14 ms·

Alexa: Amazon's Operating System

278 points by misiti3780 10y ago

3am_hackernews 10y ago
Slightly tangential to the post: Does anyone know how to make diagrams (watercolor style) like the ones in OPs article and blog?
- alexbilbie 10y ago
  I believe he uses Paper - https://www.fiftythree.com https://www.fiftythree.com
  - danso 10y ago
    This comment totally sidetracked my day. I've been searching for a way to quickly do diagrams, but without the use of full-blown Visio-like flowchart software. I downloaded Paper back in the day and remember when it came out with its "Smart Shape" feature, but didn't ever think to use it for easily sketching charts.
walterbell 10y ago
Alexa currently requires memorization of command sequences. Can take a while for older users to learn. E.g. there's a skill (AskMyBuddy) that sends a preprogrammed text to a list of cellphones, typically a request for help. But the user needs to be trained to remember the exact command ("Alexa Ask My Buddy to send help"), which might be forgotten if someone is in a stressful situation. Anecdote: tried to create a todo list with one item, "buy milk", but Alexa would not accept this item unless you setup the ability to purchase items from Amazon. Weather does not work outside the US (needs a US address).
- danso 10y ago
  However, its NLP is quite good. Having my (Vietnamese-born) parents try the Echo Dot, I was struck by how awful their English actually is, at least in comparison to how my brain has come accustomed to their speech patterns. For one thing, they enunciate "Alexa" much differently than I do. And then where I would say, "What's the weather today", they say, "What weather today is?" or "What day this week will be snow?" To my surprise, Alexa actually understood their convoluted phrasing, at least for the built-in skills that Alexa has had well-honed out of the box.
  - zitterbewegung 10y ago
    If you say the intent activation word (weather / snow / light etc..) the intent will trigger. Phrasing can help for certain queries though.
    - jordache 10y ago
      bingo!
  - melvinmt 10y ago
    Interesting. The phrases I typically use for Google Search are also not considered proper English grammar, but are highly effective in getting the results that I want. I wonder if that's the case as well here.
  - Eridrus 10y ago
    Thanks for this comment, I hadn't really thought about how NLP may fail ESL speakers. Do you think your parents would be more comfortable talking to it in Vietnamese if it was possible? I'm mostly wondering if handling good Vietnamese is easier than handling English with poor grammar.
    - yellowapple 10y ago
      Handling poor English grammar is a necessity anyway if you want to hit mass market share, since not everyone speaks as if they read the Oxford English Dictionary every night even when they are native English speakers.
    - danso 10y ago
      Definitely. Their English even after 30+ years in America is at the level where our English-English conversations are probably at the elementary grade level (except with a few more proper nouns). I used to think that they were at least better in understanding my natural English conversation, but I've realized that I reflexively shift to using much simpler sentences when speaking to them. But when they're with Vietnamese friends or family, they have conversations (in Vietnamese) just as normal adults typically do in their native language. Conversely, I've since realized that the Vietnamese that I think I understand is probably at the toddler level. For a very long time, I just assumed the Vietnamese language lacked features such as pronouns and articles. But then I realized that when my parents tell me to go wash the dishes, my brain just fixates on "wash dishes" and ignores all the other connective words. So I know a lot of verbs and nouns but very few words that are part of everyday conversational speech in Vietnamese. I imagine that's what Alexa feels like :) Your comment made me curious how well the Google Translate app can deal with foreign languages. I was stunned to see that it could understand my attempts at Vietnamese. So other than a proportionately smaller dataset to learn from (Vietnamese usage vs English usage of Google or Amazon), seems like Alexa and Google Home could competently deal with foreign languages.
- wccrawford 10y ago
  Most commands are pretty obvious and easy, but some of them aren't. For instance, the phone locator. The command is something like, "Alexa, tell trackr to locate my phone." But my wife and I can never remember that when we need to locate a phone, and we have to figure out it out all over again. I assume that people have to call for emergency services less often than we misplace our phones, so I'm sure it's even harder to remember the exact verbiage for that.
- diminoten 10y ago
  Alexa added "Ham Bread" to my shopping list yesterday. Not super on-topic, but I laughed when I saw it.
- willyyr 10y ago
  Weather works quite well for me here in germany.
  - walterbell 10y ago
    Thanks. Looks like some countries work, others don't.
- dalore 10y ago
  Weather works fine in the UK.
gbrown_ 10y ago
How is the on the front page? There is nothing of merit in the article. Edit: HN title has been corrected.
ikeboy 10y ago
>. First, no company could ever build enough phones for the world, and secondly, to serve every customer would ruin the profit margins that make the business model so successful. Both seem wrong? They could produce more models at lower price points and lower costs and maintain similar margins, like Samsung. Probably the branding effect on margin would be smaller but would still be a healthy margin. Am I missing the point here?
trequartista 10y ago
Don't think that the "operating system" for the internet of things is fully defined yet. Amazon is simply the first and the biggest mover. Google has also launched Home. Apple has Homekit. Interesting to see how it pans out
- diego_moita 10y ago
  This is a very good point. I wonder also if we'll ever see one established and dominating others. There are a lot of other small players with a future: Tizen (on Samsung and other devices), RTOS, Kontiki, lots of proprietary stuff based on Linux (e.g.: Garmin stuff), QNX, ...
- pwthornton 10y ago
  Homekit is really interesting when stuff works with it (which is not a lot), and when you can use your voice with it (which is limited). If Apple could really get more people onboard with Homekit and build standalone Siri devices it could be in the pole position here, but Apple doesn't seem to get what it has with either Homekit or Siri. Homekit makes it really easy to set up different scenes with different smart devices and interactions. Setting these up requires good user interfaces beyond voice. Apple gets this. Unfortunately, Homekit is really limited right now.
CodeSheikh 10y ago
"The concept of an operating system is pretty straightforward: it is a piece of software that manages a computer, making said computer’s hardware resources" So the author luxuriously simplified a sophisticated piece of software like an OS to simply prove his point that Alexa can be classified as an OS because it is a software that also manages hardware resources. Someone please correct but I was under the impression that Alexa is merely a facade OS and behind the scenes it is an amalgamation of sophisticated intertwining of web services and data crunching. Can Alexa still be at its 100% without internet? Edit 1: Grammar
- freehunter 10y ago
  Does an OS necessarily need to function without being connected to the Internet? Is there anything wrong with a definition of OS that includes "Internet connectivity"? How does Internet connectivity differ from hard disk connectivity, RAM connectivity, floppy disk connectivity, etc? That brings up questions of what the word "function" means. My phone will technically function without any wireless connection, but then it's not really a phone, is it? The Echo will turn on without an Internet connection, at least far enough to be able to say "I'm sorry, I don't have an Internet connection" most likely. It's the ages old question: is Linux an OS? No, it's a kernel. Is Ubuntu an OS? No, it's a distribution. Is Gnome an OS? No, it's a desktop environment. You could say with a straight face that Alexa is an OS that's designed to run cloud software. The OS works without a connection, but the user land might not.
- DannyB2 10y ago
  Marketing seeks to destroy the meaning of useful technical jargon. The term Operating System is a good example. Most people have no idea what an OS actually is. They think it is all of the stuff bundled with the OS. Similarly in the 1980's the term Relational Database was used in marketing materials to describe any micro computer database product that was for sale.
- danso 10y ago
  I agree with you. Alexa is an interface that ties APIs together. Defining OS as software that connects hardware to interfaces seems so reductive that it seems any software could be regarded as an operating system. Is there any software that doesn't access any hardware resources?
roadnottaken 10y ago
>"The Internet made the operating system of the computer used to access it irrelevant" Hyperbolic statements like this one make me stop reading. There's still PLENTY of important Desktop computing.
- joehart42 10y ago
  For professionals and hobbyists yes. For most people, not at all.
  - roadnottaken 10y ago
    Aren't most (many?) adults professionals? Most college-educated people I know spend most of their working hours in front of a computer not a smartphone.
    - freehunter 10y ago
      I'm a professional, working a technical role for one of the largest tech companies in the world. I'm using a MacBook, but I've done a (proof of concept) week of work entirely from an iPhone SE. Some of my coworkers use Red Hat, some use Windows. I know one guy working on an iPad Pro, although he's a little less technical than the rest of us so most of his day is spent in PowerPoint. But my job mainly consists of interacting with remote machines through a web browser or SSH. Thanks to the Internet, I don't need to worry about what physical form factor my machine is. If all you need is Word, Excel, a web browser, and email, you're basically set no matter where you go. Desktops are less relevant today than ever before. For many people, the desktop OS is just a VM host and their browser is the real "OS".
      - roadnottaken 10y ago
        I largely agree with you, but there are still a lot of common office functions (e.g. printing) that aren't well-served by browser-based computing. Added to which, many businesses still use custom or industry-specific desktop software that hasn't migrated to the browser yet. Personally, I'm with you -- I don't care about OS and do most of my work through browser/terminal. But there is still some critical scientific software that keeps me on Windows/OSX and I wouldn't dream of doing graphic design in a browser. I also agree that "Desktops are less relevant today than ever before" but they're far from irrelevant... Maybe in a decade or two.
DannyB2 10y ago
As of last week, Alexa cannot tell me how many inches per second is an atto parsec per micro fortnight. Google can. Alexa can tell me how many sides a hexagon has. But cannot tell me the name of a six sided polygon.
- petra 10y ago
  Sure, Google offers a better technical solution. But do they have enough incentives ? A good business model to be willing to offer it for almost free for people ? The will to push it as hard as Amazon does ? It doesn't seem so.
  - ehsankia 10y ago
    Maybe not as heavily as Amazon (literally adding items to your Amazon cart for items you need), but indirectly, they do. Since Google Home is integrated with all Google products (calendar, keep, maps, Youtube, chromecast, Android and more to come), this keeps the user in the Google eco-system.
    - wstrange 10y ago
      Right. And it is a gateway to future Google services. Car hailing, flight booking, etc.
  - msabalau 10y ago
    Yeah, Google is only selling Google Home for $50 less than the Amazon Echo, and only have 87% smartphone market share for Android where Google Now can be installed, and only over a billion people using the Google Play marketplace. They have no hope of competing with Amazon in this space.
  - wstrange 10y ago
    Google has huge incentives to get this into everyone's home.
- blowski 10y ago
  If that's the main criticism of Alexa, then I'm rushing out to buy one immediately. I'm not interested in an always-on voice activated device so that I can ask it rarely asked complicated questions. I'm interested in how well it understands my voice, and how many day-to-day chores it can help with.
JoeCortopassi 10y ago
Alexa has a fundamental short coming that stops them from being a robust operating system like the writer describes: the cognitive load in memorizing all possible variations of 3rd party apps on their platform. Siri might have greater difficulty with natural language processing than Alexa, but I never have to think much about the word order or phrasing. With Alexa, I'm constantly feeling like I'm playing MadLibs with my eyes closed. That being said, the openness of their platform is a huge benefit, and the main reason I have one. I for one am very interested in seeing which improves first: Siri's natural language processing, or Alexa's contextual matching of their api. I know Google Now wins in a lot of areas, and there is a group of people that have no problem using them, but overall sentiment seems to be one of distrust in giving them an always on microphone
- flippyhead 10y ago
  > With Alexa, I'm constantly feeling like I'm playing MadLibs with my eyes closed. Well said!
- throwaway2016a 10y ago
  I made my own app and I can't even remember how to use it. I keep saying the wrong trigger word. It's my one gripe with Alexa is that the app name needs to be a prefixed. What I want to say: > Alexa, open the garage door What I actually need to say > Alexa, tell Some App Name to open the garage door
  - cptskippy 10y ago
    > It's my one gripe with Alexa is that the app name needs to be a prefixed. The thing that annoys me is when this doesn't work. > "Alexa, play <station name as it appears in Alexa App> on Pandora" > "I couldn't find <station name as it appears in Alexa App>, here's some crap on Amazon Music"
    - illumin8 10y ago
      You know you can set the default music provider in the Alexa app, right? Setting this to Spotify allowed me to stop asking Alexa to "play X on spotify" and just say "play X" without getting bounced to Amazon music.
Zigurd 10y ago
Having worked on voice control systems, I was impressed by the consistency with which Alexa switches among tasks. If you are not attuned to what's going on, it feels perfectly natural to interrupt some tasks and return to them, while ending other tasks after briefly diverting to them. It's a voice/media/data access task management system that needs no visual indicators.
FatAmericanDev 10y ago
How do I make diagrams and charts in this style?
- holyjaw 10y ago
  Looks like that was done with Paper [1]. 1: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id506003812?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id506003812?mt=8
- TarpitCarnivore 10y ago
  I believe Ben draws them in the iOS app Paper
amorphid 10y ago
I can't talk about Elixir in front of Alexa. It is always chiming in "I'm sorry, I didn't get that."
- canadaj 10y ago
  I haven't had Alexa for long, but I haven't had it trigger off of Alexa-sounding words yet. I did do the training in the app a couple of times when I first got it, though. Have you tried doing the training yet?
  - amorphid 10y ago
    It belongs to a friend, so I haven't trained it. But I will probably buy one soon, and then figure out how to use it well. I could always use a unique phrase... "27ffe8a1-4cd0-4739-bc46-9ad51a9c14ba, turn on the living room lights."
    - Arelius 10y ago
      No... you can't... there are only a couple pre-programmed wake-words "Alexa", "Echo" and something or another.
      - amorphid 10y ago
        Good to know. Thanks!
      - krallja 10y ago
        The third wake word is "Amazon".
- danso 10y ago
  You could have it configured to respond to "Amazon"' IIRC. Probably a decent mitigation for users actually named Alexa or Alex (e.g. "Alex, hon, when are we going to dinner?")
makecheck 10y ago
They have to remove branding from Alexa "skills" so that more natural requests are possible. The #1 thing preventing me from installing most "skills" is that invariably I would have to speak "Alexa, ask <ridiculously-named product> to X" instead of just "do X". I should also be able to use the app to write the exact command text I want to use.
- taeric 10y ago
  How would you prevent this from being a back door into a person's house? Or, more directly, how do you prevent applications from stealing phrases from each other? That is, you are basically saying that you want everything in $PATH. This would be like if git had decided that "log" should just do "git log". Certainly could make sense. And I agree that users should be able to allow this. However, the applications? I'm not as sold. You are basically allowing a situation where the fundamental behavior of the system would change from installing a single skill. And it might not be clear on how or why it changed. (Certainly not to most users.)
  - dv_dt 10y ago
    Perhaps they could let users set a skill alias.
    - taeric 10y ago
      I fully agree that should be possible. Apologies if I didn't make that clear.
    - lewisl9029 10y ago
      This and custom voice training for device names are on the top of my wishlist for the Echo. For some reason my Echo has a really hard time recognizing some of the rather obvious names I give to my devices, like "LG TV". It'd be great if we could train the voice recognition engine to associate certain pronunciations with a specific device name.
      - 10y ago
youdontknowtho 10y ago
digerati type overhypes over hyped tech...news at 11.
TWAndrews 10y ago
We got an Echo over the holidays, and watching my 7, 5 and 3 year old daughters interact with it has given me a glimpse of what bringing home a black-and-white TV in the 50s must have been like: Objectively it's pretty limited, but it (voice-driven interaction, rather than the Echo specifically) is so obviously the future it's striking. Separately, I've told my daughters that they probably won't ever need to learn to drive--cars will probably do it for them by the time they are driving age. They've put two and two together, and the other day I overheard them saying "Someday we'll be able to call an Alexa car and have it take us where ever we want."
- drhayes9 10y ago
  My four-year-old son is the same way. He talks to my Google Home all the time, asking it weird questions (which it sometimes answers! "Hey Google, are you a robot?" "I prefer to think of myself as your friend."), getting it to tell him jokes, turning our Christmas tree on and off via IFTTT and a WeMo switch. It's all very natural for him.
- sakabaro 10y ago
  I think we still far away from "Someday we'll be able to call an Alexa car and have it take us where ever we want.". It might or might not be possible. We need anyway several leap in AI innovations to achieve that.
  - sjg007 10y ago
    brb.. going to start self driving car company called "a lexa".
    - Haydos585x2 10y ago
      "Alexa, get a lexa car" "A lexus car has been purchased with Amazon One-Speak™. You have been charged $72,040. Delivery will be between 7 to 14 days."
  - TWAndrews 10y ago
    True, but it's plausible enough that 7 year-olds can connect the dots from existing or close-to-existing technologies.
bkbridge 10y ago
Was at an Alexa meetup. One of the senior Alexa developers was speaking. What was said blew my mind: We want you to use conversational UI, on any device, Apple's, MSFT, Google, anyone you like. We think in the end, you'll have the best experience with Echo. How often does a mega tech company encourage you to use the competitions products? Think Amazon hit out of the park. Hey Google, just does not cut it for me. Alexa, and that sultry voice, just no comparisons. (IMHO).
zie 10y ago
Another problem with Alexa as an OS here is Alexa, Siri, and OK Google will never work for some classes of disability. Myself I'm Deaf/Mute, so I can't talk to any of these things, or hear their responses, so they are 100% completely useless to me. There is a good reason text interfaces are so ubiquitous, they can easily be changed into Assistive Devices (like say spoken word for the blind).
- BatFastard 10y ago
  That may be true, but really they are a interface to decision making logic( AI ). The AI looks for text to power it, that might be spoken word, or in your case in a few years I can see a camera reading your signing and having the ability to sign back to you.
  - lazaroclapp 10y ago
    Would it sign back or simply display written text? Seems to me that signing back is just an artifact of the limitations of human body movements as an output channel... or are there many people who can read sign language faster than they can read letters? (honest question, I don't know the answer)
    - dikdik 10y ago
      yes, many people can "read" sign faster than text. The language is not a 1-for-1 translation of English among other reasons.
      - Splines 10y ago
        Sometimes this goes horribly wrong: https://i.imgur.com/uxcATG6.jpg https://i.imgur.com/uxcATG6.jpg
    - KMuncie 10y ago
      Reading is entirely different for the deaf and is far inferior when compared to seeing something signed. Take a look at https://www.jw.org/ase https://www.jw.org/ase for an example of how a website can be tailored for the sign language community.
RickHull 10y ago
> More fundamentally, Amazon sought to sell the phone through hardware and OS differentiation, much like Apple, but the company could not be more different organizationally and culturally from the iPhone maker; you don’t make good products because you really want to, you make good products by fostering the conditions in which great products can be made, and Amazon’s deeply rooted culture of modularity and services was completely ill-suited for building a highly differentiated physical product. Eh, Amazon hit it out of the park with something in the Kindle line, no matter your e-book-reading taste. They have good reason to believe they can design products for the masses.

278 points by misiti3780 10y ago

Slightly tangential to the post: Does anyone know how to make diagrams (watercolor style) like the ones in OPs article and blog?

alexbilbie 10y ago
I believe he uses Paper - https://www.fiftythree.com https://www.fiftythree.com
- danso 10y ago
  This comment totally sidetracked my day. I've been searching for a way to quickly do diagrams, but without the use of full-blown Visio-like flowchart software. I downloaded Paper back in the day and remember when it came out with its "Smart Shape" feature, but didn't ever think to use it for easily sketching charts.

walterbell 10y ago

Alexa currently requires memorization of command sequences. Can take a while for older users to learn. E.g. there's a skill (AskMyBuddy) that sends a preprogrammed text to a list of cellphones, typically a request for help. But the user needs to be trained to remember the exact command ("Alexa Ask My Buddy to send help"), which might be forgotten if someone is in a stressful situation. Anecdote: tried to create a todo list with one item, "buy milk", but Alexa would not accept this item unless you setup the ability to purchase items from Amazon. Weather does not work outside the US (needs a US address).

danso 10y ago
However, its NLP is quite good. Having my (Vietnamese-born) parents try the Echo Dot, I was struck by how awful their English actually is, at least in comparison to how my brain has come accustomed to their speech patterns. For one thing, they enunciate "Alexa" much differently than I do. And then where I would say, "What's the weather today", they say, "What weather today is?" or "What day this week will be snow?" To my surprise, Alexa actually understood their convoluted phrasing, at least for the built-in skills that Alexa has had well-honed out of the box.
- zitterbewegung 10y ago
  If you say the intent activation word (weather / snow / light etc..) the intent will trigger. Phrasing can help for certain queries though.
  - jordache 10y ago
    bingo!
- melvinmt 10y ago
  Interesting. The phrases I typically use for Google Search are also not considered proper English grammar, but are highly effective in getting the results that I want. I wonder if that's the case as well here.
- Eridrus 10y ago
  Thanks for this comment, I hadn't really thought about how NLP may fail ESL speakers. Do you think your parents would be more comfortable talking to it in Vietnamese if it was possible? I'm mostly wondering if handling good Vietnamese is easier than handling English with poor grammar.
  - yellowapple 10y ago
    Handling poor English grammar is a necessity anyway if you want to hit mass market share, since not everyone speaks as if they read the Oxford English Dictionary every night even when they are native English speakers.
  - danso 10y ago
    Definitely. Their English even after 30+ years in America is at the level where our English-English conversations are probably at the elementary grade level (except with a few more proper nouns). I used to think that they were at least better in understanding my natural English conversation, but I've realized that I reflexively shift to using much simpler sentences when speaking to them. But when they're with Vietnamese friends or family, they have conversations (in Vietnamese) just as normal adults typically do in their native language. Conversely, I've since realized that the Vietnamese that I think I understand is probably at the toddler level. For a very long time, I just assumed the Vietnamese language lacked features such as pronouns and articles. But then I realized that when my parents tell me to go wash the dishes, my brain just fixates on "wash dishes" and ignores all the other connective words. So I know a lot of verbs and nouns but very few words that are part of everyday conversational speech in Vietnamese. I imagine that's what Alexa feels like :) Your comment made me curious how well the Google Translate app can deal with foreign languages. I was stunned to see that it could understand my attempts at Vietnamese. So other than a proportionately smaller dataset to learn from (Vietnamese usage vs English usage of Google or Amazon), seems like Alexa and Google Home could competently deal with foreign languages.
wccrawford 10y ago
Most commands are pretty obvious and easy, but some of them aren't. For instance, the phone locator. The command is something like, "Alexa, tell trackr to locate my phone." But my wife and I can never remember that when we need to locate a phone, and we have to figure out it out all over again. I assume that people have to call for emergency services less often than we misplace our phones, so I'm sure it's even harder to remember the exact verbiage for that.
diminoten 10y ago
Alexa added "Ham Bread" to my shopping list yesterday. Not super on-topic, but I laughed when I saw it.
willyyr 10y ago
Weather works quite well for me here in germany.
- walterbell 10y ago
  Thanks. Looks like some countries work, others don't.
dalore 10y ago
Weather works fine in the UK.

gbrown_ 10y ago

How is the on the front page? There is nothing of merit in the article. Edit: HN title has been corrected.

ikeboy 10y ago

>. First, no company could ever build enough phones for the world, and secondly, to serve every customer would ruin the profit margins that make the business model so successful. Both seem wrong? They could produce more models at lower price points and lower costs and maintain similar margins, like Samsung. Probably the branding effect on margin would be smaller but would still be a healthy margin. Am I missing the point here?

trequartista 10y ago

Don't think that the "operating system" for the internet of things is fully defined yet. Amazon is simply the first and the biggest mover. Google has also launched Home. Apple has Homekit. Interesting to see how it pans out

diego_moita 10y ago
This is a very good point. I wonder also if we'll ever see one established and dominating others. There are a lot of other small players with a future: Tizen (on Samsung and other devices), RTOS, Kontiki, lots of proprietary stuff based on Linux (e.g.: Garmin stuff), QNX, ...
pwthornton 10y ago
Homekit is really interesting when stuff works with it (which is not a lot), and when you can use your voice with it (which is limited). If Apple could really get more people onboard with Homekit and build standalone Siri devices it could be in the pole position here, but Apple doesn't seem to get what it has with either Homekit or Siri. Homekit makes it really easy to set up different scenes with different smart devices and interactions. Setting these up requires good user interfaces beyond voice. Apple gets this. Unfortunately, Homekit is really limited right now.

CodeSheikh 10y ago

"The concept of an operating system is pretty straightforward: it is a piece of software that manages a computer, making said computer’s hardware resources" So the author luxuriously simplified a sophisticated piece of software like an OS to simply prove his point that Alexa can be classified as an OS because it is a software that also manages hardware resources. Someone please correct but I was under the impression that Alexa is merely a facade OS and behind the scenes it is an amalgamation of sophisticated intertwining of web services and data crunching. Can Alexa still be at its 100% without internet? Edit 1: Grammar

freehunter 10y ago
Does an OS necessarily need to function without being connected to the Internet? Is there anything wrong with a definition of OS that includes "Internet connectivity"? How does Internet connectivity differ from hard disk connectivity, RAM connectivity, floppy disk connectivity, etc? That brings up questions of what the word "function" means. My phone will technically function without any wireless connection, but then it's not really a phone, is it? The Echo will turn on without an Internet connection, at least far enough to be able to say "I'm sorry, I don't have an Internet connection" most likely. It's the ages old question: is Linux an OS? No, it's a kernel. Is Ubuntu an OS? No, it's a distribution. Is Gnome an OS? No, it's a desktop environment. You could say with a straight face that Alexa is an OS that's designed to run cloud software. The OS works without a connection, but the user land might not.
DannyB2 10y ago
Marketing seeks to destroy the meaning of useful technical jargon. The term Operating System is a good example. Most people have no idea what an OS actually is. They think it is all of the stuff bundled with the OS. Similarly in the 1980's the term Relational Database was used in marketing materials to describe any micro computer database product that was for sale.
danso 10y ago
I agree with you. Alexa is an interface that ties APIs together. Defining OS as software that connects hardware to interfaces seems so reductive that it seems any software could be regarded as an operating system. Is there any software that doesn't access any hardware resources?

roadnottaken 10y ago

>"The Internet made the operating system of the computer used to access it irrelevant" Hyperbolic statements like this one make me stop reading. There's still PLENTY of important Desktop computing.

joehart42 10y ago
For professionals and hobbyists yes. For most people, not at all.
- roadnottaken 10y ago
  Aren't most (many?) adults professionals? Most college-educated people I know spend most of their working hours in front of a computer not a smartphone.
  - freehunter 10y ago
    I'm a professional, working a technical role for one of the largest tech companies in the world. I'm using a MacBook, but I've done a (proof of concept) week of work entirely from an iPhone SE. Some of my coworkers use Red Hat, some use Windows. I know one guy working on an iPad Pro, although he's a little less technical than the rest of us so most of his day is spent in PowerPoint. But my job mainly consists of interacting with remote machines through a web browser or SSH. Thanks to the Internet, I don't need to worry about what physical form factor my machine is. If all you need is Word, Excel, a web browser, and email, you're basically set no matter where you go. Desktops are less relevant today than ever before. For many people, the desktop OS is just a VM host and their browser is the real "OS".
    - roadnottaken 10y ago
      I largely agree with you, but there are still a lot of common office functions (e.g. printing) that aren't well-served by browser-based computing. Added to which, many businesses still use custom or industry-specific desktop software that hasn't migrated to the browser yet. Personally, I'm with you -- I don't care about OS and do most of my work through browser/terminal. But there is still some critical scientific software that keeps me on Windows/OSX and I wouldn't dream of doing graphic design in a browser. I also agree that "Desktops are less relevant today than ever before" but they're far from irrelevant... Maybe in a decade or two.

DannyB2 10y ago

As of last week, Alexa cannot tell me how many inches per second is an atto parsec per micro fortnight. Google can. Alexa can tell me how many sides a hexagon has. But cannot tell me the name of a six sided polygon.

petra 10y ago
Sure, Google offers a better technical solution. But do they have enough incentives ? A good business model to be willing to offer it for almost free for people ? The will to push it as hard as Amazon does ? It doesn't seem so.
- ehsankia 10y ago
  Maybe not as heavily as Amazon (literally adding items to your Amazon cart for items you need), but indirectly, they do. Since Google Home is integrated with all Google products (calendar, keep, maps, Youtube, chromecast, Android and more to come), this keeps the user in the Google eco-system.
  - wstrange 10y ago
    Right. And it is a gateway to future Google services. Car hailing, flight booking, etc.
- msabalau 10y ago
  Yeah, Google is only selling Google Home for $50 less than the Amazon Echo, and only have 87% smartphone market share for Android where Google Now can be installed, and only over a billion people using the Google Play marketplace. They have no hope of competing with Amazon in this space.
- wstrange 10y ago
  Google has huge incentives to get this into everyone's home.
blowski 10y ago
If that's the main criticism of Alexa, then I'm rushing out to buy one immediately. I'm not interested in an always-on voice activated device so that I can ask it rarely asked complicated questions. I'm interested in how well it understands my voice, and how many day-to-day chores it can help with.

JoeCortopassi 10y ago

Alexa has a fundamental short coming that stops them from being a robust operating system like the writer describes: the cognitive load in memorizing all possible variations of 3rd party apps on their platform. Siri might have greater difficulty with natural language processing than Alexa, but I never have to think much about the word order or phrasing. With Alexa, I'm constantly feeling like I'm playing MadLibs with my eyes closed. That being said, the openness of their platform is a huge benefit, and the main reason I have one. I for one am very interested in seeing which improves first: Siri's natural language processing, or Alexa's contextual matching of their api. I know Google Now wins in a lot of areas, and there is a group of people that have no problem using them, but overall sentiment seems to be one of distrust in giving them an always on microphone

flippyhead 10y ago
> With Alexa, I'm constantly feeling like I'm playing MadLibs with my eyes closed. Well said!
throwaway2016a 10y ago
I made my own app and I can't even remember how to use it. I keep saying the wrong trigger word. It's my one gripe with Alexa is that the app name needs to be a prefixed. What I want to say: > Alexa, open the garage door What I actually need to say > Alexa, tell Some App Name to open the garage door
- cptskippy 10y ago
  > It's my one gripe with Alexa is that the app name needs to be a prefixed. The thing that annoys me is when this doesn't work. > "Alexa, play <station name as it appears in Alexa App> on Pandora" > "I couldn't find <station name as it appears in Alexa App>, here's some crap on Amazon Music"
  - illumin8 10y ago
    You know you can set the default music provider in the Alexa app, right? Setting this to Spotify allowed me to stop asking Alexa to "play X on spotify" and just say "play X" without getting bounced to Amazon music.

Zigurd 10y ago

Having worked on voice control systems, I was impressed by the consistency with which Alexa switches among tasks. If you are not attuned to what's going on, it feels perfectly natural to interrupt some tasks and return to them, while ending other tasks after briefly diverting to them. It's a voice/media/data access task management system that needs no visual indicators.

FatAmericanDev 10y ago

How do I make diagrams and charts in this style?

holyjaw 10y ago
Looks like that was done with Paper [1]. 1: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id506003812?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id506003812?mt=8
TarpitCarnivore 10y ago
I believe Ben draws them in the iOS app Paper

amorphid 10y ago

I can't talk about Elixir in front of Alexa. It is always chiming in "I'm sorry, I didn't get that."

canadaj 10y ago
I haven't had Alexa for long, but I haven't had it trigger off of Alexa-sounding words yet. I did do the training in the app a couple of times when I first got it, though. Have you tried doing the training yet?
- amorphid 10y ago
  It belongs to a friend, so I haven't trained it. But I will probably buy one soon, and then figure out how to use it well. I could always use a unique phrase... "27ffe8a1-4cd0-4739-bc46-9ad51a9c14ba, turn on the living room lights."
  - Arelius 10y ago
    No... you can't... there are only a couple pre-programmed wake-words "Alexa", "Echo" and something or another.
    - amorphid 10y ago
      Good to know. Thanks!
    - krallja 10y ago
      The third wake word is "Amazon".
danso 10y ago
You could have it configured to respond to "Amazon"' IIRC. Probably a decent mitigation for users actually named Alexa or Alex (e.g. "Alex, hon, when are we going to dinner?")

makecheck 10y ago

They have to remove branding from Alexa "skills" so that more natural requests are possible. The #1 thing preventing me from installing most "skills" is that invariably I would have to speak "Alexa, ask <ridiculously-named product> to X" instead of just "do X". I should also be able to use the app to write the exact command text I want to use.

taeric 10y ago
How would you prevent this from being a back door into a person's house? Or, more directly, how do you prevent applications from stealing phrases from each other? That is, you are basically saying that you want everything in $PATH. This would be like if git had decided that "log" should just do "git log". Certainly could make sense. And I agree that users should be able to allow this. However, the applications? I'm not as sold. You are basically allowing a situation where the fundamental behavior of the system would change from installing a single skill. And it might not be clear on how or why it changed. (Certainly not to most users.)
- dv_dt 10y ago
  Perhaps they could let users set a skill alias.
  - taeric 10y ago
    I fully agree that should be possible. Apologies if I didn't make that clear.
  - lewisl9029 10y ago
    This and custom voice training for device names are on the top of my wishlist for the Echo. For some reason my Echo has a really hard time recognizing some of the rather obvious names I give to my devices, like "LG TV". It'd be great if we could train the voice recognition engine to associate certain pronunciations with a specific device name.
    - 10y ago

youdontknowtho 10y ago

digerati type overhypes over hyped tech...news at 11.

TWAndrews 10y ago

We got an Echo over the holidays, and watching my 7, 5 and 3 year old daughters interact with it has given me a glimpse of what bringing home a black-and-white TV in the 50s must have been like: Objectively it's pretty limited, but it (voice-driven interaction, rather than the Echo specifically) is so obviously the future it's striking. Separately, I've told my daughters that they probably won't ever need to learn to drive--cars will probably do it for them by the time they are driving age. They've put two and two together, and the other day I overheard them saying "Someday we'll be able to call an Alexa car and have it take us where ever we want."

drhayes9 10y ago
My four-year-old son is the same way. He talks to my Google Home all the time, asking it weird questions (which it sometimes answers! "Hey Google, are you a robot?" "I prefer to think of myself as your friend."), getting it to tell him jokes, turning our Christmas tree on and off via IFTTT and a WeMo switch. It's all very natural for him.
sakabaro 10y ago
I think we still far away from "Someday we'll be able to call an Alexa car and have it take us where ever we want.". It might or might not be possible. We need anyway several leap in AI innovations to achieve that.
- sjg007 10y ago
  brb.. going to start self driving car company called "a lexa".
  - Haydos585x2 10y ago
    "Alexa, get a lexa car" "A lexus car has been purchased with Amazon One-Speak™. You have been charged $72,040. Delivery will be between 7 to 14 days."
- TWAndrews 10y ago
  True, but it's plausible enough that 7 year-olds can connect the dots from existing or close-to-existing technologies.

bkbridge 10y ago

Was at an Alexa meetup. One of the senior Alexa developers was speaking. What was said blew my mind: We want you to use conversational UI, on any device, Apple's, MSFT, Google, anyone you like. We think in the end, you'll have the best experience with Echo. How often does a mega tech company encourage you to use the competitions products? Think Amazon hit out of the park. Hey Google, just does not cut it for me. Alexa, and that sultry voice, just no comparisons. (IMHO).

zie 10y ago

Another problem with Alexa as an OS here is Alexa, Siri, and OK Google will never work for some classes of disability. Myself I'm Deaf/Mute, so I can't talk to any of these things, or hear their responses, so they are 100% completely useless to me. There is a good reason text interfaces are so ubiquitous, they can easily be changed into Assistive Devices (like say spoken word for the blind).

BatFastard 10y ago
That may be true, but really they are a interface to decision making logic( AI ). The AI looks for text to power it, that might be spoken word, or in your case in a few years I can see a camera reading your signing and having the ability to sign back to you.
- lazaroclapp 10y ago
  Would it sign back or simply display written text? Seems to me that signing back is just an artifact of the limitations of human body movements as an output channel... or are there many people who can read sign language faster than they can read letters? (honest question, I don't know the answer)
  - dikdik 10y ago
    yes, many people can "read" sign faster than text. The language is not a 1-for-1 translation of English among other reasons.
    - Splines 10y ago
      Sometimes this goes horribly wrong: https://i.imgur.com/uxcATG6.jpg https://i.imgur.com/uxcATG6.jpg
  - KMuncie 10y ago
    Reading is entirely different for the deaf and is far inferior when compared to seeing something signed. Take a look at https://www.jw.org/ase https://www.jw.org/ase for an example of how a website can be tailored for the sign language community.

RickHull 10y ago

> More fundamentally, Amazon sought to sell the phone through hardware and OS differentiation, much like Apple, but the company could not be more different organizationally and culturally from the iPhone maker; you don’t make good products because you really want to, you make good products by fostering the conditions in which great products can be made, and Amazon’s deeply rooted culture of modularity and services was completely ill-suited for building a highly differentiated physical product. Eh, Amazon hit it out of the park with something in the Kindle line, no matter your e-book-reading taste. They have good reason to believe they can design products for the masses.