dewme

danox said:

Who runs that spyware on a Mac?  

If you're referring to Chrome, that's a good question. I haven't come across any stats that are fresher than 2016. Newer data shows Chrome on desktop platforms with roughly 70% usage versus Safari's roughly 10%. On mobile platforms Chrome usage is a few percentage points behind its desktop rate but Safari is up to about 25%. The only time you see Safari ahead of Chrome (about 60% vs 40%) is if you break tablets alone out of the mobile stats. These stats are based on a set of sample sites that track what browsers are hitting them. Nothing really surprising at all when you compare Mac vs non-Mac market share across computing platforms.

No matter how you slice it, there's a crapload of people using Chrome, so it's both the market leader in terms of usage and the most heavily scrutinized browser. Seeing more vulnerabilities discovered on a browser that has 70% usage should not be a surprise to anyone. I worry most about vulnerabilities that have not been publicly disclosed - regardless of whether the'd been discovered or not. There are obviously plenty of vulnerabilities that have been discovered but not disclosed, but instead banked or sold to the highest bidder. Once they are disclosed they lose most of their value, although people who don't keep their systems updated ensure that vulnerabilities still retain a diminished level of residual value. 

badmonk said:

I love Amazon prime but the problem with Alexa is that the devices were too cheaply priced for their abilities & pushed out the door without concern for a sustainable longterm model.

The issue was not only privacy but it was trust more importantly.  Amazon’s pricing is so scattershot & often mercenary (based on what they know about you I suspect).

So no one is willing to trust a verbal exchange to order from them without concern of price.

If Jeff & the executive class lived like normal people they would have realized it was never going to scale to the point where people would engage in frictionless verbal ordering.

And a robot spy that is walking around your home?  Well-to-do people are not going to go for it.

Trust has nothing to do with it. The voice based ordering process is simply a bad fit for how people like to shop. The smart refill buttons were a flop also because they simply were not a natural fit with how people manage stuff in their lives. 

ihatescreennames said:

bloggerblog said:

Amazon lacks customer trust when it comes to handling data. I won’t be surprised if it got sold to police or governments. I don’t even trust their palm reader tech or Ring security system. 

Is that actually true, though? I know plenty of people with some form of Echo in their house who also say they don’t care about their privacy or personal data. Any time I’ve mentioned Amazon’s mishandling of data to them they had no idea but also just shrug it off. 

The only place I really see any concern around handling of data or privacy is in these types of forums, which tends to be a more tech focused niche of people. Even this isn’t absolute. A friend of mine loves to refer to herself as a “techie-girl” and is one of those I mentioned above. 

So, is there really (much) lack of customer trust with Amazon?

I trust Amazon as much as I trust Apple, Google, and Microsoft. 

Good article. In my opinion the Alexa technology is at least a generation ahead of the best version of Siri, wherever that happens to reside, which is probably on the iPhone. It’s very apparent to me that Amazon has invested a ton of money into refinement Alexa technology in anticipation of the technology helping to drive sales both on its storefront and through preferred integration with other Amazon products.

If my use of Alexa technology is any indicator, I’d say that 99% of what I use the Alexa technology for has zero benefit to Amazon’s bottom line. The 1% is mostly the Alexa technology querying me for feedback on past product purchases or Amazon offering a product discount for ordering something using Alexa.

I don’t buy into the argument that Amazon investing less in Alexa technology is going to benefit Apple because just like Alexa, Siri isn’t driving product sales in a measurable way. It’s a convenience function that’s sadly far less capable than Alexa, but I seriously doubt that its monetization impact is even as good as Alexa’s. Perhaps the reason Siri technology seems so behind Alexa technology is because Apple is only investing in Siri technology at a level that is more commensurate with its ROI on the sales side of the equation. But even here I think Apple is eating a lot of costs just to keep the convenience factor in the products that use it. Unlike Amazon, Apple makes a gigaton of money on device sales while Amazon is probably selling a lot of its devices at a loss to pull through sales from other channels.

Hopefully Amazon will continue to invest in Alexa technology at a sustainable level. Even without any great advances the functionality of the Alexa technology will likely maintain its lead over semi-competing technologies like Siri for a few more years. I say semi-competing because neither technology is a drop-in replacement for the other. There are a few areas of overlap, like using Alexa with Apple Music, but for the most part these are two basically closed systems that play in their own ecosystems. The Alexa technology does have an API that third parties can integrate into their products, but it’s not displacing Siri technology in any of those cases because Siri is (as far as I know) exclusive to Apple products.

The Alexa technology is quite amazing and I’m sure that Amazon could find other product and system makers who would license it at a much deeper level if Amazon decided to open it up as a product.

I’ll give Musk an opportunity to redeem himself only because of his track record. For me, it comes down to what he does next and whether it ties up all the loose ends on the total chaos he’s created. However, there is one glaring thing that he’s done that is a major WTF from my perspective - his assertion that this is an engineering problem that needs to be solved. He’s basically said that the only employees he values right now are engineers.

I’m a big fan of engineers and engineering, but I don’t see Twitter as an engineering company. It’s a company that uses technology and engineering to power its platform, but it’s not selling engineered products or even in the engineering domain, unless you’re talking human engineering. Engineers are great at the “how to solve a problem” part, but you need people who clearly know “what problems need to be solved.” If you don’t nail the “what” part the “how” part is irrelevant.