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> what are people actually using these for?

Off the top of my head from last night while cooking dinner:

* "hey google, add olive oil to the grocery list"

* "hey google, set a timer for 15 minutes for rice"

* "hey google, play some Christmas music"

* "hey google, how much time is left on the rice"

I could have fumbled with pulling out my iphone for all of these, but I would have had to stop prepping dinner, wash my hands, and then mess with the phone. Instead, it just fits in the flow of what I am doing.

I believe from iPhone 6S and above, there's an option to just say "Hey, Siri" to activate Siri without having to touch the phone, so you can basically do the same thing with iPhones.

5s had it as well, although it needed to be charging, which limited the usefulness of it greatly.

But then he's listening to Christmas music via crappy phone speakers. I think people in this discussion are ignoring the advantage of having half-way decent speakers in Echo and Google Home.

Also, your phone may be deep in a pocket, in a coat, or in your purse in the other room. Echo/Home is right there in the kitchen waiting for you.

Lastly, you have no battery worries. Want 12+ hours of music in the kitchen? No problem.

"Hey Siri" doesn't work well, if at all, when the phone is in a pocket. I've tried.

There is, but my phone is either in my pocket or not right next to me. Google Home works fine across the room, and ties directly into Google Music. I can also tell it to cast to my better speakers if that's what I want it to do. Siri also has a weird way of doing multiple timers: http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2014/01/timers-and-reminder...

I soooo wish there was a way to define non-Amazon defaults for a lot of things, but I get why they'd want to lock it down. I don't suppose there's an open-source alternative to hack on?

"play some Christmas music" doesn't work so well if you want to use Spotify -- it has to become "play some Christmas music from Spotify", which feels awkward.

"order X" defaults to Amazon, where I might want to voice-order groceries using Instacart or order a pizza using GrubHub/Uber Eats/whatever.

As of a couple months ago, you can set Spotify as your default music player -- so you no longer have to do this.

> "hey google, play some Christmas music"

In Canada this just doers a google search, whereas "play Bruno Mars" fires up Spotify as expected.

I have Google Music so it finds music by matching on playlists/genre.

Yeah, the hands free, walk around barking out commands to (Alexa in my case) is the big win IMO.

I think you might be too YOUNG to get it.

I think older people love the idea of interacting with a computer with voice - it's way easier for someone to get a quick answer with voice if they're otherwise unfamiliar with navigating a smart phone or laptop (plus the added Star Trek "Computer, locate Commander Riker" aspect - with that added feeling of nostalgia, maybe).

EDIT: changed words for clarity

Exactly. The generation that grew up with Star Trek:TNG and Voyager are 35-45 years old now, and that's our vision of the future. I see more thirty- and forty-somethings with iPads and Kindles (i.e. PADDs) than any other demographic, and the idea of saying "Computer, add X to the grocery list" just seems like how the future should be.

I do find it funny that the tech from a fictional post-scarcity society is being pioneered in the real world by a merchandise company (Amazon) and an advertising company (Google). Meanwhile, Microsoft is lagging behind despite Cortana (in my experience) having the best voice recognition of all the services, Siri included.

As an (incidental) user I can tell you that Alexa is of middling usefulness at best, even for someone with a high degree of home-automation type stuff. The voice recognition is quite good compared to similar services, but that's about the only thing it has going for it really.

Most of the 'skills' (an appstore with absolutely zero quality control) are useless or extremely limited shovelware hidden behind archaic verbal rituals. I say verbal rituals because what you might consider a normal request, such as "Alexa, how much is Tesla stock selling for?", turns into the complex "Alexa, ask Cool ACME Stock Master what the current buying price of Tesla stock is".

It very much appears that instead of being able to infer what you mean, Alexa mostly just matches extremely specific strings to extremely specific corresponding processes. Understandable as a developer, extremely frustrating as a user.

Using Alexa becomes natural. Re-phrasing the same thing thirty times until you get the intended result with the required phrasing moreso.

Really the only reason to buy it is so that you can control your Lifx lights and listen to streaming music on demand. The latter is quite good as long as you don't mind mediocre speakers or sound quality.

All of that said...there is, however, something to be said about the novelty factor of being able to ask for very basic dictionary / wikipedia lookups.

  It very much appears that instead of being able to infer
  what you mean, Alexa mostly just matches extremely
  specific strings to extremely specific corresponding
  processes. Understandable as a developer, extremely
  frustrating as a user.

I think getting this right, and especially getting it right while allowing third-party skills and preserving user privacy, is probably very difficult.

If someone says "Alexa, we need more bread" how do you figure out which skill to delegate that to when the 'amazon', 'ebay', 'ocado', and 'asda' skills all report they can order products matching that query, the 'music' and 'video' skills report they can stream content matching that query, and the 'grocery list' skill reports it can add that to a grocery list?

If I say that, what I really mean is "Look at Ocado and Asda, if I have a delivery coming in the near future add my most-ordered full size loaf of bread to the order if it's not already present, otherwise add it to my grocery list and remind me when I'm leaving work tomorrow"

And that behaviour is bread-specific. If I'm ordering beer I want different behaviour - and if I'm ordering something personal, maybe I don't want my search broadcast to every retailer just to check if they can help with it.

The full behaviour may be a bit too much for now, but deciding which to use seems simple: it's how Android Intents already work. Apps register themselves for which kinds of actions they can handle, then the user gets asked which one to use, and can set a default.

> Alexa, we need more bread

< Should I order it through Ocado, Asda, Ebay or Amazon?

> Always use Asda for bread ("unless I tell you otherwise" is implied)

I expect Google Home is much better with things like asking for Tesla stock since it already does this kind of thing for search. I tried your exact queries on my phone and they worked. People have also noticed that the Home device also remembers context, so you don't always have to repeat yourself.

So I don't think we can really generalize Alexa's failings to the entire space.

> isn't the most convenient way to turn on a light switch still just physically flipping the switch?

The answer to this is: No.

The Echo and Google Smarthome don't require you to take it out of your pocket to interact with it. Walk in the door and it's listening. It sounds like a small difference but it is huge.

I think voice interfaces are very easily dismissed as for the lazy people, or a gimmick. Until you start using it on a daily basis. Then you start to realize how stupid it is to not be able to turn on your lights while both hands are overloaded with grocery bags (because two trips to the car is just never done!)

I feel like presence detection is a better option for lights.

Stumbling in the dark waiting for Echo to process your command versus just having the lights turn on when you enter a room.

I disagree, here. I may not always want the lights on. I prefer voice control to motion detection.

Yep. Same here. You want to be able to explicitly turn off the lights (say when you go to bed). Not have to wait for some timer to expire.

I suppose if the motion sensors had some extreme AI and could detect when I would want the lights on or off and make that decision before I verbalized it. But I'd probably want the voice interface as an override when the AI gets the wrong answer.

The voice recognition technology is so much more reliable and flexible than I've found Siri to be. It has an API that allows developers to build apps for it, and is updated every week with new voice commands and features that make it even more interesting and useful.

I resisted for a long time, then bought an Echo, and I loved that so much that I bought a dot, then another, then a 3 pack for my kids for Christmas. It's great for timers, alarms, playing music, news, browsing Amazon, and so much more.

Being portable helps, especially with speakers that work so much better than phone speakers do.

FWIW, I'm a 38 year-old father of 3. I think that if you bought one, you would find yourself delighted (and surprised) by how fun it can be.

what do you mean by "browsing amazon"?

Shopping for items that pop into my head.

"Alexa, order a _____."

"I found 7 items matching ___..." and proceeds to go through the list.

The last startup I worked at the server dev brought in an Echo and set up a basic analytics app that queried the database so we could ask it for user activity over the last 24 hours, or the last week.

Picked up an Echo Dot on Black Friday on a whim and I'm genuinely surprised how much I use it.

Last night's tasks:

- Got into a dark house with my hands full of bags, "Hey Alexa turn on the living room lights. Play blues music."

- Taking my shoes off, "Hey Alexa what's the news"

- Cooking, "Hey Alexa what's 12 fluid ounces in cups. Add garlic to my shopping list."

- On the way out the door, "Hey Alexa ask NYC Transit what's the status of the 4 train"

- Going to sleep, "Hey Alexa turn off the bedroom light. Play white noise. Loop."

- Wake up in the middle of the night "Hey Alexa what time is it? What time is my first meeting tomorrow? Cancel my alarm for 7:30AM. Set an alarm for 8AM.". All without shining a screen in my face, which can disrupt sleep cycles.

There's a few glitches (sometimes the speech clips, had to reboot it once or twice) but speech recognition is decent (I have a soft-spoken English accent which challenges some systems). Also it's great when alone but kind of awkward talking to the machine when you have company.

I can see a lot of mundane tasks switching over to ambient, speech-based interfaces in the future. I'll be adding Alexa Skills development to my skillset over Christmas.

> - Going to sleep, "Hey Alexa turn off the bedroom light. Play white noise. Loop." > - Wake up in the middle of the night "Hey Alexa what time is it? What time is my first meeting tomorrow? Cancel my alarm for 7:30AM. Set an alarm for 8AM.". All without shining a screen in my face, which can disrupt sleep cycles.

I've seen a bunch of people mention use cases in their bedrooms, which is great, but they seem to fall apart when you're not single since you don't want the speaker waking your partner up, which is sad since I would like to know what time it is without shining a light in my eyes.

Yep! Currently the solution I have to that is an old bedside clock with glow in the dark hands. It's great when I'm sleeping alone though - which is what most consumer tech seems optimized towards.

> if you have an android phone or iphone or smartwatch, you already can "Hey Siri/Google" whatever you want,

Most of those devices just don't have speakers/microphones cable of working reliably at room scale in real world conditions. They've certainly gotten better over the years but I doubt they will ever match the reliability of physically larger devices purpose built for the task.

> how many people have 50$ wifi connected bulbs? and isn't the most convenient way to turn on a light switch still just physically flipping the switch?

I don't think this is the killer app for the Echo but home automation is becoming pretty mainstream these days. Enough so that stores like Lowes, Home Depot, Target, etc stock bulbs, switchable outlets, starter kits, etc.

> isn't the most convenient way to turn on a light switch still just physically flipping the switch?

Not if you have your hands full or the switch happens to be on the other side of a dark room. Home automation is a novelty at first but once that wears off it becomes just another tool not very different from a light switch

I can't wait to be able to control my TV from one of these things. Much easier than hunting for the Roku app on my phone, since I've long lost the actual remote.

Harmony works with Echo now. "Alexa turn on the TV" works well.

Nice. For me it seems a little ridiculous to spend $99 on an IR sensor + LED since I don't have any more home automation.

Given I gave the Echo I had away, I'm hoping the next iteration of the Echo or Google Home device has the $2 of components required to implement this functionality so that it just works out of the box.

I've had the echo since it was in limited beta, and while I've played with a lot of the features over time, I think what I use it for most consistently is a voice enabled alarm/timer and a way to shut off my lights without having to get up to do so. I don't really keep a consistent sleep schedule so not having to finger-fiddle with my alarm to set it to 8 hours from now is nice. "Alexa set alarm for 10:30am" "Alexa lights off"

It's crazy how quickly you get used to having it there. When I'm at a hotel or a friends house I almost get annoyed that it's not standing by for simple stuff like just reminding me to decouple from a task in a half hour - "Alexa set a timer for 30 minutes"

Lastly its super convenient if you are super engrossed in something but also want food. You can just yell "Alexa tell dominos to order my favorite". No going to the site or anything just one sentence and 20 minutes later you have pizza.

My mom loves it. It introduced her to the idea of unlimited free music(prime music) since she didn't care to figure out the others The other big thing, even with a phone it needs to be out. Until recently hey Siri wasn't a thing. Cooking timers are really convenient - my phone gets covered in flour.

The echo is always in the same exact spot, so there's no hunting for it, never a need for hands. It just works

Lights are still a gimmick.

I'm a new parent and I need to track when my son eats/poops/pees etc. There are times when my hands aren't available. I built a tiny "app" that just records these things to a google spreadsheet for me.

I also like the idea of "authenticating" via being present in my home. If my in laws are watching my son while I step out for a few minutes - they can talk to Alexa as easily as I can.

Interestingly this is something that amazon is actually advertising the echo with: https://www.amazon.com/cWix-Baby-Stats/dp/B01CJRUAF6

Voice command is sometimes the only option when parents' hands are full.

I don't think it's age. It's a lot more relevant to me as a parent (of 2). I suspect it has to do with how much time and energy you need to invest in the activities near where an Echo would be.

I was most excited to hook the Echo up to home automation, but I haven't yet because the special bulbs and plug adapters are too expensive.

Instead, my wife and I use it heavily for:

* Music: Playing music immediately to get kids jumping around, when hosting people over for dinner, whatever. We have a portable Bose speaker, but it's not nearly as convenient.

* Timers: We set these a lot to multitask. Filling the bath, cooking, whatever.

* Weather: While getting ourselves and the kids ready in the morning, we usually ask about the weather for today to figure out which sweater/coat combinations need to happen.

* Shopping: We are constantly running out of things. We can quickly say "Add ___ to the shopping list." Even if we don't actually order from Amazon, later I can pull up the list on my phone. Plus, using IFTTT, the items get copied to my iOS Reminders list, which is shared with my wife.

> playing music

where does the music come from when you ok google it? I don't have a sonos or whatever set up in my house, so I use my Echo for this (the speaker is excellent) and playing spotify, playing tunein radio, playing pandora, setting kitchen timers when cooking and getting weather reports.

yeah you can get these in a million other ways, but it's just convenient to have in the kitchen.

Yep, there is no one killer thing, just a ton of small useful things. Like, when you are cooking and run out of oregano. "Alexa, add oregano", and now its in your shopping list.

I am wondering the exact, same, thing.

I have truly no idea why people buy these. I'm a tech nerd, I usually am an early adopter of newfangled technology. But this? I literally couldn't justify spending $5 on it.

>i live in a relatively tech-infested city

I think these type of products may end up being better for the less tech obsessed. I'm thinking of getting one in the next year or so because I don't have my phone on me at all times when I'm at home and and I think that's true for a lot of people who aren't hyper-connected and attached to their phones all the time. It's nice to have access to all that stuff just in the house but without feeling like you're attached to a device at all times.

No one else mentioned my $500 phone has trash speakers compared to my $90 (or whatever I paid for it on sale) echo? I wouldn't want my phone to be as big and heavy as the echo, but I certainly enjoy listening to it.

Also binary thinking, people in the ankle bracelet tribe literally cannot comprehend people who don't carry their phone with them everywhere 24x7 and vice versa, and echo is incredibly useful to members of the non-ankle bracelet tribe.

(ankle bracelet as in giant house arrest GPS tracker thingie, not shiny gold high fashion)

I have another interesting problem in that I have a newer phone that uses huge amounts of power to do the simplest things, and aftermarket wireless Qi charger, and Qi only provides USB1.0 slow charging rates of power, so even with my phone laying on the charger (s, I have multiple chargers) the battery slowly dies if I play music or podcasts or anything, whereas the echo is ac powered and I don't feel like I threw out $1 into the battery replacement fund every time I charge it because the echo is always plugged in. It feels cheaper to use the echo, less hassle. I can afford to replace my phone battery but its a huge inconvenient PITA.

"if you have an android phone or iphone or smartwatch, you already can "Hey Siri/Google" whatever you want"

Powered on 100% of the time is the difference. The listening takes too much power for most devices still whereas echo's are always wired and listening. There are probably differences in the software as well but thats a big one. I guess the speaker is larger as well. Kinda like a beats pill audio quality (limited by size) with n always on mic.

Most high end phones now days have the option to have an always listening microphone for almost no power usage (1 or 2 percent over the day on my Galaxy S5). So if you leave your phone in the middle of the room it works quite well, and often you can even shout at your pocket.

But I think you are right, it's the small improvement over the phone, you always know where it is, and the microphones are designed for large area reception over phone microphones which are generally optimizes for closer sound sources. These small differences are valuable, even though you can get 90% of the functionality by just keeping your phone in the open.

I can say "Alexa, turn off all lights" before going to bed, eg. I can turn the backyard lights without leaving my bedroom if I hear a noise.

As a "read me the news, play NPR or BBC or Podcasts, tell me the weather, make a shopping list" kind of device, to play music in various places, to manage a lot of the automation in the house, to listen to audible books, to buy music.

I have Echoes in the bedroom and kitchen/living room and a Tap that floats.

NB: I work for AWS but am just an general Alexa fanboy (and I am definitely a lot older than 27).

For useless stuff like playing music, setting timer, checking train status, creating reminds on gmail

I have one in my bathroom and "Alexa, news" is part of every morning.

Other than that, I don't know. I tried to get it to play a podcast today, but it wouldn't.

It's a $40 bedroom speaker to play music and news in a super convenient way. My friends and I love it. Timer, alarm, and weather are pleasant bonuses.

It's the only smart home control that we actually use. "Alexa turn on the lights" is easier than any other way of doing it.

> Hey Siri/Google already does this, no?

Only if you have your phone on you, and at least I don't carry mine around at home.

We bought one for a relative who's vision was deteriorating so that he could listen to audiobooks just by talking to it.

Checking my daily todo list on Todoist, getting news from NPR, playing audiobooks

When I'm walking into my bedroom, I want the nightstand lamp on, so I say "Alexa, turn on the bedroom lamp". The nightstand with the lamp is on the other side of the bed that I don't sleep on, so it's much easier to say "Alexa, turn off the bedroom lamp", than to roll over and stretch out to turn it off. And much easier just to tell Alexa to turn it on in the middle of the night instead of fumbling around. Alexa always responds with "Ok", and saying the commands I could see as a problem with a significant other, but at this house I'm living alone, so it's all good.

I like to ask Alexa what time it is without turning on the tv or looking for my phone. Whem I'm going to the bathroom, I'll tell Alexa to play the news. I add things to the shopping list, check the weather, set alarms for certain times...

For $40 (the dot) it's worth it. I'm hoping to save some money with a smart thermostat. And I'm hoping Google will put out something like the dot because I hear it's much more conversation (I just don't want to plunk down $140 or whatever it is for the Google Home right now).