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Comment by markolschesky | Hacker News Reader

No Spotify, no buy. Being locked into Apple Music is a non-starter for me. It's still mindboggling to me that Siri can't/won't interface with my Spotify account. My lowly Amazon Echo supports this just fine. In fact, I prefer it to the spotify UX/UI.

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This is same reason why I refuse to use Fire TV, Android TV or Apple TV. I'll stick with Roku until the walled gardens fall.

I would suggest Roku make a digital assistant as well but it would probably come in 4 different models ranging from wholly unusable to outrageously expensive, have a purple bow tie, and need to be replaced annually with the latest model.

Roku itself is a walled garden. You cannot develop apps for them unless you are blessed by them. Last I checked the SDK was closed (as in, closed to even try out developing for Roku).

The BrightScript API for Roku app development is freely available, and any Roku set-top box or Roku TV can be put in developer mode where you can sideload your own channel. You can also upload private channels where users can install your content via a weblink -- they have to go through certification to be in the on-device Roku Channel Store. All developer docs and samplers are all on GitHub, see https://github.com/rokudev

Isn't Android TV pretty open in this regard?

After all, it even has a VLC app...

Apple TV has VLC too.

Didn't knew that!!

> How dare a company lock me into their ecosystem! I want to be locked into a different ecosystem, dammit!

The echo supports a range of music services, not limited to amazon music. I use it with pandora, for instance.

AFAIK Google Home doesn't work with Amazon Music and Echo doesn't work with Google Play Music or Chromecasts.

This is correct. I have google music and my echo won't play it. Really annoying.

Amazon refuses to even sell Chromecasts or Apple TVs and lies about it if you contact customer support. I've been told that "it's just out of stock", that "we had too many complaints", and even "Apple refuses to let us sell those products".

It's why I canceled Amazon Prime (Funny, after being a customer for over a decade, with Prime since it was offered, cancelling was a single click, with zero follow-up or attempt at retention. Not even a "Oh, hey, why did you decide to cancel after so many years?")

Just canceled too and was surprised how friction free it was. They sent just one follow up email so far trying to tell me about all the "benefits" I'll lose (which were things I never used anyways).

Right but there's no material difference between the two. You just have a choice between which master to serve. Amazon's platform isn't more open, they've just allowed other music services to operate on their platform.

Amazon's platform is substantially more open:

https://developer.amazon.com/alexa-skills-kit

It looks to be as open as Apple's TvOS, but that's not the point. Having a easygoing gatekeeper protecting your walled garden doesn't make it open.

I wouldn't say that Amazon's is open. I would say it is much more open than Apple's, though.

Downloading API kits and actually getting those things you built approved for distribution are very different things though.

Amazon approval is basically a rubber stamp. Can't say the same for Apple's. I'm also not aware of Amazon denying anything for competitive purposes. Amazon is happy to let Spotify on their platform, despite having a music service of their own, for instance.

Amazon has also shown that as a company, they're more than willing to engage in anticompetitive behavior when they feel threatened (for example, refusing to sell Chromecasts and Apple TVs, refusing to port Amazon Prime Video to competitors' platforms, etc.) I wouldn't put it past them to drop support for other services when it suits them.

Siri has an API: https://developer.apple.com/sirikit/

Not sure why Spotify isn't using it.

SiriKit only supports a limited number of domains and intents, of which playing music is not one of them.

Siri has an "API". A very limited set of things it can do.

It's basically a hard coded list of events that get triggered if someone says a particular phrase.

Spotify's use case isn't supported.

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