Welcome to 9 to 5 Mac Daily for Thursday, August 14th, 2025.

I'm your host, Chance Miller.

We are sponsored this week by Backblaze.

Leading off today, a new report from Bloomberg dives deep into Apple's plans to expand into new product categories,

powered in part by its renewed effort on Siri and

artificial intelligence. The story explains that Apple is still working on its home pad smart

display product. This was initially planned to debut this year, but has been pushed to mid-20206

due to delays of the upgraded Siri architecture.

Apple is also still working on its tabletop Siri device,

described as an iPad on a robotic arm that can move around and follow you

based on where you're standing or sitting.

Apple employees refer to it as a Pixar lamp-style device. This iPad robotic

arm product is expected to launch in 2027. A new version of Siri will be the basis of these

products, and we've talked before about a lot of the new features, like personal context and in-app

actions. Bloomberg's report explains that there's more to it than just those two things.

The report says Apple is planning to put Siri at the center of the device's operating systems and give it a visual personality to make it feel lifelike.

The approach, which Apple is codenamed Bubbles, is vaguely reminiscent of Clippy, the animated paperclip from the 1990s,

that served as a virtual assistant in Microsoft Office.

The story says Apple has tested making Siri look like an animated version of the Finder logo,

which is the iconic smiley face that represents the Max file management system.

Designers are also considering ideas that veer closer to Memoji, the playful characters that

Apple lets users design for their Apple accounts.

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