The nice (ish) thing about Apple is that since they price everything stupidly high, I have some faith they're making a profit.

I don't think Alexa makes money. I'm pretty sure the hardware is sold at a loss, with the intention it gets you to buy shit through Amazon with it. Which - obviously - no. Nobody is shopping via voice, that was always a stupid idea.

Same here. I have one echo left and using as a fancy kitchen timer with clock.

I did exactly the same and haven't missed it one bit.

I tried the same but I have multiple people in my house so about 20% of the time when I say “turn off the lights” it responds with “who is talking” and goes through a voice calibration exercise.

It’s super infuriating because I guess they want to personalize to the speaker, even when it doesn’t matter. And I suppose I sound similarly to others in my household.