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Amazon enables free calls and messages on all Echo devices with Alexa Calling

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Re: Amazon enables free calls and messages on all Echo devices with Alexa Calling

#71

Post by FullMtlAlcoholc »

ianai wrote: post #68
FullMtlAlcoholc wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people responsible for this knew exactly what they are doing. They are putting a vice grip on society's notion of what privacy is, crushing it into an ever smaller idea. It's not for the benefit of people, it's for their own narrow self-interest and profit. If this were bi-directional, that along with a loss of privacy came blanket transparency into how they're using the data they record, shared their data sets a…

Yes, I can't shake the terror of everything I say or do being recorded and analyzed.

We're all politicians and celebrities now! (Except without the fame, fortune, or power)

Re: Amazon enables free calls and messages on all Echo devices with Alexa Calling

#72

Post by sosborn »

ianai wrote: post #66
gordon_freeman wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple still has a huge advantage with their iOS app ecosystem. They can introduce a hardware and add an SDK to iOS that allows their developers to create apps that seamlessly work on that hardware. But they need to come up with the hardware fast because Amazon will race far ahead otherwise.

Let's not forget their huge cash on hand. Apple could purchase its way into any market and technology at this point.

I really like apple stuff, but your sentence could have easily applied to Microsoft at the dawn of smartphones. Capital is not a guaranteed path to success.

Re: Amazon enables free calls and messages on all Echo devices with Alexa Calling

#73

Post by gambiting »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #11
AlexandrB wrote: post #5

This is "free" as in Amazon is free to record your calls and messages and use them either as training data for AI or targeting data for advertising.

Huh? Skype is free. Google Hangouts is free. Google voice is free. Do you have a facebook account? LinkedIn? Gmail? All of your points apply there as well. How is this controversial?

Over here(UK) you can get a sim card from any operator for free, and call people on the same network for free - yet I don't expect my telephone conversations to be recorded and analysed by my mobile network. Why is it different here?

Re: Amazon enables free calls and messages on all Echo devices with Alexa Calling

#74

Post by smokinn »

ehsankia wrote: post #70
dtien wrote: post #61

Apple (and Google) really dropped the ball on the connected Home 'smartbox' that Amazon popularized with Alexa. We received one as a gift this past Christmas, and I'm now a full believer in this tech after being a very big skeptic during the first couple years of Alexa's existence. Add to the fact, that we primarily use it as a smart connected radio, and the benefits are still beyond clear to me. Essentially, you've…

I'm not sure how Google dropedp the ball? I see your argument that Apple was also well situated to create this, but other than starting a bit late, what has Google done wrong? They are catching up very quickly, since like Apple, they are in a much better position to create this technology as they have most of the ingredients already. Google Home has managed to mostly catch up in 6 months to a product that's been out…

The Nexus Q was Google dropping the ball: https://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/05/the-google-nexus-...

I have a couple of friends who still have one in a drawer somewhere and it was just poor execution all around. They could have been way ahead of the curve but now they're playing catchup. They're definitely still very well positioned and catching up fast though. Google's AI capability and straightfoward integration with exclusive market-leading products (Google Now, Google Maps, etc.) will likely make them a leader eventually unless they drop the ball again.

Re: Amazon enables free calls and messages on all Echo devices with Alexa Calling

#75

Post by seanp2k2 »

ianai wrote: post #65
dtien wrote: post #61

Apple (and Google) really dropped the ball on the connected Home 'smartbox' that Amazon popularized with Alexa. We received one as a gift this past Christmas, and I'm now a full believer in this tech after being a very big skeptic during the first couple years of Alexa's existence. Add to the fact, that we primarily use it as a smart connected radio, and the benefits are still beyond clear to me. Essentially, you've…

This might be the thing that stirs apple to action. I'm under the impression that Alexa works much better at understanding than Siri? Is that true? What would be great is if all these things could work together. Amazons smartphones are not compelling and they don't have laptops/desktops. It sounds like they do IoT well, while Apple does the later.

2011 re MobileMe http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-mobileme-failure-2...

The tech matters in that it must work, but what they've really been lacking is a cohesive story around how all of this stuff works together and what it enables people to do. Right now, my biggest interaction with iCloud is constantly being reminded that I'm out of storage on it, randomly, sometimes via CarPlay while driving.

Apple is a hardware company. Their software forays have been mixed. They do some awesome stuff and some terrible stuff. Many great iOS features were lifted from some combination of the jailbreak community + android. The App Store on Mac has some dumb limitations which have driven away some big and many small publishers. It's still hard to explain what iCloud does exactly and why storage on it costs $10/month for 1TB in 2017. The Photos app, which forcibly replaced the sometimes-liked iPhoto, regularly crashes / hangs for me when trying to import more than a couple hundred photos. It's awful and slow on a brand new top of the line maxed out rMBP when opening my library with ~20k photos. I don't really believe that I'm an outlier in how many photos I take, but the experience is awful, I can't enable any type of debug status / anything to tell me what it's actually doing, can't go back to iPhoto, Aperture is discontinued, and the storage format for the Photos library is not just flat files of the original sources, so it's basically impossible to switch to any other management software for this task (plus the iPhone won't sync with many other pieces of software). iTunes is and has been garbage for a decade and a half at this point, and again it's forced upon you if you use an iPhone. Have a problem with your phone? Forget fixing the configuration despite it all being there (I used to be into jailbreak and you can basically fix anything if you want to badly enough), it's time for a hard reset. Enjoy spending the whole day resetting your 2FA tokens. Look also at what they've done with Final Cut Pro. Combine this with how it's impossible to upgrade the GPU in the current Mac Pro to anything resembling current best-in-class pro performance levels, and it's easy to make the argument that Apple doesn't care about pro users as of about 5 years ago. Ooh yeah, and about Apple Maps, HomeKit, discontinuing wifi routers, the Apple TV, watchOS...

Above all, to me, this represents an internal issue with their leadership. Very few people there seem to know how to manage a software product. Granted it's a difficult thing to do well, but honestly, to me, their losses far outweigh their wins in this space in the past decade. They've had some big missed opportunities and while I don't have insight into their leadership, I don't see that changing any time soon.

Despite all of this, they continue to print money and move tons of product, so I guess from a purely capitalistic standpoint, who cares...but I know that they could do so much better with this stuff, and that hurts.

Re: Amazon enables free calls and messages on all Echo devices with Alexa Calling

#76

Post by dtien »

ehsankia wrote: post #70
dtien wrote: post #61

Apple (and Google) really dropped the ball on the connected Home 'smartbox' that Amazon popularized with Alexa. We received one as a gift this past Christmas, and I'm now a full believer in this tech after being a very big skeptic during the first couple years of Alexa's existence. Add to the fact, that we primarily use it as a smart connected radio, and the benefits are still beyond clear to me. Essentially, you've…

I'm not sure how Google dropedp the ball? I see your argument that Apple was also well situated to create this, but other than starting a bit late, what has Google done wrong? They are catching up very quickly, since like Apple, they are in a much better position to create this technology as they have most of the ingredients already. Google Home has managed to mostly catch up in 6 months to a product that's been out…

I suppose for both Google and Apple 'dropping the ball' not only relates to starting late, but also

a) having the ingredients way before Amazon

b) knowing the market for such a product was viable(people were ready) and desirable($$ could be huge)

c) and having made failed attempts at it

Apple and Google both tried to attack it through the SmartTV effort, which came and went and didn't amount to much. People didn't want to spend upwards of $1K for such a thing, whoops. Then Google purchased Nest, thinking that would be a nice backdoor into the Home automated system -- I have a Nest also, good product, but again, not the right entry way for this product category.

Than along comes Amazon and creates essentially a wireless smart speaker, that you can talk to, at a $100 price tag. Boom.

Don't get me wrong, Google Home is catching up fast and I had a heavy debate/research session when we got Alexa on whether I should exchange it for Home. But in the end, it just didn't matter, Alexa did things well enough at this point. Google may have the better, more widely adopted ecosystem (Gmail, Calendar, etc), the Voice assistant is likely better from what I've read, and I have no doubt Google can do the SDK/app ecosystem in a great way. But really, I feel like Alexa is doing things just well enough to keep the competition at bay, and with their head start, they're owning the consumer mindshare. And the combination of those 2 things might be enough to fend off any newcomers now.... though let the competition and innovation continue -- on that I agree!

Re: Amazon enables free calls and messages on all Echo devices with Alexa Calling

#77

Post by [deleted] »

ehsankia wrote: post #70
dtien wrote: post #61

Apple (and Google) really dropped the ball on the connected Home 'smartbox' that Amazon popularized with Alexa. We received one as a gift this past Christmas, and I'm now a full believer in this tech after being a very big skeptic during the first couple years of Alexa's existence. Add to the fact, that we primarily use it as a smart connected radio, and the benefits are still beyond clear to me. Essentially, you've…

I'm not sure how Google dropedp the ball? I see your argument that Apple was also well situated to create this, but other than starting a bit late, what has Google done wrong? They are catching up very quickly, since like Apple, they are in a much better position to create this technology as they have most of the ingredients already. Google Home has managed to mostly catch up in 6 months to a product that's been out…

[deleted]

Re: Amazon enables free calls and messages on all Echo devices with Alexa Calling

#78

Post by dkrich »

dtien wrote: post #61

Apple (and Google) really dropped the ball on the connected Home 'smartbox' that Amazon popularized with Alexa. We received one as a gift this past Christmas, and I'm now a full believer in this tech after being a very big skeptic during the first couple years of Alexa's existence. Add to the fact, that we primarily use it as a smart connected radio, and the benefits are still beyond clear to me. Essentially, you've…

Apple spends years meticulously developing and then releasing the most successful (and profitable) consumer computing platform of all time. Nearly every man, woman and child in the US has an Apple device no more than five feet from them at all time that's completely capable of controlling every home device connected to the internet.

Amazon spends years and billions of dollars trying to compete in the hardware space with Apple, unsuccessfully releasing a phone and several very average tablet devices, none of which really gain much traction.

Then they release a device that can respond only to voice "pretty well" which can now handle VOIP calls only with other Amazon devices and we are ceding this battle to Amazon?

I think Amazon has to greatly improve the user experience before the Echo moves past a cool novelty item for me. I own one, and I can honestly say I feel no desire to purchase any more.

My Nest cam on the other hand I use all day to monitor my dog (using my iPhone) and often consider switching to Google Home and buying more Nest products because I feel invested in that ecosystem.

To me, the tablet/smart phone experience is just more efficient and easier than dealing with voice. That's just my own experience though, and time may prove me very wrong.

Re: Amazon enables free calls and messages on all Echo devices with Alexa Calling

#79

Post by FreakyT »

FullMtlAlcoholc wrote: post #56

> The one that has jumped out at me first is called “Drop In” — which lets you make a call to someone without them even answering the phone first. I wish that the product person who pushed this as an "innovative" idea lives a short, brutish, and painful life where he/she dies alone. EDIT: That's too mean spirited. If you want to peer in on your elderly parents, webcams are a better idea because you'll put them in a p…

> What person would ever want this "feature"?

Look up research on "media spaces" if you're interested in the practical applications of this kind of feature. Just one example paper, but there are many more: https://www.billbuxton.com/DGPmediaspace.pdf

Digitally creating a "portal" like this can be considered roughly analogous to connected spaces in real life. So, for example, two break rooms across different campuses of the same company, or a couple in a long-distance relationship that would ordinarily live together if not for whatever was keeping them in LDR mode stand to benefit from this sort of continuous video communication.

Re: Amazon enables free calls and messages on all Echo devices with Alexa Calling

#80

Post by ghurtado »

FullMtlAlcoholc wrote: post #56

> The one that has jumped out at me first is called “Drop In” — which lets you make a call to someone without them even answering the phone first. I wish that the product person who pushed this as an "innovative" idea lives a short, brutish, and painful life where he/she dies alone. EDIT: That's too mean spirited. If you want to peer in on your elderly parents, webcams are a better idea because you'll put them in a p…

> What person would ever want this "feature"?

The disabled come to mind, for starters. The elderly, assisted living, I can think of a few use cases.

Do you remember the Nextel phones? (push to talk) They were annoying as all hell in a corporate setting, but had some very valid use cases in a lot of industries, to the point of being the #1 feature of a Nextel.

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