81–90 of 355 posts
The pricing seems odd. $20/mo for Alexa+, but it's free with a $15/mo Prime subscription? It makes me think that it will only be included with Prime for a short time - long enough to get a lot of Alexa users hooked on it.
I ordered the first echo the day it was announced, and was excited about the possibility for years. But that "possibility" never turned into reality for me and I ended up only using it to start timers and play music. I've since abandoned the product line and do not have faith that Amazon will develop this into something actually useful, rather than something that is used to sell me products and surveil on me.
It’s really awesome for starting timers and playing music though. I also ask it questions and it does pretty well at answering them. For once we get to be on the opposite side of the exploitation curve here. They can provide this service to me for free in perpetuity I hope. I think my Dots were maybe $19 or bought on eBay.
> Alexa+ costs $19.99 per month, but is free for all Prime members. Prime costs $140/year ($11.66/mo). Why would they even waste their time with the other subscription? To make the Prime option look more enticing?
Yes? I mean, they pretty much say that outright, when they say (paraphrased): "It's $19.99, but free with Prime. Look how much more you are saving with Prime now!"
The "standalone" price exists solely to justify the claim that Prime subscribers are saving money.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I stopped shopping at Amazon about a year ago. Too much overhead figuring out the good products, vs the scam products, vs the mediocre but pushed products. Been using Newegg/BestBuy for electronics, Costco/Target/Walmart for home goods, local grocery stores for food, and Barnes and Noble for books. I used to be good at picking out the gems from the cruft on Amazon, but either it's gotten more difficult or I've lost m…
> Too much overhead figuring out the good products ... How does changing stores help. If the products are still the same but on Walmart, how are you getting better information?
The main use case in our house for Alexa is sending announcements between rooms. But for a few months now, it hasn’t worked properly. I will say: “Alexa, send an announcement”. But 50% of the time, instead of prompting me for the announcement, it will play me saying “Send an announcement” around the house. I wonder if anyone else has had this issue, or if it’s just me?
Wait till she "mishears" you: "I thought you said you wanted to purchase 10 gallons of Amazon basics hand soap. Sorry about that. The shipping is arriving today, but you can return it back at the nearest UPS location". I see this kind of junk in their prime video adds when we are trying to watch a movie. "While we show this add, click here to add the item to your cart".
>Alexa+ is also proactive when it’s important — like ... telling you a gift you wanted to buy is on sale. I feel there is a growing divide in digital culture, with the majority being the eager consumer of surveillance capitalism, and the much smaller but growing minority that sees it as absurd to pay for invasive commercials. On a purely UX level, I have never seen 'shouting at a speaker' as a desirable general purpo…
> She can also help you search, find or buy virtually any item online, and make useful suggestions based on your interests. And there it is. Still trying to sell refills on paper towels. > Alexa+ costs $19.99 per month, but is free for all Prime members. Unrelated business unit profit to subsidize reaches into new markets. Amazon isn't so egregious here as the other tech titans, but it is absurd to think I'll need a…
> She can also help you search, find or buy virtually any item online, and make useful suggestions based on your interests. The Alexa team have been struggling to make this a reality since day one according to some contacts I had there, it was always the intent. Little did they know that they had merely invented an elaborate egg timer, and I'm not sure how you'd pivot that into a profitable product.
I've been spoiled by LLMs in my daily work and now want to put the same kind of prompts into search boxes. Not "air fryers" but "air fryers without bluetooth or wifi and less than 3 cooking modes, and no negative reviews about the device failing prematurely." I'm not going to let Alexa plus or minus listen into my whole life, but I would like some that of intelligence when I actually go shopping.
If an LLM-based voice assistant/hardware combination works as well as ChatGPT-for-voice works today, I don't think it's a stretch to say that nearly everyone in the coming years will use/have one (the software of course will be portable to whatever device you're using--house, phone, car, etc. But the hardware portion I do believe will be critical because most of the time using it will be at home in a room and in that…