints all over.
I myself am flipping out about Flippy™!
Disability augments.
We need a word/concept for technology that has just slightly more utility than a Minsky/Shannon's useless machine but that small amount of utility obfuscates the actual uselessness of the technology.
I like that Apple is taking on big hard futuristic problems, like AR/VR, AI, and home robotics.
But from a business perspective it seems unlikely to be successful. Apple could "easily" sell a luxury car and TVs and print many billions of dollars right away. They wouldn't need unproven tech -- they could just use their design skills along with vertical integration to have very nice products that people would want to buy. Apple should eschew some of Silicon Valley's obsessions, like self-driving cars, which most people do not care about at all, and instead focus on their strengths.
Sounds like you’ve never been in a Waymo. It’s so much better than an Uber it’s not even funny, and that’s worth many billions right there.
Apple just recently cancelled their car project after ten years of R&D and spending over $10 billion.
But Waymo is essentially building an automated taxi service, not self driving cars to be sold to consumers. Replacing taxis would probably never produce the margins that Apple expects. Self driving cars would only make sense for Apple if they could produce what Elon Musk has claimed Tesla would produce (and probably never will) - level 4+ driving.
that failure is much more a leadership issue than a talent issue. Google was founded by PhD students and it shows. (I am one.) It's like a giant lab where things get prototyped and innovations are pushed, but where product ends up sidelined by bloated admin (how many levels are there and why does it feel like an MMORPG i.e World of Warcraft) and lack of clear capitalist vision (I'm actually anti-capitalist but even I can admit to this LOL). Honestly, it sounds exactly like a university. I used to think Google was slated to be the king of AI back when I starting out because they had ALL the talent (even OpenAI is its offshoot if you consider early employees and Ilya himself). I feel like it was so lateral that it was a loose federation of small tribes of smart people that live under the same banner, but not a tight organization where each team had its purpose within a giant mechanism. But as the saying goes too many cooks spoil the broth.
Apple is WAY different internally. For all its dreariness and corpo atmosphere (not allowed to talk to each other, teams siloed and laser focused on shipping a specific product) they have much clearer vision of what will sell and what not, usual company missteps (AR glasses) notwithstanding.
Good luck to them. Xiaomi has been already doing it for years at approachable prices. They now also have a car, the Su 7, a project which Apple gave up on. Of course, it possibly comes with th CCP/PLA embedded spyware.
For me the "transformative" aspect of personal robotics is... maintenance
Why does every store have self opening doors, but no houses do? I think it's because paying ~$500/year to get it running again when it breaks feels like a waste to almost any home owner. The same with other random innovations, like a car stacker to push your car into the garage roof when not in use so you can use the garage (the hydraulics would break), fans and pumps to move heat in or out of the house or water around the garden, they're a pain because they break, it's only worth it if you're running a commercial operation.
So homes end up with the absolute minimum number of things that could break. Calling out trades for the few things people must have requires smart people who are physically able, that have their ticket in a protected industry (in many countries). But a robot could have the same knowledge and physicality - at a fixed yearly cost.
If that were to happen, homes would transform as all sorts of things that require very occasional maintenance would start to appear. If something breaks even a very weak robot could diagnose it, find the parts online, have them delivered and probably install them.
> Why does every store have self opening doors, but no houses do?
This is easy to answer: I don't want a door that opens by itself (except in my dreams) because it's potentially dangerous, might open when I don't want (and let my cat out) and it's likely an energy sieve.
The juice isn't worth the squeeze - even not counting maintenance.
It's also just laziness. Even in homes with very few things to do maintenance on, things still go unmaintained.
> fans and pumps to move heat in or out of the house or water around the garden, they're a pain because they break, it's only worth it if you're running a commercial operation.
Um, what? AC and sprinklers? Those are common in homes.
"Smart home" has really fallen flat across the board, from smart speakers to the Roomba. It would be great if Apple changed that, but I'm not optimistic. I just don't think people really want smart home devices all that much.
I think the issue is that smart home devices didn't do anything I couldn't already do, but a physical switch is faster than arguing with the computer.
Hey Google, can you turn off the baby bedroom light?
I'm sorry, I don't know that device.
I used to have a dozen or so Google Home devices for all sort of automation, but have mostly given up on it. I feel like Google is going to kill these any day now, the Google Assistant on them has been getting dumber and dumber. Where in the past, it would do its best to provide an answer, now for 99% of queries it just says "idk how to help with that."
So the only thing these devices are used for these days in my household are setting alarms and turning lights on/off. In the next home, probably won't even bother.
I've totally disabled my entire smart home ecosystem. Philips hue thankfully has a hubless fallback (with the Zigbee remote). I just hate the unreliable nature of wireless devices, and having to manage an account for every accessory (Philips hue account, wemo account, iCloud account, etc.). Matter/thread which was supposed to be a smart home revolution turned out to be a crapshoot requiring proprietary Thread border routers.
Probably A/B testing but mine answers most questions these days, I swear even those it couldn't answer in the past. It hasn't given me the I don't know answer in a long while. Still mostly used for lights, morning alarms, shop opening hours, asking if my dog can eat my snack and the weather.
I know others here saying they can do it themselves but nothing beats asking google to turn off the lights in the house when I've forgotten and I'm cosy in bed already.
There's also profiteering and security issues. Thermostat that wants to connect to "cloud" and needs to know my street address, my name etc.? -- Not happening. Companies selling "smart" devices instantly overcomplicated relatively simple appliances making them beyond DIY repair level, and, on top of it, wanted to sell service of supporting these overly complicated devices. It's just very hard to see the benefit, when all that eg. the thermostat does is turning the boiler on and off, saving a few seconds to someone who'd otherwise have to do it manually.
There also aren't that many areas where automation could possibly accomplish much. I think, the main directions are:
* Optimize energy usage (the same thermostat thing). It doesn't really amount to much. It could be useful in industrial setting, but for households it just doesn't save that much money, even if it works well.
* Cleaning. Making roombas deal with furniture or large objects left on the floor seems like mission impossible without a significant change in approach. Similarly for surfaces that are above the floor (desk, shelves etc.) Cleaning the exterior could be its own an quite an interesting thing though. Stuff like removing dead foliage from the roof for instance, or repainting the walls.
* Cooking. This could be potentially interesting, but will probably require a complete redesign of the tools used for cooking today to be reasonably priced. Eg. there would be no need for knives with handles for humans, because it's easier to make a slicing / chopping machine that has a very different configuration. Stoves and ovens would need to have some way of moving pots in and out automatically. Also, they'd probably have to be connected to the fridge and other kitchen storage... Which, in the end, means that it's not going to be an incremental upgrade. It will be also probably difficult to make the automated system coexist with human cooks...
> it just doesn't save that much money, even if it works well
You should see how wasteful typical American households are when they use a dumb thermometer. The best energy-saving feature is simply at-home vs away-from-home detection. I don't want my HVAC at home to run when I'm away at work or worse away at vacation, unless the temperature is really extreme. This easily saves me hundreds of dollars for a month-long vacation.
> Making roombas deal with furniture or large objects left on the floor seems like mission impossible
Roomba the company hasn't innovated in years. Switch to a different brand like Roborocks. Also don't choose models with a camera for privacy and performance reasons: lidar is much better.
High end robot vacuums have been innovating (including Roomba), with self-emptying bins and ML-based obstacle avoidance for things like cords and pet waste. This requires a camera, so any high end robot vacuum is going to have one. For me, those features are worth it.
The other big area of innovation is combo-vacuum+mop, including automatic water replacement and cleaning, but those features don’t seem to be fully ready for prime time yet. Roomba is behind the curve on this one.
ML-based obstacle avoidance does not require a camera. The latest products consciously avoid cameras to assuage fears that the images captured could be sent to the cloud.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/19/1065306/roomba-i...
It may not require a camera, but in practice I think most or all units use them. It’s definitely not a Roomba-specific issue.
I’m familiar with the “woman on a toilet” story and I think it’s overblown. It was a prototype unit used for training the ML model, not a consumer unit.
How does the thermostat know you are going on a month long vacation?
This is why it’s requirement that all “smart” devices in my house can fall back to “dumb” use. Smart switches are the way forward here. They work just the same as existing switches, but I can also control them via automation, voice, or an app.
I normally recommend people start their home automation journey with smart bulbs, ideally in their bedroom so they can speak their lights off and on while in bed, but long-term, switches are the best.
> I think the issue is that smart home devices didn't do anything I couldn't already do, but a physical switch is faster than arguing with the computer.
Exactly this.
I've had so many "aw fuck it I'll do it myself" moments with tech.
I no longer use any smart home devices. It was a passing fad as far as my experience goes.
Seemed cool, didn't really change my life.
As another commenter alluded to, good Smarthome tech becomes an appliance, which isn’t a desirable high margin business, and bad tech becomes a nuisance which is also not a desirable business.
That’s why Google is slowly getting out of it and shifting their focus from Nest. That’s why Apple never did much beyond a few speakers, and it’s why Amazon is right at home in that business (but even they’re getting out of the money-losing voice assistant aspect).
Robotics… seem like a miss to me. Very few tasks at home are as simple as vacuuming, but maybe I just lack the creativity and vision. Apple surely has some great tech left over from the car R&D so who knows. Apple is unfortunately not great at a “communal” perspective when making things.
I think a big issue no one talks about will be robot storage/garages. It’s already an issue for Roomba and anything bigger will be a no-go for many households. That is probably apples best chance - make it pleasant to look at and a status symbol.
> Robotics… seem like a miss to me. Very few tasks at home are as simple as vacuuming, but maybe I just lack the creativity and vision.
SwitchBot is working on something I haven't seen elsewhere yet: Making robot vacuums double as mops is becoming common, and and a few have modifications to hook into the water/waste lines so you don't have to refill it, but SwitchBot made that as part of its primary design because they got the idea to use the robot to ferry water around other places: it can automatically refill their humidifier and empty their dehumidifier.
I could imagine further enhancements for watering plants, or maybe if it's a success a future one that cleans rugs may become feasible.
> Robotics… seem like a miss to me. Very few tasks at home are as simple as vacuuming
Even vacuuming was pretty hard. Most vacuum robots were a disappointment until maybe 2 or 3 years.
Oh absolutely, it just has the advantage of being a well know and relatively simple machine (the vacuum), that is expected to roll across the floor, and is expected to avoid household objects instead of interacting with them.
Almost all other tasks either operate at human-hands level (significantly bigger robot) or need intimate understanding of you and your home (eg picking things up off the floor) or need a ton of dexterity (folding clothes). Or all three.
I like smart devices for their automation potential. I use smart plugs to turn on and off lights, coffee makers, grow lights, heating mats. The ability to quickly program a plug to turn on every morning at 10am and turn off again at 10pm is valuable to me. It's even more valuable if you get into hobbies like aquarium keeping where you can automate lights and fish feeders.
Yes, you can do all of these things manually, but are you good at keeping a flawless schedule? It may not matter if you forget to turn on the coffee maker but it matters a lot if you forget to feed the fish. And you won't always be available to handle these things every single day, unless you work from home and follow an extremely rigid schedule.
I'm curious about the coffee maker bit. I drink espresso and I can't really imagine a benefit in turning something a device on if someone isn't there to also put coffee in it, pour it etc.
How much time does it save you having your coffee maker or before you go to get coffee?
I drink espresso as well. It takes 1/2 hour to warm up the machine after I turn it on. Having it turn on and be ready for me when I want to make a coffee saves 1/2 hour. Plus I have time-of-use billing for electricity so having it turn on early in the morning during off-peak hours saves money! It takes more energy to heat the thing up to operating temperature than it does to maintain that temperature all day.
Ah yes, makes sense. I use a stovetop pot on an induction plate. It heats up super fast.
The thing with a fish feeder is that it can be completely analog and still work fine.
Only if you're feeding once a day. You often want to feed 2 or even 3 times a day with a smaller amount at each feeding time. This tends to lead to less wasted food.
You've made a stunning point. There's no analog way to make things happen more than once a day. The logic is clear and irrefutable. Well done.
You feed fish during the day when the light is on. If you feed them 3 times a day and the light is on for a 12 hour period, that’s once every 4 hours 3 times followed by 12 hours of rest. What analog timer can do that?
A 12 hour one with stops every four hours. Reset the timer when you fill the feeder in the morning.
If this was an interview question I would reject the job. You don't seem worth working with.
That’s not going to work if you’re going on a vacation for a week. You want to fill the feeder with a week’s worth of food at a time and have it feed every day according to the schedule. Control the power to the feeder with a smart plug and set the feeder’s internal timer to 4 hours.
I have a Roomba, it works pretty well for doing 'maintenance level' vacuuming--keeping the level of cat hair to a manageable level, etc. For the most part, robot vacuums have succeeded in becoming boring, which is what I really want in an appliance.
I want a smart home, but I also do not want to send my data to anyone else and I don't really have the time to cobble something together.
If apple can refrain from sending the data to icloud or any other servers, then I would be very interested.
That exists today. Apple's Homekit is the only real solution for a smart home that doesn't send everything to/from the cloud.
I'm trying to update to v2 of HomeKit in the Home app but it won't let me unless I login to iCloud. From what I recall v2 of HomeKit relies on a hub spoke model, as opposed to v1 which relies more on broadcast packets.
> ”“Smart home" has really fallen flat across the board,… I just don't think people really want smart home devices all that much.”
Or are these devices just so common, unremarkable, and ubiquitous now that you just aren’t noticing them anymore? I can’t think of any of my friends and family who don’t at least have some smart speakers and smart lighting devices in their home.
Smart door locks that you can open with your phone, and smart door bells and security cameras that you can monitor remotely are becoming pretty common too.
I think it's that most actually useful smart home stuff was very quickly saturated. It is great to be able to adjust my lights easily. It is great to turn my TV off in the other room. It is great to have a robot vacuum.
But a smart coffee maker? A smart clock? A smart dishwasher? All this garbage ended up being gimmicks and it ran out of steam so quickly.
I hope the things that are useful continue to get support as the big players abandon smart home expansion.
I really do want smart home devices! My biggest issue so far has been stability and interoperability issues between each vendor and system. Those things have gotten better, but are still a headache. Apple is in a pretty good position to solve those pain points (at the cost of buying new devices (Apple brand or Apple Certified maybe?). Or maybe I need to dive deeper into HomeAssistant...
> Or maybe I need to dive deeper into HomeAssistant...
This is the answer.
HomeAssistant is fantastic and has unified everything of mine into a single platform. Control mostly happens through Google and Apple/Homekit devices (other than hardware switches), and everything works pretty seamlessly.
I thought I would be into smart home devices, but the companies fucked up by turning them into privacy and security liabilities, with poor interoperability and likelihood of turning into junk when the company goes under.
From what I hear, it's a nightmare to get Siri to know what light you want to turn on. Unfortunately it seems like apple is trailing the pack in the smart home area.
In terms of mental development Siri, is at best, a 5 year kid. It has never been useful to me.
HomeKit and HomePods are such a mess, I don’t think Apple has it in them.
I have the feeling that basically all current smart home products are either a disappointment in their limitations or useful but really time consuming.
The only smart appliances I got are Philips hue lights which are nice but well, after the initial discovery, I use them as classical light bulbs 99% of the time. I’ve found zero useful automation (not saying they don’t exists) and I can’t see why I would control lighting from my phone (at least not enough to justify spending hundreds into smart bulbs and smart switches).
Ultimately, I’m not against smart home but since each home is unique, by definition, those objects are only useful if the user is willing to invest enough time to tailor the configuration to be useful in his own unique house.
Oh I thought about ranting about my experience with Sonos speakers which are really nice speakers with great audio quality for the money and size and everything you’d want except the "smart" part you are forced to use with their terrible (and closed) software.
Sonos would like a word.
I'm not holding my breath after seeing their stock price.
I want something that cleans my bathroom and toilet. I will buy it for my business and will pay 20-30k/year.
Also, something to Clean my dishes (Load in the dishwasher, turn it on, and put it away).
Doing my laundry - load, wash and fold. Mow the lawn.
Pretty sure you can get a domestic service to pop by at much lower than that. Biologics are still king.
I just want a machine that will produce a cup of something that is almost, but not completely, unlike tea.
Thank you for reminding me of this fabulous book.
You can get shitty vending machines for that!
Automated lawn mowing is relatively mature at this point and works well, assuming you have a relatively flat lawn.
A one time purchase price of 20k would be acceptable. $20-30k per year is ridiculous. For that price you can hire a person to come and clean your toilet for 5 hours a day, every single day.
So... I have a gardener. He works two days a week doing all kinds of stuff.
The mowing itself (and trimming) takes 5% of his time, or even less.
Funny how people enjoy automating the part that you easily could do yourself without a massive time impact.
It depends. My backyard lawn is about 2 acres in size. It takes me 1.5 hours to manually mow it with a small 21 inch powered push mower. I just let the auto mower do its thing continuously and it charges itself. Costs almost nothing since I sharpen the blades about once a month myself. It’s also nice because the grass is always trimmed. You don’t have to go through the let it get tall and the landscaper mows it down every two weeks cycle.
What kind of auto mower?
Husqvarna
Oh yeah, I my lawn isn't that large. But I try to have less lawn and more plants and interesting flora. I also feel that is better for the environment somehow, although <citation needed>.
That's part of why tech products disappoint. The MO is to reduce a complex problem to a simple base case (our robot can vacuum an entire house provided you have no stairs or furniture), half ass solving the complexities, and market your product as if they don't matter.
I'll continue doing stuff myself or paying humans. My time is too valuable to waste on empty promises that tech will save me time.
says the guy paying someone else to do it
You created an account on HN just to say that?
I own a hotel. 20k per year robot that cleans bathroom will save me 20k.
I would pay like $5000 for a laundry folding robot. I just want a big washing-machine sized box where I dump my laundry at the top and slowly everything gets folded. That's 1 hour / week freed up.
You could get yourself a drying cabinet (basically a closet with an A/C inside).
That could handle items on hangers, but I'm talking about folding underwear, shorts, T-shirts, pants, etc... That requires careful manipulation.
I used to think so, too, but solved this the following:
Hanging EVERYTHING. Not only shirts and jackets, but also t-shirts, pants, shorts.
This leaves one drawer each for socks and underwear, which both is not horrible from a laundry management perspetive.
If you replace enough of your cabinets with dishwashers you never need to put dishes away again.
Tech companies: best we can do is an AI that reads your kids bedtime stories. You know, the moments we actually cherish. The manual labor is all we'll humans have left to do.
Oops you left Storyteller.ai running on autoplay and its been reading Mein Kamp for two hours
Make your bathroom entirely waterproof and add a drain and high pressure sprinklers. Done.
Japan makes incredible bidet toilets that got some traction during the pandemic. The jokes write themselves but a smart toilet that had health tracking features liked to the rest of the Apple fitness eco-system could be interesting.
The security camera, door lock, and thermostat space has room for improvement. The annual subscription model for cameras combined with their privacy gaps opens a space for Apple. My car unlocks when I walk up to it. Shouldn't my house do the same?
Kitchen appliances have gone done in quality to the point that they are replaced every few years when the linear motors fail. I don't know if there is enough margin for Apple but knowing what food is cycling through the kitchen would be another interesting health input.
3D printer, laser cutter, replicator machine that manufactures physical goods in your house.
Automatic pool/hot tub system that keeps chemical levels balanced and orders supplies as needed.
Urban gardening pods that allow anyone to grow healthy food at home.
> Japan makes incredible bidet toilets that got some traction during the pandemic.
But Google actually got rid of theirs because they can't be used with recycled water/greywater, since it isn't clean enough.
> Urban gardening pods that allow anyone to grow healthy food at home.
Pretty much anything involving urban gardening is a fake hippie pastoralist idea. Centralization and professionalization is good.
> Near its campus in Cupertino, California, Apple has a secret facility that resembles the inside of a house — a site where it can test future devices and initiatives for the home.
Apple has a condo in Cupertino?
UL has, or had, a whole house in Fremont (maybe Milpitas) associated with their Fremont lab location for testing Wi-Fi/Bluetooth/etc interoperability in a "real-world" setting. They're not the only test lab to do something like that, either.
It would not surprise me at all if Apple had a similar facility for themselves, especially for internal demos, user testing, and sanity checks.
They even have a small medical facility.
WWDC21
There are a bunch of things in a house that are time consuming that would benefit from the help of robots. In fact it’s all the things that rich people can afford to hire someone to do:
- cooking
- cleaning
- taking care of kids
You can be sure that a ton of people are working on those.
Ok. Now you’re just reading the script from the hit Disney channel movie Smart House
apple already sells a device for taking care of kids, just get them an ipad and it'll keep them entertained all day long! /s
It would be nice to have a tripod on wheels that can have my iPad follow me around, and possibly respond to voice commands (move up, move down) or possibly integrate with the iPad camera to automatically be at eye level.
I've been using this and it's great but has its limitations: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01J6HBY1Q
This seems like one of the most hideously complex products you could possibly choose. Self driving cars were already out of reach for Apple and their team abandoned the effort. How do they think they are going to navigate and clean people’s homes!?
They should just fix Siri and iTunes. Siri is shockingly useless. If Siri were even a little more useful I would get a Home Pod but it's utterly useless for most things except setting timers and turning on lights.
Whisper >>>> Siri
Yeah, in retrospect, it was silly to think the company responsible for Siri was going to succeed in the self-driving car business... or the robot business.
They need some actual management talent, evidently.
Sounds like Apple needs to increase its dividend, this does not sound like a promising use of capital for Apple.
I was about to say the same thing, Apple have too much capital and they do not know what to do with it. It would be better to give it back to their investors instead of...this.
Barring major technical glitches, installation and configuration of a reliable locally hosted Zigbee-based solution is on the order of two hours.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJEwrSSFe9s
Here's what I used:
Raspberry Pi Model 4 B
Raspberry Pi CPU
Raspberry Pi CPU heatsink (w/self-adhesive)
Raspberry Pi manual
Raspberry Pi A/C adapter
Raspberry Pi case
ConBee II Zigbee USB gateway
USB ADATA Micro SD card reader
USB cable
Micro SD card (for operating system and Home Assistant)
Ethernet cable (probably not needed because the Pi 4 has onboard WiFi)
I haven't tried running a local text-to-speech engine backed by an LLM to control Home Assistant (HA). Maybe someone is working on this already?
TTS: https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper
LLM: https://github.com/Mozilla-Ocho/llamafile/releases
LLM: https://huggingface.co/TheBloke/Nous-Hermes-2-Mixtral-8x7B-D...
HA: https://www.home-assistant.io/
It would take some tweaking to get the voice commands working correctly.
I wish Apple went back to being more secretive and closed off like before. I don’t want to hear about anything unless they have a completed product.
I see it as the potential 'Next Apple Car'
I’m guessing if they’re successful, the result will be something extremely expensive.
I wish there was a vacuum bot that didn’t need so frequent maintenance.
They Gonna have a division names U.S. Robotics and Mechanical Men?
facepalm emoji