alt Hacker NewsIt's not just marketing, iRobot basically stopped innovating. For commodity items like robot vacuums or pool cleaners, there is a relentless pressure to innovate. You can't simply coast or else you will soon find yourself left behind.
This is a good article to describe the viewpoint of Chinese iRobot competitor https://kr-asia.com/at-usd-90-per-unit-seauto-is-quietly-swe...
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Yeah, this company went through an amazingly bad period. They quite innovating, and also worked really hard to segment their products in a way that would extract every last $ out of the consumer. "Oh you want it not to run into things? You'll need one more step up for another $100-200" It wasn't really based on the hardware, so much as the intentional limitations of the software.
Meanwhile cheap roborocks had no arbitrary limitations and more honest marketing.
I miss the optimism that this company used to have, but I won't miss the entity that they became.
I haven't seen a useful innovation in a robovacuum for at least a decade. What are you talking about?
Biggest issue has been the flood of cheap chinese units on the market - like GoPro, they had nowhere to go, and got beat on price once feature parity was achieved (which didn't take that long).
The best robovac was Neato. Lidar and mapping 13 years ago. No cloud.
Too bad our American leaders sold us out.