This is the best summary I could come up with:
For a moment there, it seemed like Amazon might pivot its Astro home robot to enterprise by giving it a better job as a camera-equipped patrol dog.
On September 25th, every one of the 20-pound wheeled robots will stop working, and Amazon will automatically issue full refunds for the $2,349.99 bot, plus a $300 credit.
Amazon isn’t commenting on how many business bots it actually sold since the November 2023 launch, but the company’s VP of hardware engineering, Lindo St. Angel, says he’s “increasingly convinced the progress we’re making in home robotics is where we should focus our resources.” We’re sharing his full internal memo below.
GeekWire first reported the news and said Amazon isn’t laying off any workers due to the pivot because they’ll just start working on home robots instead.
The Amazon Astro for Home robot is still listed as an invite-only Day 1 Edition product, years after its release.
Last year, leaked internal documents hinted at a new version with conversational generative AI that “remembers what it saw and understood,” is able to “engage in a Q&A dialogue on what it saw,” and can potentially spot hazards in a home like broken glass on the floor.
The original article contains 375 words, the summary contains 199 words. Saved 47%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
We need laws that make this illegal. I get it that they don’t want to support it for whatever reason, but electronic waste is already a big problem and you can’t convince me everyone is recycling their used electronics.
you can’t convince me everyone is recycling their used electronics.
Amazon bricks your expensive new-ish device and now you have to pay to have it recycled? Hell no people aren’t recycling them, and that too should be illegal. Amazon should be legally required to take responsibility for recycling those devices, and how the device is recycled should be part of the device design process.
The article says that Amazon has a recycling program and has provided free assistance and home pickup for these as part of the sunsetting.
I have an hard time believing they will handle it properly, given that they prefer to trash many returned items rather than putting them back into stock when it suits them.
Amazon did this with their cloud security cameras as well.
Spotify did it with their “Car thing”
It’s common and I agree, should be illegal.
Should be required to open source it and unlock everything before sunsetting products.
This is what gets me. Why don’t they do this? They’re turning down profit by discontinuing support, but probably their logic is someone else will benefit from the hardware without bringing in profit, so that’s bad forsomefucking reason.
Before launching products*
walled gardens are only a little less awful when still supported
To be mildly fair to Spotify Car Thing lasted for at least 3yrs. The worst part was, imo, it was really good. Like sure, my phone does voice commands but they work like 1/5 times. Car Thing worked nearly 100%, responded to anyone in the cars voice (pro/con depending on situation lol), and was a nice display for my preAndroidAuto headunit. Honestly I think the biggest mistake was that it was tied to a car, I used it on my desk for a while as a dedicated music control surface and it worked well. If more time went into making it just a universal Spotify controller it would have been much better as a thing. Have it mounted next to your receiver, or slap a battery in it and put it on a coffee table during a party and that would have been cool AF and requires zero phone interactions.
Good luck. Sounds similar to the problem that the movement Stop Killing Games is trying to solve as well, which I doubt will get anywhere.
This is why you don’t buy any hardware that requires “the cloud” to function with no option to self host. At least they are giving refunds this time, but that’s usually not the case.
I bought a Rabbit R1 for half off used on eBay, but only after I learned you can install full Android on it.
