Inside Apple's slow progress on its first robot: a nine-inch screen on a swiveling arm

[The Information] Apple's new CEO John Ternus wants the company to get serious about robots, but Apple's plodding progress on the first one it hopes to sell—a device with a nine-inch screen that swivels on an arm and resembles the Pixar lamp—suggests he could face an uphill battle, according to The Information. Apple began work on the robot in 2019, code-naming it J595, with modest ambitions: it was envisioned mostly as a video-call device whose robotic arm could follow someone around a room. Hopes ballooned once executives wanted to add AI capabilities. The current design envisions the robot using a camera and sensors to be fully aware of its environment and act autonomously—turning on lights when someone enters a room, perhaps even telling a cat to get off a table—while avoiding accidental collisions with nearby objects. Much of the hardware has been finished for around two years, but the software team has found it difficult to keep pace, people who have worked on the project said. The hardware team responsible for J595 has pushed to hurry up and release the product, while the software team has advocated delaying it and over the past year has tried to strip back some proposed features, focusing the product on a few capabilities related to FaceTime and automating home tasks such as switching on a light.