Our FCC robot banned future

Last week, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced a sweeping ban on foreign-made smart robotics equipment, which bans future models built outside the US from critical FCC certification. Jennifer Pattison Tuohy wrote a fantastic article on The Verge, summing up what effects the new FCC ban could have on US consumers. Losing access to new robot vacuums, robot lawn mowers, and other smart home robots will be a tremendous blow to smart homes in the United States. Having tested many robots over the last 8 years of my YouTube channel, they are the most time-saving smart home purchase you can make. Robot vacuum companies are also big sponsors of tech creators, including me.

As Pattison Tuohy points out in her article, Matic is the most US-based robot vacuum. But with final assembly here and less than 65% of parts coming from the US, it is likely still banned under the FCC ruling. With a similar WiFi router ban, the FCC ended up granting a number of notable exceptions to routers from certain companies like Amazon's eero. I would bet there will be a similar list of companies permitted, alongside feigning interest from those companies to open factories in the United States. Regardless, the short-term outlook doesn’t look good for US consumers.

Apple’s CEO transition moves further

This week was Tim Cook’s last Apple earnings call as CEO. It was also new CEO John Ternus’ first time at an Apple TV red carpet premiere with Ted Lasso Season 4. Ternus gave several quick interviews with and without Tim Cook, including this one with iJustine.

Jason Snell pointed out on Six Colors that in this last quarter, Apple’s revenue was $109.4 billion. This is more than Apple’s entire 2011 annual revenue, $108 billion, when Tim Cook took over as CEO. Under Tim Cook's tenure as CEO, the stock rose roughly 23x.

In less than a month, on September 1st, John Ternus will officially be CEO of Apple.

Apple’s new smart home speaker

Mark Gurman posted an article on Bloomberg summarizing the latest of what he knows about Apple’s long-rumored HomePod with a screen. One aspect that gets me excited is how the device will change appearance depending on which family member is looking at the device, and how the interface will get more detailed as you move closer. These are the kind of design details that I love from Apple, and their ability to make fluid animations could be perfect here.

This device was delayed because it relied on the new Siri architecture launching with the ’27 releases this fall. Gurman now expects this new device to launch sometime between October and early next year.

The Schedule

This week, I posted a video going through what I would pick right now if I were starting a new smart home. We also had my first live stream in my new home studio setup. I also published a list of my favorite Ubiquiti UniFi gear. I have some more gear list pages coming soon, but they haven't launched yet, as I hit technical issues yesterday with Geniuslink's API outage.

I hope you have a great rest of your Sunday,
Eric