Clearly, people love these things. I have a few friends who own it and say it's an amazing product; and commenters on HN have expressed their enthusiasm for it as well.<p>There is a question that's been bothering me for years now, to which I still don't have an answer, which is: does modern technology suck just for me, or am I just less tolerant of defects than most people are?<p>I am currently typing this from a 2016 macbook that for some reason won't keep disconnecting from my WiFi router. Last week, iOS decided to randomly delete all of my saved locations in the Maps app. I've never had stable, fast internet anywhere I've lived in the US in the past 8 years - every few days or so, shit just doesn't work for a bit. I've owned things like a Nest or Philips Hue in the past, and they randomly reset to factory mode or desync'd from my phone . Half the time I try to play my PS4, some stupid patch fails to download, or PSN is down, etc.<p>The more things like the Amazon Echo I would have in my house, the more irritating my daily life would be - because I don't want to deal with the 5% of the time where I have to repeat my request 5 times for it to tell me the weather, or the connection to the Amazon server is lost and I can't play any music. This 5% of the time across dozens of devices results in being annoyed 100% of the time.<p>All of this is why I mainly use a record player to listen to music at home (no DRM, no problem with servers being down or albums removed remotely), really like my GameCube for video games (put a disk in and play, no patches to download), still exclusively buy paper books, am fine with dumb light switches, and so on.<p>If you think this entire thing is ridiculous, I fully agree - I make my living contributing to this industry! But either people are living through these same annoyances as I am and they're fine with it (in which case please teach me your secrets), or somehow I'm getting a worse experience with technology than 99.9% of the population (I guess statistically such a person must exist, and it is me).
what are people actually using these for?
i'm legitimately curious about the use cases for this.
if you have an android phone or iphone or smartwatch, you already can "Hey Siri/Google" whatever you want, including playing music.
is it for light switches? Hey Siri/Google already does this, no? also, how many people have 50$ wifi connected bulbs? and isn't the most convenient way to turn on a light switch still just physically flipping the switch? (they're usually located right where you need them)
is it for shopping? this seems like still a rare use case.
is it to check the weather? that's already on your phone/wrist/computer/tv/window.
is it to look up facts? again, siri/cortana/heygoogle does this.<p>it's possible that i'm not the target demographic, that i'm the only person who doesnt have literally everything in their home futuristically connected (locks, lights, windows, curtains, vacuums, etc) -- and that this is actually solving a huge problem for a lot of people. but that seems unlikely -- i live in a relatively tech-infested city (SF) and almost nobody i know has those things.<p>maybe i'm too old (27) to "get it"? get off my lawn??
Have had an echo since launch and the Google Home for a month. The Echo basically uses commands. There is some flexibility but not inference like the Google Home.<p>So with the echo you sometimes have to do a quick Google search to get the name of the song so you can tell the Echo.<p>The Google Home does not require the extra step. With the Google Home I am starting to use a condensed English. So I will say "play sting Gwen bottle"<p>The Google home will launch Sting and Gwen Stefani playing message in the bottle. But the Google Home will also turn on the TV, set the correct input and then start playing.<p>The Echo is older but for my family use cases the Google Home is far more useful.<p>This was before the new capibilities just added to the Google Home
Not quite.. I ordered a second Echo Dot for my mom last Thursday (the 15th). It was originally scheduled to ship on the 30th, but shipped early on the 19th and she got it today.<p>She's not very technically oriented (iPad is about as complicated as she wants to get), but absolutely LOVES the Dot. I bought her first one for her birthday back in October, and she called me on my birthday three weeks after that and had it sing "Happy Birthday" to me over the phone. She'd had it for all of a week before she told me "I need another one of these for the other end of the house.."
I have noticed that Amazon (and Amazon merchants) seem to be unprepared for this holiday season. Amazon was always my go-to place for "oh shit I need a Christmas present at it's December 20th".<p>I went online to buy a few things this weekend and almost every item I looked up was marked "Back in stock on Dec XX" where XX was somewhere in the range of 24th to 30th.<p>So I'm not surprised that this extends to Amazon's own products. It's a shame, as one of the main reasons to shop on Amazon is to know you can get almost anything with no notice.
Fascinating.<p>Don't take my comment the wrong way -- I'm not begrudging anyone on their spending habits or how they use their disposable income, but I genuinely have several items or activities that I'd rather spend that $140 current sale price on.<p>Or, to rephrase, the idea of voice controlling music in my house appeals to me, but not at this price point? For what it's worth, the sibling products are also awkwardly priced for me: the cheapest Tap (edit/correction: Dot) has a terrible speaker while the mid-range Tap isn't hands-free.<p>I'd be truly curious how people actually use the Echo: how much of it is music playing, how much of it is checking the weather, or witty banter, or re-ordering a household item. Is it more of a utility device? Is it more of an entertainment device? Is it some clever hybrid thereof?
I think ultimately google home and amazon echo will walk a separate path. Amazon will focus on what they do best--selling stuff, and Google will focus on what they do best--providing information.<p>Of course they will be a big overlap (like how it is now), but smart companies tend to play to their strengths than to play by their enemy's rules.
I see this "artificial supply constraint" hype-mobile getting played up a lot by consumer electronics marketing.<p>It's pretty easy to get the factories in Shenzhen to crank out a couple extra to meet demand (it USED to be a lot harder).<p>I call BS.
FWIW, there's stock in the Amazon UK store, and Amazon are advertising via a front page banner.<p>Echo: <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01GAGVC9K/" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01GAGVC9K/</a><p>Echo Dot: <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01DFKBG5Y/" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01DFKBG5Y/</a><p>Delivery to UK addresses only, but if you befriend a UK HN-er who's willing to be a patsy, I'm sure that won't be too much of a hurdle.
Having a hot mic in my house that there is data to servers that I don't control really doesn't appeal to me. Although I know my Android phone is essentially the same thing, I'm actively looking to replace my version of Android with something different soon as I can.
I found the idea that it could be always listening to you creepy at first...but if you think about it your mobile phone, landline phone, computer microphone and more could be hijacked to always listen to you as well so there isn't much difference.
I was given one as a gift, but I can't bring myself to plug it in.<p>The device sends sound to their servers to process what you are saying. They probably aren't sending <i>all</i> the sound, but if they aren't, I can't be bothered to keep up to date on if they change that policy.<p>Is it unreasonable to assume that the NSA is logging (or will eventually be logging) everything sent over the Internet with this device around?
I was in a Bed Bath and Beyond today and there was people looking for the Echo. All models were sold out, they put a sign saying they didn't have any more Echos.
People here are really missing the point with these things asking, "why should I care?"<p>It should be clear to the HN crowd. One day, ambient voice technology is going to be everywhere. In your car. In the supermarket. Everywhere. The Amazon Echo is an early example of it. That it's connected to the largest goods distribution network has the potential to enhance modern living in an obvious way.<p>It's so typical with new technology to see a bunch of naysayers and ho-hum attitudes until one day it hits mainstream and everyone is like, "oh yeah, I knew it all along"
I was hoping to see a review of them here. I almost bought an Echo, or a Tap, but then I read the audio wasn't great. I wanted something to play music well and it sounded as if it didn't. I would love to know whether or not their audio quality or Google Home's, were worth it. Otherwise I guess I'll buy a decent quality amp for my Airport Express or something, which seems to cost about as much.
I had one for two weeks and sent it back. The requirement to summon an app before asking your question is clumsy and really takes the "magic" out of the experience. I'm waiting for the Google Home to be available.<p>Critically lacking in both ecosystems, is the ability to handle multiple user profiles so that it can recognise who is asking the question and tailor the answer to that users schedule, travel etc.
I was excited about Echo when my co-worker introduced it to me a month ago, but then realize I'd have to write a Lambda function, set up this and that, and the fact I'd have to write out the exact command, I shrugged a bit and lost my interest. Now that AWS has Rekognition, Polly, and Greengrass, I am more excited to find out how to integrate them (although sure Google's Vision API and Voice API already exist for a while now).
Why do I love the Echo? It was stupid easy to put up a Skill to control my house, my way. Skills are open to do whatever you can code up. They need to talk to a secure endpoint, but with Lets Encrypt handing out SSL like candy, what is your excuse? Since my Skill is custom to my house, it isn't open to the public - I'll just be "testing" it for a long time.
FWIW, they still have them in stock at the Amazon Bookstore (in Seattle). My sister in North Carolina was trying desperately to find one for a gift, so I popped in there. They're also on sale, a discount of about ~$40. They seemed to be aware of the shortage and saw this a good way to get people to check out the store.
Its worth noting that you can build a Echo yourself, for example: <a href="http://www.instructables.com/id/Build-a-Raspberry-Pi-Powered-Amazon-Echo/?ALLSTEPS" rel="nofollow">http://www.instructables.com/id/Build-a-Raspberry-Pi-Powered...</a><p>With blacjack, and hookers...
The greatest part about the echo is that I can create my own skills for my own echo without having to publish my skills to skill store.<p>This allows me to build the Alexa that I want to build which is really awesome IMO.
This is surprising. How does it compare to siri and the android equivalent? For me Siri doesn't get me more than half the time, while google gets me most of the time.
My amazon dot and Rpi3 enabled kodi are next (literally) to each other, yet communication needs to leave the house for them to talk to each other...sort it out amazon!
Had huge problems with my MacBook and with a zoom wifi cable modem and a dlink ac router. Connection to xfinity wifi was better. Then we moved and I got fiber with their commercial wifi router and things have been stable. Less APS around. At work we have Cisco access points which were stable when not misconfigured.
Considering the ambiguity of "Sold Out", maybe the original headline, "Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush", would be better?