Pretty sure I should be the target market for this, and I bought one. But I don't use it and it sits unplugged on the shelf. I'm going to sell it while the going is good.<p>It's just so <i>pointless</i>. You have to speak to it in some weird specific way to get it to integrate with other stuff and it feels so completely invasive.<p>My wife is the other end of the scale of target market. Complete non-techie, absolute ease of use consumer. She used it as a glorified egg timer, bluetooth speaker and occasionally to play some radio (when it didn't cut out). IT did nothing else for her and adding skills herself was a PITA step too far.<p>I'm a 'millennial' (if that matters) but this just doesn't have a place in my home. Even my kids, who loved shouting at it to play music, got bored of it and went back to selecting music on their devices.<p>Maybe I'm getting old but it just feels like Alexa and other voice assistants are just getting shoved into stuff because it is a 'tech spec' and they hope that will sell their device.<p>It's 3D all over again.
I really hope it's not Alexa.<p>My brother's Alexa will say stuff like "Sorry, I don't understand 'turn living room light off'" even though the "turn living room light on" command worked five minutes prior. Repeating back <i>exactly</i> what Alexa didn't understand works the second or third time. "Unpolished" doesn't do the platform justice.<p>My Google Home is accurate, even though open doors and with the TV on. The Pixel 2 seems to yield control to Home just fine (which was a problem with my Pixel 1). The voice itself sounds slightly more natural and friendly - I sometimes find myself holding back a "thank you."<p>Has anyone had any contradictory experiences to my own?
I'm only interested in owning one of these devices when I actually own it. That is when the device is actually working for me, not the corporation who sold it to me. I'd be very interested in a personal assistant/ daemon that wasn't part of some walled-garden ecosystem and would actually put the benefit of its user ahead of the profits of corporation. If I ask my daemon to find me a product, I want it to compare prices across all online vendors to find the best deal for me, not just default to purchasing from Amazon. I also want complete control over the information it shares with third-parties, and I want to directly benefit from any information sharing as my data is valuable and if folks want it they're going to have to provide me some benefit in exchange.
These kinds of devices are things I will never own. If they start coming as built-in non-optional features on televisions or other home electronics, I won't buy those either.
I totally buy the story from a personal perspective, but it does seem like the general cloud marketshare case across Google, Azure, and AWS is starting to normalize.<p>I'm excited about the possibilities of the big 3 competing on a more level playing field.<p>Am I being naive here, or not? It feels like a new marketplace is opening up.
My prediction is these devises will start becoming worthwhile when Alexa et al reach actual human intelligence. Voice interfaces does nothing for anyone unless you are handicapped in some way.