This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Their products require their app, would this effectively turn their devices useless when the servers die?
I know it supports a single button to start cleaning, but I wonder if that will work properly without being able to call home.
Might be time for people to look for alternatives.
It technically still works without the app but it loses features that increase the efficiency of the map, tells it where not to clean, scheduled cleaning, etc.
So basically anything that makes it more useful than just doing it yourself.
I assume this will brick all Roombas past the 800 series. All the scheduling, advanced mapping features etc are hosted on AWS. You’ll be able to press clean to start but that’s pretty much it… That’s unless they open up their software which they probably won’t
Another company squandering their patents and market advantage. Reminds me of TiVo.
I'm glad I waited to replace my old Eufy one. I definitely will not be replacing it with Roomba now.
my first thought was aren't they a part of the Military Industrial Complex, how could they possibly go bankrupt? It turns out they sold off that part of their business in 2016 to private equity. Oops.
Pretty much inevitable. Nowadays there are so many robot vacuum cleaners from different brands, and everyone has more or less figured out the tech so they all work pretty well. (I have a Roborock, and have nothing to say about it other than it keeps the floors clean and doesn't cause me any grief.) There's no moat, so consumer market success is purely a matter of manufacturing and cost efficiency, and iRobot obviously would have a huge upfill fight against Samsung, Xiaomi, and a thousand other light consumer goods makers.
I bought a roborock Q Revo the other week, and it works great at vacuuming and mopping.
I changed its spoken language to Chinese though, to remind me who I'm living with.
I thought this was a funny gag, until I changed my router and wifi, and then had to update the robots wifi connection with all the voice prompts in chinese
I’m glad my old, non-smart one still works fine. It slams into things and says, “Roomba needs help” or something when it eats a sock or wire I missed. But at least it will outlast the company’s servers.
