It’s been a rough stretch for AI gadgets, and Apple may be joining the growing list of companies stumbling in the space. After the high-profile failures of Humane’s Ai Pin and Rabbit’s R1, which both struggled to deliver on their promises, new reports suggest Apple is facing similar challenges with its rumored robotic smart home hub. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the device is encountering significant engineering hurdles—particularly with its motor system—and Apple is still searching for meaningful AI applications that justify the hardware. As a result, the project has been pushed back to a launch window of roughly two years from now. While mechanical issues are a common engineering challenge—ones Apple has historically solved with time and resources—the real difficulty lies in the AI component. Creating AI features that are genuinely useful isn’t just a matter of funding or technical prowess; it’s about finding the right purpose. And right now, that purpose remains unclear, not just for Apple but across the entire AI gadget landscape. Despite the abundance of AI features on today’s devices—like Google’s Gemini-powered Pixel updates—many users remain unaware of them or don’t see a compelling reason to engage. Convincing people to adopt AI features on a smartphone they carry constantly is already tough. Doing so on a novel, unfamiliar device like a robotic home hub is exponentially harder. The situation is further complicated by Apple’s ongoing struggles with its own AI ambitions. The long-awaited upgrade to Siri, envisioned as a chatbot-powered assistant, has yet to materialize in a way that feels natural or useful. The rollout of Apple Intelligence features has been uneven, with some, like notification summaries, briefly paused after underperforming and even causing confusion. These setbacks have eroded confidence in Apple’s ability to deliver on its AI vision. Meanwhile, Jony Ive and Sam Altman’s joint venture, IO, is reportedly facing similar roadblocks. Their portable AI device is running into problems with voice assistant functionality and cloud-based computing capacity—key hurdles for any truly intelligent hardware. The challenges are not isolated to one company; they point to deeper issues in how AI is being applied to physical devices. Apple still has time to refine its approach. A two-year timeline allows for iteration and learning from others’ missteps. But with so many high-profile failures already in the rearview, the pressure is on. If Apple—often seen as the gold standard in consumer tech—can’t crack the code on useful AI hardware, the path forward for the entire category looks even more uncertain.