3 ms·

I have two 1st gen Echos, and I think Amazon's moat is laughably overrated (and is being drastically overhyped in the early Homepod reviews). Surveys show that

I have two 1st gen Echos, and I think Amazon's moat is laughably overrated (and is being drastically overhyped in the early Homepod reviews). Surveys show that people are using these things for nothing more sophisticated than Siri 1.0 - timers, songs, weather, "what time is it" - which squares with our experience. We have some connected devices, but Gruber is right - at the moment, they require such stilted grammar that our phones will be the center of our connected home for the forseeable future.

criddell 9y ago
The smart home stuff is very frustrating for me. I'll say "Alexa turn on the bathroom light" and it will respond that there's no device with that name. A natural follow up question is "Alex what devices do you know about". I'm happy to have our Echos, but we mostly use it exactly as you describe - for timers, music, and weather. We also use a grocery list app that lets us say "Alexa add peanut butter to the shopping list". That's kind of nice to have in the kitchen.