Confession: When BougeRV told me about its remote-controlled wagon with animated lighting, I called it in for a laugh, expecting to eviscerate it in a review. It's ridiculous, to be sure. But the DuneRover also proved very capable, with enough torque to flatten hills even when carrying over 200 pounds of gear. It can also traverse soft sand that defeats conventional wagons.

As someone who regularly uses a variety of wagons to haul all sorts of gear, the DuneRover is an epiphany. But what BougeRV sent me was a Kickstarter prototype - and it shows.

Production units won't ship until February 2027. So, what follows is less of a review and mo …

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The Matic is our favorite robot vacuum and robo-mop, and it's also now the first to escape the FCC's Roomba ban.

Well, sort of - because the Matic wasn't banned to begin with.

Here's what's actually happening: On October 2nd, the FCC added the original Matic, model 4MA0001, and its charging dock model 4DK0008 to its ban waiver list. That allows the FCC to approve these radio products for import, marketing, and sale.

But the Matic doesn't need a waiver, because its radios were already approved years ago. The FCC's foreign drone, robot, and router bans only keep future products from getting imported into the United States, not existing o …

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Keurig's new single-serve coffee machine delivers the same convenience that helped popularize its appliances but without the use of recyclable pods made from plastic and aluminum. The company first showed off its Keurig Alta machine two years ago while introducing the puck-shaped pod replacements called AltaRounds that wrap pressed coffee grounds in a plant-based coating derived from seaweed. The pucks are 100 percent compostable, and while they currently come in plastic wrappers to keep them fresh, the company is working to transition to paper wrappers, according to CNET.

The Keurig Alta is now available for preorder for $499.99 with shipp …

Read the full story at The Verge.

The open-source smart home platform Home Assistant is kicking the cloud to the curb - in name at least. "We are renaming Home Assistant Cloud to Home Assistant Link, because we hate clouds," founder Paulus Schoutsen told The Verge in an interview ahead of today's announcement. "Big tech ruined the cloud, so we're out."

The move is part of a long-term strategy Schoutsen and his team have been pursuing to make Home Assistant a mainstream smart home platform. Schoutsen says most users find the powerful platform after hitting the limits of mainstream options like Google Home, Amazon Alexa, and Apple Home. But it has a steep learning curve, and …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Apple's rumored push into smart home tech could include a smart home security camera that only gives users text event descriptions instead of video footage. Mark Gurman said in the first episode of the Power On podcast that the camera will be part of "a new Apple smart home ecosystem," alongside Apple's rumored smart home hub:

They're also building home security products, both first-party and third-party home security products. And the biggest thing is a program called J450. And this is an offshoot and a companion product to the J490 smart home display. And these are little cameras that you can put around your house. They have very low fr …

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Apple's long-rumored smart home hub will reportedly be revealed on October 13th. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports that the smart home device will be revealed alongside a new HomePod mini and an upgraded Apple TV device.

All three products are set to showcase Siri AI, Apple's overhauled AI-powered assistant. The smart home hub, a new product category for Apple, will be the centerpiece. It will reportedly feature a 6-inch display which can be mounted on a wall or sit on a countertop. The hub is "about as thick as an iPhone," according to Gurman, and has bezels similar to older iPads.

It sounds like the hub will look a little similar to Apple' …

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This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on the fragile state of your connected devices, follow Jennifer Pattison Tuohy. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes on Sunday at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here.

How it started

A decade ago, a group of former Apple engineers built a beautiful smart oven. With a built-in scale, restaurant-grade heating elements, a camera, and the intelligence to recognize a chicken breast and cook it perfectly, the June Oven set the standard for smart cooking appliances. At $1,495, it was absurdly expensive, but it quickly grew a smal …

Read the full story at The Verge.