It's not about saving time, it's about avoiding context switches. Also I'm really bad at remembering that I'm out of something even 5 seconds later, much less when I'm at the store racking my brain for what I'm running low on.
Is this like, what society wants though? Are we all here to be waited on hand and foot, have our every need taken care of? Do we end up being able to solve more real problems this way, or do we end in a dearth of imagination? Interesting implications - we either end up with a higher percentage of people being self-actualized or an idiotistopia a la wall-e and idiocracy.
I think I'm better off for the effort I put into things like buying detergent, walking to work and figuring out my way instead of using GMaps. It's not like I'd be worse off if I stopped doing any one of those things, but the lifestyle in aggregate where you have a button for everything does have an impact I think.
I have a hard time seeing how people can develop the schlep tolerance and planning skill to do something challenging and big if they can't remember to buy detergent.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9297279
Let's merge these two threads together and see which wins!
I did eventually get mine back in February or so. The add to shopping list feature is very convenient. I don't see this obsoleting that Echo function which is much more general purpose. (Can add anything whether you get it from Amazon or somewhere else.)
Buying groceries is a solved problem, mostly.