It’s alive! It’s alive!
February 11, 2025 8:12 AM Subscribe
Remember that video from Pixar, years ago, with that cute animated lamp? It appears that Apple research people have now made that lamp for real. Be prepared for wicked cuteness. The video is at the bottom of the link.
Three years later, when it's boring old tech, the owner leaves it on the curb while sad music plays and a rain-soaked Swede addresses the camera: "Many of you feel bad for this lamp. That is because you crazy. It has no feelings..."
posted by at by at 8:27 AM on February 11 [14 favorites]
posted by at by at 8:27 AM on February 11 [14 favorites]
This is fun. Way more personality than I expected. This is how we get R2D2, people.
posted by caution live frogs at 8:28 AM on February 11 [3 favorites]
posted by caution live frogs at 8:28 AM on February 11 [3 favorites]
It has no feelings
and the $2 one from the op shop is much bedder.
There's something about post-Woz Apple's approach to design that just sets my teeth on edge. Has done since the beige tombstone Mac, probably always will. I know it's just me, but that doesn't make it better.
What I can tell you for certain is that this particular lamp would find some way to induce an overwhelming rage spike within 30 seconds of arrival on my desk. Do. Not. Want.
posted by flabdablet at 8:37 AM on February 11 [3 favorites]
and the $2 one from the op shop is much bedder.
There's something about post-Woz Apple's approach to design that just sets my teeth on edge. Has done since the beige tombstone Mac, probably always will. I know it's just me, but that doesn't make it better.
What I can tell you for certain is that this particular lamp would find some way to induce an overwhelming rage spike within 30 seconds of arrival on my desk. Do. Not. Want.
posted by flabdablet at 8:37 AM on February 11 [3 favorites]
This is how we get R2D2, people.
Actually, I'm pretty sure this is how we get Gigolo Joe.
posted by fight or flight at 8:37 AM on February 11 [5 favorites]
Actually, I'm pretty sure this is how we get Gigolo Joe.
posted by fight or flight at 8:37 AM on February 11 [5 favorites]
Well, I think that it's cute. I liked the one trying to get it's user to drink more water.
posted by Spike Glee at 8:39 AM on February 11 [1 favorite]
posted by Spike Glee at 8:39 AM on February 11 [1 favorite]
If it did that to me, I would want it to get terrible pain in all the diodes down its left side.
posted by flabdablet at 8:43 AM on February 11 [5 favorites]
posted by flabdablet at 8:43 AM on February 11 [5 favorites]
I don't want my appliances to have expressed "personality" or "emotions." I'm enough of a crouton-petter as it is, thanks.
posted by the sobsister at 8:51 AM on February 11 [7 favorites]
posted by the sobsister at 8:51 AM on February 11 [7 favorites]
This is really nicely done. For a while I've been thinking of building a reading lamp for my kid that gets dimmer and dimmer as it gets later and they gets more tired. But now I'm thinking of having it slowly droop as it nods off. (Of course the whirring of servo gears won't help anyone fall asleep, but.)
posted by phooky at 8:53 AM on February 11
posted by phooky at 8:53 AM on February 11
This is how Faang finally tricks me into installing a spybot smart device in my home. Several, in fact. I don't want Crouton to get lonely while I'm at work.
posted by Richard Daly at 8:54 AM on February 11 [1 favorite]
posted by Richard Daly at 8:54 AM on February 11 [1 favorite]
Here's a current summary of the rumors about Apple working on some kind of home robot project as a next-generation product line
posted by JoeZydeco at 8:54 AM on February 11 [1 favorite]
posted by JoeZydeco at 8:54 AM on February 11 [1 favorite]
I hate this. I suspect trying to interact with this thing would be even more frustrating and counterintuitive than trying to interact with people.
posted by Faint of Butt at 8:55 AM on February 11 [3 favorites]
posted by Faint of Butt at 8:55 AM on February 11 [3 favorites]
> I suspect trying to interact with this thing would be even more frustrating and counterintuitive than trying to interact with people.
In its current state, yeah, it seems less useful than a lamp I can move around with my own hands. It could be a boon for accessibility for people with limited motor control, or who are nonverbal and can't use conventional sound activation -- assuming Apple continues developing this with those features in mind. I came in with jokes, but really I feel like this has potential value, even if no immediate value.
posted by at by at 9:04 AM on February 11 [3 favorites]
In its current state, yeah, it seems less useful than a lamp I can move around with my own hands. It could be a boon for accessibility for people with limited motor control, or who are nonverbal and can't use conventional sound activation -- assuming Apple continues developing this with those features in mind. I came in with jokes, but really I feel like this has potential value, even if no immediate value.
posted by at by at 9:04 AM on February 11 [3 favorites]
The video is very cute, and also I hope to never own a disposable device that tries to form an emotional relationship with me.
Come to think of it, Apple would also hate that -- they want me tired and annoyed with my devices every 18 months. Cuteness would ruin their whole business model!
posted by eraserbones at 9:14 AM on February 11 [2 favorites]
Come to think of it, Apple would also hate that -- they want me tired and annoyed with my devices every 18 months. Cuteness would ruin their whole business model!
posted by eraserbones at 9:14 AM on February 11 [2 favorites]
RingTFA... looking at my bog-standard black reading lamp....
Folks, this won't work. I talk with my hands. All the time.
Sometimes I answer.
The gizmo will quickly overheat and explode, whirling through the air with the chaotic force of sad neglect and unfulfilled dreams.
Save a life. Buy non-emo appliances.
posted by TrishaU at 9:16 AM on February 11 [3 favorites]
Folks, this won't work. I talk with my hands. All the time.
Sometimes I answer.
The gizmo will quickly overheat and explode, whirling through the air with the chaotic force of sad neglect and unfulfilled dreams.
Save a life. Buy non-emo appliances.
posted by TrishaU at 9:16 AM on February 11 [3 favorites]
What I value most in a task lamp is the ability to stay the fuck where I put it until I put it somewhere else. If I were to lose the ability to position my task lamp by hand, I would want its accessible replacement to pass the same test.
Anglepoise lamps fail it when the springs slacken due to age. This robot lamp fails it right out of the gate, and the tacit assumption that this failure is something I want would most likely be the kernel from which that rage spike sprouts.
posted by flabdablet at 9:20 AM on February 11 [2 favorites]
Anglepoise lamps fail it when the springs slacken due to age. This robot lamp fails it right out of the gate, and the tacit assumption that this failure is something I want would most likely be the kernel from which that rage spike sprouts.
posted by flabdablet at 9:20 AM on February 11 [2 favorites]
Wait, it doesn't even jump?!?
posted by heyitsgogi at 9:27 AM on February 11 [3 favorites]
posted by heyitsgogi at 9:27 AM on February 11 [3 favorites]
Well, xedrik, there was this cat, and its owner had the brilliant idea to attach a headlamp to its collar.
But instead of sitting by its owner, the cat hid under the bed and chased bugs attracted to the light.
Cats gonna do what cats gonna do.
posted by TrishaU at 9:29 AM on February 11
But instead of sitting by its owner, the cat hid under the bed and chased bugs attracted to the light.
Cats gonna do what cats gonna do.
posted by TrishaU at 9:29 AM on February 11
Wait, it doesn't even jump?!?
Consider the lampbots of the desk, how they go; they jump not, neither do they squish.
posted by flabdablet at 9:31 AM on February 11 [6 favorites]
Consider the lampbots of the desk, how they go; they jump not, neither do they squish.
posted by flabdablet at 9:31 AM on February 11 [6 favorites]
For a while I've been thinking of building a reading lamp for my kid that gets dimmer and dimmer as it gets later and they gets more tired. But now I'm thinking of having it slowly droop as it nods off.
Should be possible to achieve that by incorporating a resistive tension wire somewhere in its guts that makes the lamp droop as it shrinks, which it will do as you progressively reduce the power applied to it to keep it hot. If you're a bit clever with cams you could even get a stepwise nodding droop happening in pretty much complete silence.
posted by flabdablet at 9:39 AM on February 11
Should be possible to achieve that by incorporating a resistive tension wire somewhere in its guts that makes the lamp droop as it shrinks, which it will do as you progressively reduce the power applied to it to keep it hot. If you're a bit clever with cams you could even get a stepwise nodding droop happening in pretty much complete silence.
posted by flabdablet at 9:39 AM on February 11
I love this, thank you for sharing. I think it’s an impressive bit of engineering, and the amount of work that went into thinking about how the lamp provides feedback to the user in either an expressive or functional way is really fun to see in action. I think the comments above forget that this is presented in the context of a research project and not an actual product that Apple is going to sell.
posted by hooray at 10:05 AM on February 11
posted by hooray at 10:05 AM on February 11
I'm reasonably certain that the lamp isn't the end-goal here - and I do think that incorporating 'play' into our tools is not inherently a bad idea - but yeah, the emotional attachment to objects thing is where I raise my eyebrow, particularly because, well, we have some precedent.
posted by bookwo3107 at 10:16 AM on February 11 [4 favorites]
posted by bookwo3107 at 10:16 AM on February 11 [4 favorites]
iLamp?
"With iLampOS 3.7, our designers have made the exciting decision to have the lamp shine directly into your eyes at all times! And no, you will not be able to roll back this update, for Important Security Reasons!"
(and yet i want one. and i want to hook it up to apple-intelligence-enhanced siri so it talks to me while pointing things out with its light.)
posted by mittens at 10:24 AM on February 11
"With iLampOS 3.7, our designers have made the exciting decision to have the lamp shine directly into your eyes at all times! And no, you will not be able to roll back this update, for Important Security Reasons!"
(and yet i want one. and i want to hook it up to apple-intelligence-enhanced siri so it talks to me while pointing things out with its light.)
posted by mittens at 10:24 AM on February 11
I'm reflexively in the same camp as flabdablet - by default I want my stuff to just do boring things like "stay in this place" until I change my mind; I would also find the "here's some water, nudge nudge" thing to be very annoying.
But I absolutely see the appeal of the final scenario, where the lamp is playing music and bopping along while the human does unrelated activity. That, I would enjoy; it makes it seem much more like a companion (or a pet) where the others just put me in mind of the annnoyingly-aggressively-helpful AI "assistant" that we mostly see. That wasn't helpful when Clippy did it, it's not helpful when Siri does it, and it wouldn't be helpful in most of these lamp scenarios.
But a little gizmo that can pretend to enjoy whatever music I ask it to play while I'm making dinner? And rock out with me a little while everyone else in the house is off doing their own thing? Yeah, that would make cooking a little more fun (assuming I could still tell it to hold still and just be a speaker when I'm in the mood for that).
posted by nickmark at 11:39 AM on February 11 [4 favorites]
But I absolutely see the appeal of the final scenario, where the lamp is playing music and bopping along while the human does unrelated activity. That, I would enjoy; it makes it seem much more like a companion (or a pet) where the others just put me in mind of the annnoyingly-aggressively-helpful AI "assistant" that we mostly see. That wasn't helpful when Clippy did it, it's not helpful when Siri does it, and it wouldn't be helpful in most of these lamp scenarios.
But a little gizmo that can pretend to enjoy whatever music I ask it to play while I'm making dinner? And rock out with me a little while everyone else in the house is off doing their own thing? Yeah, that would make cooking a little more fun (assuming I could still tell it to hold still and just be a speaker when I'm in the mood for that).
posted by nickmark at 11:39 AM on February 11 [4 favorites]
When you ignore its suggestions does it start banging its head on the desk?
posted by gottabefunky at 12:28 PM on February 11 [1 favorite]
posted by gottabefunky at 12:28 PM on February 11 [1 favorite]
Come to think of it, Apple would also hate that -- they want me tired and annoyed with my devices every 18 months.
~ Looks at his 10-year-old iPhone. Shrugs.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:46 PM on February 11 [1 favorite]
~ Looks at his 10-year-old iPhone. Shrugs.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:46 PM on February 11 [1 favorite]
But a little gizmo that can pretend to enjoy whatever music I ask it to play while I'm making dinner? And rock out with me a little while everyone else in the house is off doing their own thing?
Didn't there use to be little flowers in a flowerpot that did that?
(Update: yes there did)
posted by trig at 2:29 PM on February 11 [1 favorite]
Didn't there use to be little flowers in a flowerpot that did that?
(Update: yes there did)
posted by trig at 2:29 PM on February 11 [1 favorite]
I'm on team crouton petter. When I saw the Pixar lamp short in the theater, I was sooooo sad for it; it was sooooooo lonely. I cannot imagine having to deal with it's emotional needs on an interpersonal level. Arrrrgh!
posted by mightshould at 2:34 PM on February 11 [1 favorite]
posted by mightshould at 2:34 PM on February 11 [1 favorite]
Somewhat related, I am currently (and very slowly; soooo many other projects rn) plugging away at building this GLaDOS lamp, which seems like it fits here.
posted by xedrik at 3:05 PM on February 11 [1 favorite]
posted by xedrik at 3:05 PM on February 11 [1 favorite]
I laughed incredibly hard at the "oh no, can't reach it" gesture it made. That lamp is just so goddamn sorry.
It's worth noting, I think, that the nature of this being published suggests strongly that it's unlikely to be a real product they're currently working on, because if it were, they'd have waited until after the product's reveal to publish. (Machine learning is also a realm in which even famously secretive Apple is more or less forced to let employees publish under their own names, because if they can't, then they'll go work somewhere else where they can.) My guess is that this sort of thing is meant as intentionally extreme examples of how one might go about creating personified movements in robotics, and that if it does wind up getting rolled into future products, we'll surely see something like 20–50% less Whimsy in order to avoid the delightful novelty becoming grating over time.
posted by DoctorFedora at 7:52 PM on February 11 [2 favorites]
It's worth noting, I think, that the nature of this being published suggests strongly that it's unlikely to be a real product they're currently working on, because if it were, they'd have waited until after the product's reveal to publish. (Machine learning is also a realm in which even famously secretive Apple is more or less forced to let employees publish under their own names, because if they can't, then they'll go work somewhere else where they can.) My guess is that this sort of thing is meant as intentionally extreme examples of how one might go about creating personified movements in robotics, and that if it does wind up getting rolled into future products, we'll surely see something like 20–50% less Whimsy in order to avoid the delightful novelty becoming grating over time.
posted by DoctorFedora at 7:52 PM on February 11 [2 favorites]
This is incredibly valuable assistive tech for one key reason: gaze tracking + auto-aiming reading light = lit magnifiers that understand a “come here” gesture after you set a book down and then look at them, and understand that if you put force on the front edge then you want it to retreat and fold up until next time. This is absurdly valuable just for that alone; or would, if combined with a tablet that has an extremely serious camera for reading on it, be a stellar platform for a tablet that unfolds without impeding your dinner plate or pivots to either light or translate whatever you’re trying to read. Like, having seen this, I immediately want this for my mother and for myself, and it’s just a skeleton prototype and would barely be able to cope with me gluing a fresnel lens to it. But it would be worth it today. Sigh. Thanks for sharing.
posted by Callisto Prime at 10:23 PM on February 11 [2 favorites]
posted by Callisto Prime at 10:23 PM on February 11 [2 favorites]
Yes? But they don’t let me read print books that aren’t available digitally..
posted by Callisto Prime at 3:37 AM on February 13
posted by Callisto Prime at 3:37 AM on February 13
gaze tracking + auto-aiming reading light = lit magnifiers that understand a “come here” gesture after you set a book down and then look at them, and understand that if you put force on the front edge then you want it to retreat and fold up until next time.
I have no objection whatsoever to any of the sensor tech that lets this prototype do what it does, only to the research effort devoted to guaranteeing that if anything like this hits the market it will come with a Genuine People Personality that I know full well would irritate me even more than I already am. My limbic system already gets plenty of stimulus from family and pets and doesn't need extra poking from Apple HQ by mechanical proxy.
On the negligible chance that any Apple researcher is reading this: if you do ever bring something like this to market then please, please make the "engagement" stuff an option that can be turned off entirely so that the machine reverts to a purely functional mode, moving from where it is to where the user wants it as smoothly, responsively and predictably as possible and never initiating activity on its own.
The first time that bastard thing decides for me that I'm thirsty and takes it upon itself to nudge my Diet Coke and topple it into the open laptop I'm working on, it's going straight through the fucking window.
posted by flabdablet at 10:08 PM on February 15
I have no objection whatsoever to any of the sensor tech that lets this prototype do what it does, only to the research effort devoted to guaranteeing that if anything like this hits the market it will come with a Genuine People Personality that I know full well would irritate me even more than I already am. My limbic system already gets plenty of stimulus from family and pets and doesn't need extra poking from Apple HQ by mechanical proxy.
On the negligible chance that any Apple researcher is reading this: if you do ever bring something like this to market then please, please make the "engagement" stuff an option that can be turned off entirely so that the machine reverts to a purely functional mode, moving from where it is to where the user wants it as smoothly, responsively and predictably as possible and never initiating activity on its own.
The first time that bastard thing decides for me that I'm thirsty and takes it upon itself to nudge my Diet Coke and topple it into the open laptop I'm working on, it's going straight through the fucking window.
posted by flabdablet at 10:08 PM on February 15
yeah I think we can take it as read that the really extreme stuff is solely for the purpose of demonstrating how far one could take the principles for various ideas rather than actual product plans
posted by DoctorFedora at 11:32 PM on February 15 [1 favorite]
posted by DoctorFedora at 11:32 PM on February 15 [1 favorite]
please make the "engagement" stuff an option that can be turned off entirely so that the machine reverts to a purely functional mode
Maybe it was just a result of being juxtaposed with the "expressive" puppy of a model, but the "functional" model in the video made me think of an old, tired dog who would really rather be lying down than reluctantly doing the stupid trick you asked for before turning around and, with sad eyes and dignity, going back to bed.
Not Marvin, just the kind to take a moment to savor its current comfort and regret its loss before moving. I did feel some kinship.
posted by trig at 2:16 AM on February 16
Maybe it was just a result of being juxtaposed with the "expressive" puppy of a model, but the "functional" model in the video made me think of an old, tired dog who would really rather be lying down than reluctantly doing the stupid trick you asked for before turning around and, with sad eyes and dignity, going back to bed.
Not Marvin, just the kind to take a moment to savor its current comfort and regret its loss before moving. I did feel some kinship.
posted by trig at 2:16 AM on February 16
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posted by Oh_Bobloblaw at 8:22 AM on February 11 [2 favorites]