Things continue to look bleak for the original robot vacuum maker. iRobot’s third-quarter results, released last week, show that revenue is down and “well below our internal expectations due to continuing market headwinds, ongoing production delays, and unforeseen shipping disruptions,” said Gary Cohen, iRobot CEO, in a press release.
This meant they had to spend more cash and are now down to under $25 million. “At this time, the Company has no sources upon which it can draw for additional capital,” said Cohen.
The Roomba manufacturer has been struggling for several years in the face of increased competition from Chinese manufacturers. A sale to Amazon in 2022 looked to be its lifeline; however, regulatory scrutiny scuppered the deal, and the company was left in further turmoil. It laid off over 30 percent of its staff, lost its founder and CEO, Colin Angle, and was left with substantial debt as a result of the fallout.
This year, iRobot launched an entirely new line of robot vacuums, ostensibly to better compete with companies like Roborock, Ecovacs, and Dreame, adding lidar navigation to its line for the first time (over VSLAM). The new models look significantly different from the original Roombas and more like their competitors. They also use a different app with fewer features, but added some new hardware features the previous models lacked, including spinning mop pads and a roller mop.
In a regulatory filing earlier this month, the company warned it may be forced to seek bankruptcy protection following the breakdown of advanced negotiations with a potential buyer, and if it couldn’t secure additional funding.
Roomba customers are understandably concerned about the impact these current financial troubles might have on their home cleaning robots.
Earlier this month, fellow American robot vacuum manufacturer Neato, which shut down in 2023, pulled the plug on its cloud services, leaving its robots unable to communicate with the Neato app. However, the vacuums can still be controlled manually.
Similarly, if iRobot goes out of business and its cloud shuts down, most Roombas should still continue to work in offline mode — pressing the physical button on the robot to start, stop, and dock it. However, they likely wouldn’t be controllable via the app for features like scheduling or specific room cleaning, or via voice commands. This potential dilemma just further highlights that cloud-connected devices should be enhanced by connectivity, not reliant on it.
For 99% of everything, if I don’t have 100% control over a physical thing in my possession, I refuse to buy it.
The exceptions are things like my phone because it’s a necessary device these days and there aren’t a lot of options for something not locked down to all hell. Though it looks like that could change eventually with a Linux phone.
Kitchen appliances, washing machines, cars, and beds do not need to be connected to the web. Hell even most of the smart features they claim require the network to function could be done without connectivity. Just program that shit into the god damn device instead of outsourcing the workload to an offsite server farm.
Nope. There is firmware on cellular modems that is controlled by the chip vendor.
Carriers work with chip companies to make sure devices work on their network but they don’t even get the source, just early release blobs for the network engineers head of the device’s release.
This code is literally the most widely used closed source code. It is more locked down than the firmware on any other device you own. It often illegal to reverse engineer.
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I’m sure one day there will be open source code for this but it’s going to come long after a Linux phone and until we can be anonymize with the tower, there is no privacy.
Graphene is good enough, IMO.
The real problem is that getting to 99% is damn near a full-time job and the capitalist cartel actively punishes it (by only offering owner control in ‘commercial-grade’ products at huge markup, or not manufacturing such things at all and forcing you to DIY).
It’s unreasonable to expect any but the most dedicated (read: stubborn) people like us to be able to handle it; the only viable solution for the masses is to wrestle back control of the government and end regulatory capture of the FTC etc.
SailfishOS is mostly daily drivable, depends on which Android apps you need (there’s a compatibility layer to run Android apps on it), with bank apps it’s often a problem.
Online banking can frequently be handled via the web site on mobile phones.
Banking apps are something that need to be working before most people will even be able to attempt to switch to a linux phone. If the options are call and be on hold for at least an hour when I probably am working got to a physical location also open only when I’m working or using a banking app that’s available 24/7 the last one is the only viable option for many people.
Well, that’s why you’ll have to try out. Or ask someone to at least try whether it opens, the apps mostly either fail on start because they require a Google certified Android, or they don’t fail at all.
I can log on to my bank through a website