Apple's rumoured 'robot iPad' sounds throughly bizarre

Apple has been rumoured to be working on all words of weird and wonderful new gadgets over the last few years, from folding iPhones to electric cars to AirPods you can control with your teeth (yes, really). As with every Apple rumour or patent leak, there's no guarantee the thing will ever see the light of day – and here's one I'm not particularly eager to see materialise.

A new report suggests Apple has "several hundred" team members working on a 'home robot' device, which could essentially take the form of an iPad attached to an arm that's capable of moving on command. But with sensors that could help the screen move by itself, it's already sounding a little dystopian. Sure, I love the M4 iPad Pro – but I don't need it to follow me around the room on a robotic arm. 

According to everybody's favourite Apple leaker Mark Gurman, The company "now has a team of several hundred people working on the device, which uses a thin robotic arm to move around a large screen, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The product, which relies on actuators to tilt the display up and down and make it spin 360 degrees […] is envisioned as a smart home command centre, videoconferencing machine and remote-controlled home security tool." The device could be released in 2026 or 2027, and feature a price tag around $1000. That puts the pricing at around the same point at the M4 iPad Pro. 

The era of smart assistants is well and truly upon us, with the likes of Amazon's Alexa and Google's assistant talking their way through homes across the world. Some of these devices have screens, but one that could follow you around the room on a 360-degree robotic arm? That sounds a little too far for me. 

But then again, perhaps the issue here is that the device sounds so well tailored to work rather than home life. It could be ideal for business calls – and sure, working from home has been much more of a thing since the pandemic. But to me, this sounds like it belongs in a conference room rather than a living room.

And indeed, it's entirely possible that Apple could choose to market this thing at business rather than general consumers. That seems to be the way it's gone with Vision Pro, although this pivot could be in response to what many have interpreted as disappointed sales. And as we know from the infamous Apple Car, the company is no stranger to ditching products that have been worked on by hundreds, nay, thousands of employees – so we'll just have to wait and see whether the robot-arm-iPad-thing decides to strong-arm its way into our homes.