In watching the video (and I admit, anticipating the responses in the comments here), I started thinking about how the "expressive" robot -- whose reception is probably a bit dependent on how engaging the user found it -- now had to also incorporate ideas of authenticity and value. Some users are going to be aggressively against a cartoonish tool because it will feel "fake" to them, and emotionally deceptive. But if you're making a robot, you probably need to make a choice about its qualities and how they match what people want from your products. Apple customers may well be okay with more expressivity in this direction. Of course, the fact that the demo is riffing off Pixar, whose values and aesthetic have shared roots with Apple's own, is part of that.
I can see there also being applications in industry. Some of the “expressions” of the lamp in the video look like they signal what it’s about to do. I can see that type of expression being useful to people who are working around robots, to know what they might do next, which could be useful for safety.
