Alexa vs. the world

[Sredni Vashtar]

Currently we have prime, dots, fire tv, various movies, a kids fire, a Kindle, and music unlimited.

Seems like it would be insane to leave Alexa when she is so good to us, but do you guys have any suggestions for competing products and services????

[Maphisto's Sidekick]

Originally Posted by Sredni Vashtar

Currently we have prime, dots, fire tv, various movies, a kids fire, a Kindle, and music unlimited.

Seems like it would be insane to leave Alexa when she is so good to us, but do you guys have any suggestions for competing products and services????

There are viable competitors?

[Sredni Vashtar]

I thought people out there have Apple TVs and Google homes and the like? But maybe not? Maybe every house is a Bezos house.

[campbell]

I run Prime on our Roku

and the kindle app on my ipads

i dont see the point of Alexa, except spying. And Im sure Amazon has PLENT of data on me already

[Rick_G]

Originally Posted by campbell

I run Prime on our Roku and the kindle app on my ipads

i dont see the point of Alexa, except spying. And Im sure Amazon has PLENT of data on me already

Ditto for us - we have a Google Home (in our home).

My sister turned off ALL their dots and echoes because of Alexa spying.

[Sredni Vashtar]

Originally Posted by campbell

I run Prime on our Roku

and the kindle app on my ipads

i dont see the point of Alexa, except spying. And Im sure Amazon has PLENT of data on me already

The thing I like most about Alexa is our music-unlimited subscription, which is 8 bucks a month for access to almost all songs/albums/stations. (And yes Google has something similar). It's probably not really worth it-- both my wife and I are addicted to the same 20 or so albums (many of which we've purchased elsewhere), but it is very convenient to have everything at our voice command.

Generally I think Alexa is pretty dumb as well as smart home technology generally. My mom gets a huge kick out of being able to turn on the lights in her computer room with ITTT voice command, but it seems like such a ridiculously unnecessary gadget to me.

[Dr T Non-Fan]

They are all ridiculously unnecessary, except possibly for the disabled.

[campbell]

What is interesting to me is how many tech advances aren't really all that needed for "normal" people, but have made life much more livable for people with all sorts of disabilities.

The Reading for the Blind and Dyslexic nonprofit I used to read for (and used to have very specialized cassette tape stuff for those receiving recordings) had to change their name to Learning Ally, and have had to specialize on the types of texts that require volunteer readers, because there's so much text-to-audio stuff out there now. It's really only specialty texts, like math textbooks with lots of equations & graphs, that still need humans to read & record. And their tech is not particularly special compared to any other online audioplayers that one can find, with bookmarks, change in readback speed, etc.

[E]

Originally Posted by campbell

I run Prime on our Roku

and the kindle app on my ipads

i dont see the point of Alexa, except spying. And Im sure Amazon has PLENT of data on me already

Agree. If I need something from Amazon, it's always a tap or two away on my phone, and I can launch Siri or "Hey Google" on my phone with no effort at all, so I don't need Alexa for information. Finally, I'm not ready for my kids to be left alone in a room to talk to an internet-connected robot and hear god knows what. Obviously the Alexa market is huge, but it doesn't solve any problems for me.

I did buy a HomePod, but mostly for the audio quality, which I think is amazing for a speaker its size. I use it only for music and not general web queries. It replaced a single Sonos speaker I used to have.

[mathmajor]

I refuse to buy in to Amazon's smart home tech. That is not their niche. This is for Google to do. Looking ahead, whom do you trust to innovate along these lines?