I own a few Alexa devices, and I like them more or less, but doesn't seem like they(amazon) have invested much in making them truly useful devices anymore - the first few times you could talk to them were cool - but after that novelty wore off, the products seem to have stagnated quite a bit - seems the market agrees.
Alexa (and the google equivalent) were an over-exuberant experiment. Speech is an interaction mode, not an all-encompassing one, and also a low-bandwidth one, so a device centered on it can't ever be a general computing device. Amazon tried to think a bit more broadly by having other on-keybaord interaction modes (buttons, which were really just clutter because their use was infrequent, and their wand, which was actually pretty handy) but again, didn't integrate it deeply into the rest of their world, so died due to lack of imagination.
Google's thing is even more stark because it had no primary raison d'etre so I only ever saw one in the wild and it was at a google employee's home!
Apple went the other way, making a speaker that you could also talk to. Of course Siri is such crap that it's fundamentally "un-sirious" too.
But speech is not a terrible adjunct. I often use speech to control my watch (start a workout, set a timer, what's the weather outside) bc the screen is so tiny and the controls so few. It sometimes tells me things if I am wearing airpods. But I have the watch cranked down to only provide me with a few things, mostly by glancing at it after it taps me. And who would design a tap-only interface?
It's not really specific to Amazon. Voice assistants are a novelty and mildly useful thing but I mostly use them for a few very specific and non-critical things. In something like my car where they could be very useful, they mostly can't handle the more complicated queries that would actually be valuable to do completely hands-free. If I had to give up voice assistants tomorrow, I'd pretty much shrug and move on.
Honestly, Kindles aren't that different. I like them (and my iPad) for traveling but I'm not sure ebooks have been the revolution that some thought they would be.
Our big thing we used them for at my place is vision assistance items. My gf is vision impaired, and it's much easier for it to read things to her, turn on lights etc. It sounds stupid and small, but it really helps her.
Comments
I own a few Alexa devices, and I like them more or less, but doesn't seem like they(amazon) have invested much in making them truly useful devices anymore - the first few times you could talk to them were cool - but after that novelty wore off, the products seem to have stagnated quite a bit - seems the market agrees.
Alexa (and the google equivalent) were an over-exuberant experiment. Speech is an interaction mode, not an all-encompassing one, and also a low-bandwidth one, so a device centered on it can't ever be a general computing device. Amazon tried to think a bit more broadly by having other on-keybaord interaction modes (buttons, which were really just clutter because their use was infrequent, and their wand, which was actually pretty handy) but again, didn't integrate it deeply into the rest of their world, so died due to lack of imagination.
Google's thing is even more stark because it had no primary raison d'etre so I only ever saw one in the wild and it was at a google employee's home!
Apple went the other way, making a speaker that you could also talk to. Of course Siri is such crap that it's fundamentally "un-sirious" too.
But speech is not a terrible adjunct. I often use speech to control my watch (start a workout, set a timer, what's the weather outside) bc the screen is so tiny and the controls so few. It sometimes tells me things if I am wearing airpods. But I have the watch cranked down to only provide me with a few things, mostly by glancing at it after it taps me. And who would design a tap-only interface?
It's not really specific to Amazon. Voice assistants are a novelty and mildly useful thing but I mostly use them for a few very specific and non-critical things. In something like my car where they could be very useful, they mostly can't handle the more complicated queries that would actually be valuable to do completely hands-free. If I had to give up voice assistants tomorrow, I'd pretty much shrug and move on.
Honestly, Kindles aren't that different. I like them (and my iPad) for traveling but I'm not sure ebooks have been the revolution that some thought they would be.
Our big thing we used them for at my place is vision assistance items. My gf is vision impaired, and it's much easier for it to read things to her, turn on lights etc. It sounds stupid and small, but it really helps her.