Apple’s magic robot lamp is coming to save us all

You know how you see a concept car from an auto manufacturer and you think “Wow! That’s so cool! I can’t wait to drive that!” and then their next car comes out and it looks like a Dodge Stratus?

Okay, look, the Dodge Stratus was a fine car. (Is it a fine car? The Macalope really has no idea and he’s not going to look it up for the purposes of this column.) But it was a modest-looking sedan. It wasn’t exactly breaking new ground. Unless you run it off the road, Jeff.

Concepts are sometimes impractical. A space-aged car might look great, and then you realize those swoops make for huge blind spots and a glass roof is a tremendous safety hazard. Some changes are understandable. Changes requested by middle managers who think the company should just keep making the kind of cars it’s been making all along, however, can suck all the wonder out of a product.

Apple recently showed off a concept that the Macalope very much hopes will become a real product someday and, if the rumors are true, it seems like it might. Dubbed “ELEGNT”, the prototype is an adorable lamp that moves in response to user commands and cues. The device can perform assistive functions–such as shining its light somewhere or projecting a video–in either a solely functional manner or in an expressive one, where it pauses to look at the user, dances to music, or otherwise performs human-like behaviors.

Presumably, these do not include non-desirable ones like incessant humming, reheating fish in the break room microwave, or, well, homicide. The video never shows the lamp wielding a knife so… fingers crossed.

Joking aside (don’t worry, just for a second) the video is fairly delightful. Apple has a real chance now to take this concept and bring it to market without sucking all the joy out of it. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has been saying for months now that Apple is working on a desktop device that moves in reaction to the user but has a screen attached to an arm rather than a lamp. And while the ELEGNT lamp does look amazingly like Pixar’s mascot, the Macalope thinks a screen is probably going to be more useful than a light bulb.

The Macalope’s pal Dan Moren recently opined on this very site that Apple should embrace its weird side. The Macalope agrees and it will be interesting to see how much of this demonstration makes it into a final product.

Anyone who’s worked in IT has probably heard the term “computer magic” before. “Just do it with computer magic.” Oh, just like that? If it’s that easy, why don’t you do it with managerial magic, Chad? That’s what I thought.

IDG

Computer magic is not a thing. But Apple has always succeeded by making things that seem like magic. Swipe to unlock. The thinness of the MacBook Air. Rebuilding the desktop.

Wait, not that last one. How did that get in there?

Apple’s magical items don’t have to work right all the time, but they need to work right almost all the time and in ways that surprise and delight you. For the Macalope’s money, AirPods are a prime example of this. Tiny headphones that (usually) automatically know which device you’re using and switch contexts for you. Not magic but pretty magical.

In an age when we are constantly promised artificial assistants who will give us the help we need and they routinely fail to do so, Apple might do well to tone down the expectation on intelligence and turn up the expectation on whimsey. Get it to do what it needs to do almost all the time, but in a way that makes you not care about those few times when it doesn’t. That’s Apple’s sweet spot.