Maybe if you live in a very small apartment. Otherwise, you'd have to take the thing with you from room to room. Remember how the Fire phone went from $200 to $0.99 in just a few months? If you think you want one, I'd recommend waiting for that to happen with this.
Will be interested to see how they execute it, but this could be a really neat idea.
Amazon have done some nice hardware. Fire TV is a nice piece of kit for the money, Fire Phone while not an iPhone competitor really was nicely built and if iterated nicely could become a really nice device (and the build quality of it is really nice).
Sorry but I think it is DOA just like Fire Phone. It's cute in the video but it would be annoying in real life. For $200 it's DOA.
To be blunt, the family portrayed in the video seems to be full of stupid people.
Perhaps, but if the actual product is half as good as the demo I'll be buying one for $99… and I'll rename Siri because everyone in my home has an iPhone and iPad.
edit: Or maybe I need to differentiate the Siri from Echo by appended an 'A' for Amazon at the end of the name. SiriA works, right?
Meh. It'll probably steer you to Amazon.com to buy stuff, regardless of the question.
In any event, how will it deal with a question for which the answer necessarily involves going to or looking at a website?
Alexa, what's the weather going to be like today?
Cloudy and colder, with a high of only 45 Fahrenheit . Would you like me to order you a fleece pullover from Amazon with same day delivery?
Alexa, play some Led Zeppelin.
I noticed you're missing two of their albums, would you like me to order and download those from Amazon for you?
Alexa, how much is the current Apple TV on Amazon?
It's $99, but the Amazon Fire TV is the same price and does so much more, would you like me to order one of those for you instead?
Alexa, how far away from Earth is the Moon?
Amazon has a large number of books that would provide the answer to that question, would you like me to purchase and download one of those from Amazon for you?
You know what would be an interesting experiment? If (somehow) some people learned about Echo and were told it was an Apple product and others were told it was an Amazon product (showing them exactly the same demo, etc.). In that case if I were in the Apple group, I'm sure I would be tempted to get one. But I know for a fact I would use it as much as I use Siri today--very sparingly. So I'll save my $100 and put it toward a 2nd gen Apple Watch. I have my iPhone with me nearly 24x7, so I don't need this gimmick.
I also find it creepy that Alexa somehow moves around the family's house. How exactly does it get from the kitchen to the bedroom? Alexa, stop stalking us!
Amazon revealed a new first-party hardware product class in “Echo,”... ...Activated by a user-assignable key word, which apparently is set to “Alexa” by default...
So they’re honestly this stupid, huh. No one who buys this is going to be smart enough to change it to anything else, so just call the service “Alexa”.
Female assistants are all the rage these days. When GPHR becomes available, I won’t be buying the male model.
Yes. And if it is successful, the next logical step will be to give it a body so it can pick things up for you, instead of just answering questions. And shortly after that... they take over ;-)
You know what would be an interesting experiment? If (somehow) some people learned about Echo and were told it was an Apple product and others were told it was an Amazon product (showing them exactly the same demo, etc.). In that case if I were in the Apple group, I'm sure I would be tempted to get one. But I know for a fact I would use it as much as I use Siri today--very sparingly. So I'll save my $100 and put it toward a 2nd gen Apple Watch. I have my iPhone with me nearly 24x7, so I don't need this gimmick.
See, I use Siri all the time. I also use Siri's new always-on feature with iOS 8 when it's plugged in at home and in the car. However, at home this is only in my bedroom and usually when I want to know the time without opening my eyes. I think this would be handy in the kitchen, especially if you are an Amazon Fresh shopper where it can add to shopping list intelligently based on what you've purchased in the past.
See, I use Siri all the time. I also use Siri's new always-on feature with iOS 8 when it's plugged in at home and in the car. However, at home this is only in my bedroom and usually when I want to know the time without opening my eyes. I think this would be handy in the kitchen, especially if you are an Amazon Fresh shopper where it can add to shopping list intelligently based on what you've purchased in the past.
I also use Hey Siri on my iPad sometimes. That's how it should be, if you have to go over to the device and pick it up it defeats half the convenience of a voice query.
One type of query I wish Siri would understand is game hints. A lot of people play games these days. You should be able to ask "How do you defeat the boss in Borderlands?" and it tells you. Currently it just does a web search...
I also use Hey Siri on my iPad sometimes. That's how it should be, if you have to go over to the device and pick it up it defeats half the convenience of a voice query.
One type of query I wish Siri would understand is game hints. A lot of people play games these days. You should be able to ask "How do you defeat the boss in Borderlands?" and it tells you. Currently it just does a web search...
Siri is unfortunately fairly stupid for this being the end of 2014.
I also miss the built-in Shazam feature in most of the iOS 8 betas.
Comments
Alexa please record and upload everything you hear to the Amazon web site until you hear the words 'cease and decist' in my voice.
Alexa, please monitor everything in my house and upload it directly to the NSA's servers. It'll save everyone time. Thanks.
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MH842AM/A/beats-by-dr-dre-pill-xl-speaker
Even the $300 Sonos Play:3 has only a 1" tweeter.
$100 for Amazon's Echo sounds (har!) like it could be one heck of a bargain.
In any event, how will it deal with a question for which the answer necessarily involves going to or looking at a website?
They could do something with a folded horn configuration in a corner of the room.
I'm going to call mine Illana.
I'll call mine Tara ... As in Tara rah boom de aye
Will be interested to see how they execute it, but this could be a really neat idea.
Amazon have done some nice hardware. Fire TV is a nice piece of kit for the money, Fire Phone while not an iPhone competitor really was nicely built and if iterated nicely could become a really nice device (and the build quality of it is really nice).
Sorry but I think it is DOA just like Fire Phone. It's cute in the video but it would be annoying in real life. For $200 it's DOA.
What about $99? There are a lot of Prime Members.
To be blunt, the family portrayed in the video seems to be full of stupid people.
Perhaps, but if the actual product is half as good as the demo I'll be buying one for $99… and I'll rename Siri because everyone in my home has an iPhone and iPad.
edit: Or maybe I need to differentiate the Siri from Echo by appended an 'A' for Amazon at the end of the name. SiriA works, right?
Alexa, what's the weather going to be like today?
Cloudy and colder, with a high of only 45 Fahrenheit . Would you like me to order you a fleece pullover from Amazon with same day delivery?
Alexa, play some Led Zeppelin.
I noticed you're missing two of their albums, would you like me to order and download those from Amazon for you?
Alexa, how much is the current Apple TV on Amazon?
It's $99, but the Amazon Fire TV is the same price and does so much more, would you like me to order one of those for you instead?
Alexa, how far away from Earth is the Moon?
Amazon has a large number of books that would provide the answer to that question, would you like me to purchase and download one of those from Amazon for you?
You know what would be an interesting experiment? If (somehow) some people learned about Echo and were told it was an Apple product and others were told it was an Amazon product (showing them exactly the same demo, etc.). In that case if I were in the Apple group, I'm sure I would be tempted to get one. But I know for a fact I would use it as much as I use Siri today--very sparingly. So I'll save my $100 and put it toward a 2nd gen Apple Watch. I have my iPhone with me nearly 24x7, so I don't need this gimmick.
I also find it creepy that Alexa somehow moves around the family's house. How exactly does it get from the kitchen to the bedroom? Alexa, stop stalking us!
At first I thought it was 2 stacked MacPros. It looks pretty nice.
Amazon's 2 biggest strengths are it's customer service and AWS. I myself use EC2 a lot.
I guess CloudFront will be the major Web Service driving this. Considering this is one-way, Glacier won't come into play just yet.
So they’re honestly this stupid, huh. No one who buys this is going to be smart enough to change it to anything else, so just call the service “Alexa”.
Female assistants are all the rage these days. When GPHR becomes available, I won’t be buying the male model.
Things are about to get weird. Really weird.
Yes. And if it is successful, the next logical step will be to give it a body so it can pick things up for you, instead of just answering questions. And shortly after that... they take over ;-)
See, I use Siri all the time. I also use Siri's new always-on feature with iOS 8 when it's plugged in at home and in the car. However, at home this is only in my bedroom and usually when I want to know the time without opening my eyes. I think this would be handy in the kitchen, especially if you are an Amazon Fresh shopper where it can add to shopping list intelligently based on what you've purchased in the past.
See, I use Siri all the time. I also use Siri's new always-on feature with iOS 8 when it's plugged in at home and in the car. However, at home this is only in my bedroom and usually when I want to know the time without opening my eyes. I think this would be handy in the kitchen, especially if you are an Amazon Fresh shopper where it can add to shopping list intelligently based on what you've purchased in the past.
I also use Hey Siri on my iPad sometimes. That's how it should be, if you have to go over to the device and pick it up it defeats half the convenience of a voice query.
One type of query I wish Siri would understand is game hints. A lot of people play games these days. You should be able to ask "How do you defeat the boss in Borderlands?" and it tells you. Currently it just does a web search...
Siri is unfortunately fairly stupid for this being the end of 2014.
I also miss the built-in Shazam feature in most of the iOS 8 betas.