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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

#191

Post by gr3yh47 »

2-4-Flinching wrote: post #173
JulianRaphael wrote: post #121

Very 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…

Simple, they have hit a price range that the average person feels they can spend and not feel to bad about wasting money later if it sits on the shelf. You would probably need to edit your question to "Why do you think millions of people bought an [Amazon] Echo Dot or a Google Home [Mini]" The evidence is clear both are the lowest costing home assistant device for their respective lines. At $30 on sales this season i…

>Simple, they have hit a price range that the average person feels they can spend and not feel to bad about wasting money later if it sits on the shelf.

I would add...

'and the vast majority of americans dont understand why they should care about government surveillance and how that relates to installing an internet-connected microphone in their home'

unfortunately most of us in the hn crowd probably feel like there is tons of awareness about surveillance right now, but my guess is that feeling is the result of filter bubbles.

Re: The Echo Dot was the best-selling product on Amazon this holiday season

#192

Post by dastbe »

always_good wrote: post #165
smileysteve wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got a google home solely because it came w/ a hue package and tried to show it to my family. The Home couldn't hear me over itself (music) across the kitchen... My alexa can hear what I'm saying down the corridor with the shower on and much louder. It was embarassing

I'm curious, why did the package size matter?

it wasn't a typo. hue is a phillips is a iot lighting system, and there are several packages that include a hue-enabled lightbulb.

Re: The Echo Dot was the best-selling product on Amazon this holiday season

#193

Post by StavrosK »

nagVenkat wrote: post #148
Washuu wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Alexa, what's the weather?" It proceeds to tell me the weather for a state over. "Alexa, set my location to XXXXX." It can't do that. Actually getting correct location details requires downloading a separate smart phone application and digging through its menus to figure out how to set the location for each individual Alexa device.

I was looking at an echo dot for the first time. my roommate is using it and our location is a small town 35 miles away. We tried to set the location through voice and then through the app but both didn’t work. We just gave up after wards thinking the weather should be similar.

For me, I went to the app and added my address, and it worked. I don't think it can set it through voice, though, you're right.

Re: The Echo Dot was the best-selling product on Amazon this holiday season

#194

Post by jsz0 »

JulianRaphael wrote: post #121

Very 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…

> Why do you think millions of people bought an Echo Dot or a Google Home?

Probably because they emulate human conversation well enough to make people feel less lonely.

Re: The Echo Dot was the best-selling product on Amazon this holiday season

#195

Post by StavrosK »

k__ wrote: post #149
blensor wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While those devices are far from perfect they are an evolutionary step in how people are able to interact with technology. My mother in law does not use a computer or smartphone at all, but she loves to use the Echo because it provides a familiar interface (speech) to services she would use (music, weather, casual information search). And interacting with voice assistants is a two way street in my opinion. They will…

Interesting. We have an Echo and to this day we haven't found any use for it. Talking is broadcast and most of the time we search stuff for ourself on mobile. Also, it often simply says it has no answer.

I'm the same as IgorPartola, I use it for kitchen timers, music and smart home controls, but I've also written a few skills so it can play movies/shows on my Chromecast, tell me my last bank transaction, etc etc. Those are pretty useful, except the Dot fails to recognize my longer sentences way too often. Sometimes it'll even recognize the skill I want to launch but not the rest of it.

Re: The Echo Dot was the best-selling product on Amazon this holiday season

#196

Post by djhworld »

I have an original Echo, it's fine.

I use it to listen to the radio via TuneIn, to turn lamps on and off and to set timers. That's about it really.

Sometimes I use it to convert American imperial units to metric, which is handy when converting recipes in the kitchen (e.g. "what's 2 cups in millilitres")

I'm at my parents house at the moment, my Mum primarily uses it to set timers, and reminders (e.g. remind me tomorrow to do X). Although our pet dog absolutely hates it though, which is amusing.

Re: The Echo Dot was the best-selling product on Amazon this holiday season

#197

Post by enraged_camel »

fiatpandas wrote: post #183
enraged_camel wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Ok Google comes extremely naturally to most people I know. And it sounds incredibly stupid to anyone else within earshot. I can’t get over how dumb my roommate sounds whenever he uses the thing. My immediate thought when I hear him say “OK Google” is that Google must have told him something and he is responding with “OK” to acknowledge. You know, the way people actually communicate. I get that it becomes natural af…

Not sure what English speaking country, or even US region, you come from but “OK [name], [call to action, often one involving both speaker and listener]” is a thing. And it doesn’t have to be a response to something said previously. Remember, people can do whatever they want with their language, and it becomes a thing even if you personally aren’t familiar with it.

Exactly, when used that way it involves both the speaker and the listener, as in “OK Bob, let’s go to the park”.

Or, if it is used to pretend a command, it is used as a continuation of an existing conversation, like when you are at the doctor and he or she says “Go ahead and get on the scale” and then “OK, now sit here and open your mouth.”

The way google uses it is definitely not natural.

There is also the pause, after you say “Ok google” and it activates search for you.

Anyway, fanboys will continue to downvote I know but the whole interaction is undoubtedly awkward as fuck.

Re: The Echo Dot was the best-selling product on Amazon this holiday season

#198

Post by HelloMcFly »

gr3yh47 wrote: post #191
2-4-Flinching wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simple, they have hit a price range that the average person feels they can spend and not feel to bad about wasting money later if it sits on the shelf. You would probably need to edit your question to "Why do you think millions of people bought an [Amazon] Echo Dot or a Google Home [Mini]" The evidence is clear both are the lowest costing home assistant device for their respective lines. At $30 on sales this season i…

>Simple, they have hit a price range that the average person feels they can spend and not feel to bad about wasting money later if it sits on the shelf. I would add... 'and the vast majority of americans dont understand why they should care about government surveillance and how that relates to installing an internet-connected microphone in their home' unfortunately most of us in the hn crowd probably feel like there…

I care about government surveillance and am not really into IoT in general, but I have an Echo. I imagine some may have a difficult time reconciling those two things, but they are not in conflict for me.

Re: The Echo Dot was the best-selling product on Amazon this holiday season

#199

Post by pdkl95 »

thg wrote: post #164
dingaling wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You could sniff the network connection and see whether it is sending anything home Not really practical with a pinned internal CA and batched uploading.

> Not really practical with a pinned internal CA and batched uploading. It's not so much about looking at the payload than it is about whether it's sending anything at all and if it is, what amount. Correct me if I'm wrong, but from everything I've read and heard these devices don't really have much in the way of internal storage capacity (yet). It either has to be uploaded or discarded.

Are you checking the cellular bands, or just your local 802.{3,11}? SoC exist with builtin LTE/CDMA/etc.

edit:

Also, voice compresses really well if you don't care about the quality. With a codec that uses most 2.4 MB/hour. A simple gate filter that cuts out quiet periods should cut the storage requirements down to only a few MB/week. A typical flash chip used to store the firmware could easily store years worth of typical household speech in the non-firmware space.

Re: The Echo Dot was the best-selling product on Amazon this holiday season

#200

Post by afpx »

b4lancesh33t wrote: post #174
afpx wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of my closest 100 friends and family bought either product, which is very strange given our technology backgrounds and the products’ apparent popularity. A good friend who works in IoT sort of considered it, but then ultimately became unmotivated because she doesn’t yet see the usefulness of consumer IoT. My guess is that most buyers are much younger than me. Perhaps they seek to be early adopters like I once di…

> None of my closest 100 friends and family bought either product How do you know that?

Because I’m close to them. Maybe 100 is a slight overestimate. But, it isn’t all that many, is it? There are 30 people just within 0.5 miles that I visit regularly.

Edit: I was totally wrong. I did an informal survey, and several people said they did have them. I just never saw them use them. Just seeing what I want to see ...

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