Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 273 posts

Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush

#41

Post by philip1209 »

CaptSpify wrote: post #8
BlackjackCF wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed here. If there's anyone who knows how to stock up for the holidays, it's Amazon. It's kind of amazing that they sold out on the Echo, all things considered.

Alternatively: could selling out be a method of potential advertisement? "If they sold out, the product must be great!"

Absolutely not. They can't gain sales from this because they're sold out. High opportunity cost - flatline zero revenue for the next week, which is (at least one of) the highest demand weeks of the year.

Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush

#42

Post by pixard »

GuiA wrote: post #7

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. 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? I am currently typing this from a 2016 ma…

I am not in the US, but I've also had many of the issues you describe. For me everything originated in the network equipment. I kept upgrading to more and more expensive routers until I came to the conclusion they are all just shit. I literally bought the best router you could buy from Asus for like $300 and I kept getting disconnects and issues many times a day. I tried the custom firmwares and what not as well, but I think it's all just so badly designed that there's no saving it.

I had a hunch that it must somehow be "me" and not my ISP, so I replace ALL of my network gear with Ubiquiti stuff. I got a UniFi USG (handles actual routing), UniFi Switch (US-8-150W), UniFi AP AC Pro (Wireless AP), CloudKey (runs the software that powers all this, but it's not strictly needed, you can run it on your PC/Mac as well just to setup things and it doesn't need to be running 100% of the time).

Since I've done this I've had ZERO disconnects. Not a single one. No WiFi problems either. I'm not sure if it would fix what you're experiencing, but I thought I'd share my experience.

Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush

#43

Post by GuiA »

vlunkr wrote: post #36
GuiA wrote: post #7

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. 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? I am currently typing this from a 2016 ma…

Living in a house with no great internet options for a couple of years kind of cured me of my impatience with technology. I have co-workers who get ticked off immediately if the internet is out for more than a minute and get Comcast on the phone. I think it's good to lower your expectations with technology a bit. You really can live without internet or Bluetooth connectivity for a few minutes. But I'm also in the sam…

> I think it's good to lower your expectations with technology a bit. You really can live without internet or Bluetooth connectivity for a few minutes.

I just get annoyed if something that would work instantly otherwise doesn't work at all. Say I want to put on music while cooking - putting on a record or CD would take 5 seconds, and work 100% of the time. But if Spotify is down, or asks me to update my password, or has removed the album I've played every week for the past year from their library, or I have to re-sync my bluetooth speaker, etc., then now I'm dealing with this instead of getting on with my cooking.

Whether this expectation is unreasonable or not is clearly a personal matter, but for me it seems like a pretty basic thing to demand from the objects I own.

Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush

#44

Post by Answerawake »

GuiA wrote: post #7

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. 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? I am currently typing this from a 2016 ma…

In the case of your flaky wifi this guy seems to have the same problem and in his case it was caused by the non apple branded dongle he had connected: https://youtu.be/NYVjIjBMx6o?t=92

Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush

#45

Post by tlow »

GuiA wrote: post #7

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. 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? I am currently typing this from a 2016 ma…

Had some weird wifi issues with Apple. Ended up creating a new "Location" (the top setting under Network in System Preferences) and the issue resolved. This is probably a combination of factors like your ability to understand that your issues are technology ones (hopefully accurate), noticing and remembering problems comes more easily than remembering situations where you might not notice, that sort of thing...

Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush

#46

Post by tedunangst »

philip1209 wrote: post #41
CaptSpify wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively: could selling out be a method of potential advertisement? "If they sold out, the product must be great!"

Absolutely not. They can't gain sales from this because they're sold out. High opportunity cost - flatline zero revenue for the next week, which is (at least one of) the highest demand weeks of the year.

That's ok. You can order one now for shipment in January, and buy something else to put under the tree!

Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush

#47

Post by CaptSpify »

philip1209 wrote: post #41
CaptSpify wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively: could selling out be a method of potential advertisement? "If they sold out, the product must be great!"

Absolutely not. They can't gain sales from this because they're sold out. High opportunity cost - flatline zero revenue for the next week, which is (at least one of) the highest demand weeks of the year.

They can't gain sales now from this, but why not in a few weeks when they have more supply?

Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush

#48

Post by krisroadruck »

hijohnnylin wrote: post #26

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 ph…

I've had the echo since it was in limited beta, and while I've played with a lot of the features over time, I think what I use it for most consistently is a voice enabled alarm/timer and a way to shut off my lights without having to get up to do so. I don't really keep a consistent sleep schedule so not having to finger-fiddle with my alarm to set it to 8 hours from now is nice. "Alexa set alarm for 10:30am" "Alexa lights off"

It's crazy how quickly you get used to having it there. When I'm at a hotel or a friends house I almost get annoyed that it's not standing by for simple stuff like just reminding me to decouple from a task in a half hour - "Alexa set a timer for 30 minutes"

Lastly its super convenient if you are super engrossed in something but also want food. You can just yell "Alexa tell dominos to order my favorite". No going to the site or anything just one sentence and 20 minutes later you have pizza.

Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush

#50

Post by nepotism2016 »

hijohnnylin wrote: post #26

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 ph…

For useless stuff like playing music, setting timer, checking train status, creating reminds on gmail
Post reply on HN