5 ms·

> I have never seen the need... Nobody "needs" any of this stuff. But once you factor in laziness and convenience, "normal" people are willing to make tradeoff

> I have never seen the need... Nobody "needs" any of this stuff. But once you factor in laziness and convenience, "normal" people are willing to make tradeoffs. I know I don't need Alexa, but when you've got grocery bags in both hands and it's dark, being able to turn on the lights by voice is handy even though it's far from "needed". And when it works well enough most of the time, it's easy to become dependent on it. For some things, voice is way more convenient than pulling out your phone and fumbling with an app (like changing a setting on a Nest). A slightly related but different example: I just tried installing a pihole in my network, and it ended up being a total headache. My wife likes using deal sites for shopping, and they like to redirect to a half dozen tracking sites before landing you on the e-store you want. And of course, the pihole got in the way of her shopping. The pihole ended up being way more trouble than it was worth and got decommissioned after only a couple of days, as white listing is a time consuming cat and mouse game I didn't want to play. My wife cares more about her $5 shopping rebate than she does her information being passed around to marketing companies, because the tradeoff is worth it. I don't think my wife is much different from most normal consumers in that regard.

alkonaut 8y ago
Yeah I realize that it's a convenience, but I don't see how this (the "hub" if you want) is the area these giants focus on (Facebook is launching one, amazon obviously had one for a long time). They seem to think that "we'll let others sort out the actual smart home, and we'll provide the controller for the smart home, because that's how we corner the market for ads/purchases/subscriptions whatever". I can see the angle they are approaching it from, and it might make sense short term business wise, but unless peoples homes actually get smart soon, their Alexa will be collecting dust after a while. > being able to turn on the lights by voice is handy even though it's far from "needed". The Alexa doesn't do that though, it only does if your home already has a ton of smart home stuff! So it's an interface to control a smart home (or if you prefer the common terminology - make an automated home a smart home). If I buy smart speaker thing and say "switch the lights on", it will find a lonely Hue smart bulb somewhere and switch it on. But the chance it will actually switch the bulb on is only 50% because if the last person to switch it off used the wall switch, the light won't come on! So a smart bulb is fundamentally incompatible with a normal dumb wall switch! Add a smart wall switch, and you no longer need a smart bulb! So the smart bulb concept is useless for any lighting fixture that has light switches. And most lighting in newish homes these days isn't in bulbs at all, it's in spotlights built into ceilings etc, or it's a light in a window, connected to a power socket. This is the problem. "smart home" tech is in its infancy and there is a myriad of different standards that don't solve the problem of being 1) cheap, 2) able to replace dumb tech in existing installations 3) complete (in the sense that the lighting gear can actually fit ALL lighting in a house, for example) 4) not make existing tech worse, such as in the hue+switch example. The quality of a new smart switch can't be flimsier than the 90's switch it replaces. It can't fail even one time in a million to switch the light off. When smart tech fails, it must become working dumb tech. If these giants really wanted to make my home smarter- they could push to standardize or even subsidize better smart tech. That's how they will get into peoples home long term. > My wife cares more about her $5 shopping rebate than she does her information being passed around to marketing companies When people tell me that they feel that way, I like to tell them a scary privacy story. Doesn't need to be true, just a plausible dystopian near-future. It could be about how the "quick quote" on the medical insurance site shows a vastly different amount than her friend of the same age and medical history - and she can't help think it's because she recently visited an online pharmacy with a referrer being a google search for a scary symptom. Something like that.
- slantyyz 8y ago
  >> The Alexa doesn't do that though, it only does if your home already has a ton of smart home stuff! So it's an interface to control a smart home (or if you prefer the common terminology - make an automated home a smart home). Very true. My house already did have smart home stuff, and that's actually the reason why I got an Alexa (it had a reputation for being good with smart home devices). And after getting an Alexa, its usefulness made me buy even more smart house gear.
QasimK 8y ago
> I know I don't need Alexa, but when you've got grocery bags in both hands and it's dark, being able to turn on the lights by voice is handy even though it's far from "needed". A simple motion/heat detecting light does what you need here, and is probably more reliable...
- slantyyz 8y ago
  I have Alexa commands that will light up the group of lights I need to get from my front door to the kitchen. Also, I have dogs that would probably find a way to turn the lights on when I don't want them to.

alkonaut 8y ago

Yeah I realize that it's a convenience, but I don't see how this (the "hub" if you want) is the area these giants focus on (Facebook is launching one, amazon obviously had one for a long time). They seem to think that "we'll let others sort out the actual smart home, and we'll provide the controller for the smart home, because that's how we corner the market for ads/purchases/subscriptions whatever". I can see the angle they are approaching it from, and it might make sense short term business wise, but unless peoples homes actually get smart soon, their Alexa will be collecting dust after a while. > being able to turn on the lights by voice is handy even though it's far from "needed". The Alexa doesn't do that though, it only does if your home already has a ton of smart home stuff! So it's an interface to control a smart home (or if you prefer the common terminology - make an automated home a smart home). If I buy smart speaker thing and say "switch the lights on", it will find a lonely Hue smart bulb somewhere and switch it on. But the chance it will actually switch the bulb on is only 50% because if the last person to switch it off used the wall switch, the light won't come on! So a smart bulb is fundamentally incompatible with a normal dumb wall switch! Add a smart wall switch, and you no longer need a smart bulb! So the smart bulb concept is useless for any lighting fixture that has light switches. And most lighting in newish homes these days isn't in bulbs at all, it's in spotlights built into ceilings etc, or it's a light in a window, connected to a power socket. This is the problem. "smart home" tech is in its infancy and there is a myriad of different standards that don't solve the problem of being 1) cheap, 2) able to replace dumb tech in existing installations 3) complete (in the sense that the lighting gear can actually fit ALL lighting in a house, for example) 4) not make existing tech worse, such as in the hue+switch example. The quality of a new smart switch can't be flimsier than the 90's switch it replaces. It can't fail even one time in a million to switch the light off. When smart tech fails, it must become working dumb tech. If these giants really wanted to make my home smarter- they could push to standardize or even subsidize better smart tech. That's how they will get into peoples home long term. > My wife cares more about her $5 shopping rebate than she does her information being passed around to marketing companies When people tell me that they feel that way, I like to tell them a scary privacy story. Doesn't need to be true, just a plausible dystopian near-future. It could be about how the "quick quote" on the medical insurance site shows a vastly different amount than her friend of the same age and medical history - and she can't help think it's because she recently visited an online pharmacy with a referrer being a google search for a scary symptom. Something like that.

slantyyz 8y ago
>> The Alexa doesn't do that though, it only does if your home already has a ton of smart home stuff! So it's an interface to control a smart home (or if you prefer the common terminology - make an automated home a smart home). Very true. My house already did have smart home stuff, and that's actually the reason why I got an Alexa (it had a reputation for being good with smart home devices). And after getting an Alexa, its usefulness made me buy even more smart house gear.

QasimK 8y ago

> I know I don't need Alexa, but when you've got grocery bags in both hands and it's dark, being able to turn on the lights by voice is handy even though it's far from "needed". A simple motion/heat detecting light does what you need here, and is probably more reliable...

slantyyz 8y ago
I have Alexa commands that will light up the group of lights I need to get from my front door to the kitchen. Also, I have dogs that would probably find a way to turn the lights on when I don't want them to.