It’s no secret that Apple is interested in robots. Since 2024, we’ve been hearing rumors about an iPad-like display attached to a robotic arm, a sequel to the recently unveiled HomeView smart hub. If you’re having a hard time picturing that—and I wouldn’t blame you if you are—imagine if the Pixar lamp were mildly useful for controlling your glut of smart home devices.
But what we didn’t know was that Apple’s ambitions may not stop with what amounts to a motorized iPad—it may have its sights set on your chores. One chore, in particular.
According to The Information, Apple’s new CEO, John Ternus, is very interested in home robots, including robots that can “complete specific everyday tasks.” Those tasks include, to no one’s surprise, folding clothes. I write “to no one’s surprise” because if you’ve been paying attention to consumer-facing robots at all over the last decade, you’ll have noticed a common theme: they all want to fold your laundry.
There’s LG’s CLOiD, SwitchBot’s Onero H1, Unitree’s G1, and older, clunkier versions like the FoldiMate. And that’s not even a complete list.
It’s one thing for SwitchBot or even LG to consider entering the laundry-folding robot game. It’s another for Apple, a company that has never actually released a consumer robot before, to do so. But Ternus clearly sees some promise there. Whether Apple can actually make that promise a reality is another question entirely, especially because, from the sound of it, the project hasn’t gone all that swimmingly so far.
According to The Information, most of the hardware for Apple’s first robot (the aforementioned robotic iPad) has been complete for about two years, but the software team has “found it difficult to keep pace.” Although the robot was initially supposed to launch this year, the timeline has been pushed to next year, or possibly 2028. The nature of the setbacks isn’t detailed at length in the report, but the insinuation (to me, at least) is that Apple is struggling to figure out what exactly its not-just-an-iPad will actually do.
It’s not difficult to see why. As novel as it would be to watch your Apple-branded smart home hub whirl about of its own volition, the targeted price of $1,000 is going to elicit demands from any potential buyer that it actually, you know… be useful.
Whether a robotic Apple product will ever see the light of day is still up in the air, but if there’s one thing that’s clear, it’s that the Ternus era is shaping up to be a bit bolder than the more iterative Cook dynasty. That should be fun to watch, even if its yield mostly amounts to “an iPad on a stick.”
