The new robot grappler arm definitely seems like an advancement on previous designs. The MEV was, as I recall, designed to mate with only a specific set of models of geostationary satellite bus and, for lack of a better term, ram a probe up its backside to grab onto it.

the probe ramming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJZ3xmuom0M

One of the things that people who don't pay attention to space based infrastructure find odd, if you tell them, is that in the entire history of manned spaceflight no human has ever gone to geostationary orbit.