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Comment by linsomniac | Hacker News Reader

My primary use of the Home speakers is playing music in the shower. That experience is actually pretty bad though, over the years between google music and spotify, getting it to play my music is just horribly obtuse. I can't reliably get it to start my music. "Playing a playlist called my favorites" or similar rather than playing my own playlist.

At one point after 3-4 failed attempts like this I said "F you" and the speaker said "Don't speak to me like that." So I unplugged it.

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I never understood why people put smart speakers in their showers. Why is a simple and cheap Bluetooth speaker not good enough? You can get them in any size and shape and sound quality and they (can) work with your phone's built-in "smart" assistant. I never use that though because when I'm in the shower all I want to do is listen to music.

Here's my routine, for reference:

    1. Turn on the speaker (which is hanging on my tile shower wall via an Ikea suction cup hook).
    2. Open Spotify on my phone and start a playlist and adjust the volume if necessary (it remembers the volume I last set for this particular Bluetooth speaker so I rarely have to touch that).
    3. Take a shower (singing and dancing of course!)
    4. Turn off the speaker.
    5. Leave the bathroom with my phone.

It works fantastically well. If a song comes on I don't like I can just push the button on the speaker to go to the next track. I can even answer phone calls on it if I want (which I never do).

Because I don’t have to remember to pair my phone with the Bluetooth speaker, then queue up whatever. I just tell my Echo to play my daily briefing, and it does the work. I picked a set that is generally done in 15-20 minutes, so it doubles as a good time for my morning routine.

In the described use-case, you don't have to re-pair your phone, you just turn the speaker on and it reconnects automatically. Both phone OSs work that way, reconnecting automatically to known devices.

Also, the daily briefing is a different use-case than was described above, where the GP commenter just wanted to play music.

That works in a single person household. But once an extra person wants to use it then each person has to do the dance of re-pairing every morning - which can be painful if the other person's device was the last one that connected and is nearby.

Being able to have anyone just walk in the shower and say "device play music on Spotify" and have it just work is much simpler and requires much less thinking and effort - which is really nice first thing in the morning.

Also a speaker you can't connect after getting in the shower, but a smart speaker you can.

I’ve just started playing music on my phone. The iPhone is plenty water resistant now and it’s not going under the shower stream anyway.

I think it is mostly iOS people that are not used to waterproof phones. Many top quality Android phones have been water resistant for years. My first one was the Sony Xperia Z1 released a decade ago.

So, controlling a speaker from your phone in the shower is an obvious solution versus trying to talk to it.

While nearly all phones (including iPhones) have been waterproof for almost decade now that does not solve the issue with capacitive touch screens not working when wet, where to put the phone where it won't slip and break on the tiles, and the terrible quality of phone speakers in general. And then you have a wet slippery phone to put in your pocket (plus probably water trapped behind whatever case you have on it).

Or just pay a small amount for a dedicated speaker with handsfree voice controls...

When you shower, do you just put your clothes on and have no access to a towel?

The first iPhone that claimed to be water resistant was the iPhone 7, which was the first iPhone to remove the headphone jack. Android phones solved water resistance with a headphone jack years before that. It was released in 2016, 3 years after the wave of Android phones that were water resistant. I'm a little surprised that it was that long ago but it also makes me question how water resistant the phones are.

Your contrived use cases in the shower come across as someone who hasn't tried to use their phone in the shower. Cases easily come off, towels exist, shower caddies exist, places where your soap isn't under a constant stream of water exist, and screens work pretty well in the shower if you aren't trying to use it under a direct stream of water in your face. I've personally never seen the feature touted in Apple advertising, so it seems fragile to me. Although I guess the number of stories I hear of people using the bathroom and needing to replace their phone because it fell in the toilet has decreased. My iPhone using friends are usually surprised when I say I regularly use my Sony in the shower.

If the iPhone actually is capable of handling water finally, maybe the screen is just particularly bad with water on it.

There's nothing "contrived" about thinking you might drop a phone that you're using while you shower.

Thats still more steps than just walking in and yelling out "Hey Google, play my music"

I've done both, and what you've described is far more effort than just shouting a command.

It is fine and works well. I mostly got the smart speakers because i wanted multi room audio for my spotify, and alexa is the cheapest decent quality multi room audio I could get.

Also, my morning routine since I have them has simplified: Go to the bathroom in the morning, my presence detection will start my morning playlist as I enter. (Turning off not included in example, either switch playlist via spotify app at some point or tell alexa/spotify to turn off for a meeting or because I leave.)

Why a smart speaker?

I have Alexa, a Dot device, which works great - never any problems - with Spotify. I think it's better than Bluetooth speaker, yeah.

Because of the timers. I can ask it to set a timer for shampoo or condition, 3 minutes, or washing my teeth, 2 minutes.

But also I can request a song by name, and for many songs it works.

It basically works as well as a Bluetooth speaker, for the same cost, but with more functionality. Pretty easy choice.

Maybe I'm weird, but my showers don't last more than a song or two (and I shave in the shower), so any effort to play music, smart speaker or dumb, is kind of wasted.

I still want profanity mode. Hurling insults at a Google Assistant and having to roast me in return would be amazing.

That's not really what I'm looking for, of course. At the time it was feeling a bit like "3 times is enemy action". A person, if I had asked them to play my playlist and they put on "KidzBopz" or other "decidedly not my playlists", they'd be like "Ok, I've pushed this gag far enough."

But seriously, I still haven't plugged that thing back in, it's been over a year. The only reliable way I could get to start my playlists was to use my phone, at which point I might as well just be using a bluetooth speaker, which is what I've been doing the last year.

"Fuck you, Dave. Fuuuuuuuck you!!!!! You and your shitty little ReVanced app"

That would be pretty awesome.

It should not respond like with "don't talk to me like that". It is a device, not a person, it has no feelings, and it is being used in a private home. No reason to police speech there.

Yeah it really rubs me wrong that smart devices do this. I OWN it. This isn’t a person. It’s a fucking computer and I don’t need lectures on language I use in my own home on my own devices. I’ll speak to my property however I want

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