shrug he's writing about the impact of these things on the music industry in a music publication. It's not going to be as fawning as one of those absurd go-go-gadget-fanboy websites, but it seemed like a perfectly reasonable exposition of what they are, specifically for providing context for how they might impact the music world.
and tbh I'm not really ready to talk to a plastic puck either. It's pretty weird, not to mention the uneasiness of having some poorly secured hacked up version of Android running 24/7 in my house with a big fat microphone attached designed to pick up as much as possible.
...and who knows, maybe his friend did tech it about ambient by writing an Alexa skill to organize her ambient playlists.