Wow..gifting something of pure marketing bullshit to your loved ones so they can be inundated with more marketing bullshit and buy more bullshit they don't need.
The Echo Dot was the best-selling product on Amazon this holiday season
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Re: The Echo Dot was the best-selling product on Amazon this holiday season
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
>General public has probably been sold on the potential & novelty of the device, without realizing how little there is to it (feature wise). There is an outrageous amount to it, feature wise. Voice is the holy grail for a pretty large amount of the public, and it is finally there. The setup is surprisingly unintuitive (even the simple step to connect to a specific wifi network is beyond many users, and it is notable…
> but I'm sure the techie niece will do it for most. For most it would probably instead be a techie nephew. Very cool that you (I’m assuming) have a techie niece though! Always great to see that sort of thing.
I think part of the point of such phrasing is to stop letting what has been typical, stay typical.
Re: The Echo Dot was the best-selling product on Amazon this holiday season
#283That happens when you lower the crap out of the price. For 30 bucks with a freebie, I even bought one. And a google home mini. In the same room.
Someone put an Echo Dot in my stocking. I’ve been ranting about these devices for a while and even recently wrote a little blog post: https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2017/12/13/voice-as-a-user-inte... Is it worth getting a Google Mini too? I’m told that it’s actually smarter. I’m going to set up my Echo so I can reorder all the stuff I hate to shop for. We’ve been waiting half a century for “Voice as a User Interface”.…
Yep, do it. You’re interested enough to write it up, you should take a look at the home mini.
There are a fair number of people in this thread saying they prefer the dot, which is really interesting to me because I thought the home was the clear winner. Perhaps I need to give Alexa a second chance.
The big upside of the home is it has contextual understanding. “Alexa, what’s the temperature in Celsius” gives me the weather, including full day forecast (cloudy etc) in Fahrenheit. Google will tell me exactly what I wanted to know. I’ve given up on Alexa, but maybe “she” deserves a second chance.
Re: The Echo Dot was the best-selling product on Amazon this holiday season
#284That happens when you lower the crap out of the price. For 30 bucks with a freebie, I even bought one. And a google home mini. In the same room.
What was the freebie?
One of those tp-link smart plugs. Which I haven't even taken out of the box yet, so maybe that shouldn't have influenced my purchase decision!
Re: The Echo Dot was the best-selling product on Amazon this holiday season
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People buy these products because they're useful My dad takes weeks or months to learn how to use any new GUI. He's used automated phone systems for his whole life, though, and a voice-driven interface would be much easier for him. It seems like HNers find it hard to believe that people like my dad exist, for some reason.
What isn't obvious at first look/listen: there is no user-driven exploratory discovery for voice-activated devices. You must memorize the exact command needed for a particular "skill". Some words may be selectable (e.g. Echo vs Alexa). If an elderly person has trouble remembering dozens of voice commands, only a tiny subset of the device's functions can be used.
> only a tiny subset of the device's functions can be used
If that small subset is sufficiently useful to that particular individual, I don't think it really matters. The average person only uses a small subset of Microsoft Word for example.
Re: The Echo Dot was the best-selling product on Amazon this holiday season
#286Very revealing discussion. Most of the participants just argue about Amazon vs. Google here, some fear surveillance, some consider the devices useless, a few want to understand if the HN crowd finds it useful. This is something I notice here on HN in product-related discussions more and more: people just say what THEY think about product X (typically a negative opinion or complaint), rather being creative, constructi…
> This is something I notice here on HN in product-related discussions more and more: people just say what THEY think about product X (typically a negative opinion or complaint), rather being creative, constructive or inquisitive.
I think that's always been true, if anything it might have gotten a little better. I remember back in the early smartphone-wars days any article about the iPhone would illicit numerous "iPhone is too locked down" comments and any Android article would illicit numerous "The UI is bad" comments.
Somewhat related, the most influencial Paul Graham article for me is http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html. I try (and often fail) to apply this when responding to articles.
Re: The Echo Dot was the best-selling product on Amazon this holiday season
#287Funny the article doesn’t say whether it was because echos Dot was sold damn cheap during the sale
Re: The Echo Dot was the best-selling product on Amazon this holiday season
#288Very revealing discussion. Most of the participants just argue about Amazon vs. Google here, some fear surveillance, some consider the devices useless, a few want to understand if the HN crowd finds it useful. This is something I notice here on HN in product-related discussions more and more: people just say what THEY think about product X (typically a negative opinion or complaint), rather being creative, constructi…
Buying decisions for gifts between adults who constantly buy stuff for themselves are governed by a very special set of rules. It can't be something they already have. It can't be something from a special interest hobby field, where enthusiasts identify deeply with every single related purchase decision. It can't be a commodity they would routinely buy anyways, that'd be like giving money. This leaves us with purely…
So, in other words, "gadgets". Kitchen gadgets (rather than tech gadgets) are also a popular choice for that kind of gift.
There are 2 kinds of gifts I like to give that aren't "purely sacrificial gifts": either a book I think the recipient will enjoy (this could be a graphic novel or art book if they aren't much of a reader), or a framed print of a portrait of their kid/partner/themselves with friends/etc. (I do large format film photography and make my own prints, so obviously the latter option is not a possibility for everyone. Still, books are great)
Re: The Echo Dot was the best-selling product on Amazon this holiday season
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
A wifi lawnmower is literally investment--it is the purchase of what in a business sense would be plant assets. Capital. The up-front expenditure of cash to generate value, in the form of saved time, later. Getting used to the idea of home automation as investment, as opposed to just business automation is something that older folks are going to have to come to grips with. But, like, I have Hue lights at home, I have…
I did the math, and found that hiring a local lawn service was even cheaper, more reliable, and used less of my time, the thing I am actually optimising for. Efficiencies of scale still beat gadgets. Not to mention the care, and graceful handling of edge cases. This is to say nothing of the myrid other services they provide. That said, I always dreamed of one, as a kid, who had to mow an acre. But as an adult, its cl…
I'm sorry that the idea makes you a little spicy, but words mean things and by any reasonable definition, and even if your particular situation does not validate the current cost of one (and bear in mind that this stuff tends to get cheaper), that doesn't mean it doesn't literally tick the boxes of an investment. Investments can even be bad ones, after all!
Re: The Echo Dot was the best-selling product on Amazon this holiday season
#290Fun fact: in Italy there's no Alexa products at all. There's simply no market / will to spread it there