Amazon Alexa

I was thinking about the number of technologies that came out (essentially) fully baked and haven't seemingly improved since. I had the thought while grumping at my Alexa. I say the same phrase every day, and every day there's a 50% failure rate. I keep looking for phrases that it can understand better than the ones I've cycled through, but they all suck. But Alexa, as shipped, was pretty great. The fact that it hasn't seemed to improve at all since confounds me. The reports of the high body counts in the division surely attest to the lack of focus or interest in core Alexa skills. All those product and integration priorities were on the wrong product stack layer. Same with: iPhone typing, Siri, Tesla software (and beyond FSD -- the only thing that seems have happened in the 2 years I've owned my vehicle is the addition of Apple Music), Apple Watch, etc.

Not surprised at all, I only used one of them for a few months, the rest 4 along with that one used are all collecting dusts over the years, it's useless, my phone does everything alexa does well and better.

Exactly. Mine is only used for timers/alarms, weather and as a bluetooth speaker. I just want those to work reliably. Every time it tries to change my behavior ("I can also...") it is actively annoying me. But I also recognize that my usage won't generate revenue and will continue to cost. Surely they can't just keep offering free service forever on equipment that was purchased at deep discount. But I don't think offering gimmicks is the answer to this.

Amazon has been adding that too which makes me want to switch away (I'm already uncomfortable with the security risks of a third party controlled cloud microphone, but it's ok in my kitchen and bedroom where no sensitive audio happens.)

For context, I work for Amazon, have multiple Alexa devices, an Oculus Quest 2 and I think the Metaverse is absolute bullshit and will never bring a cent. But I totally disagree with the comparison between Alexa and the Metaverse. Alexa has adoption and struggles with monetization, while the Metaverse struggles with adoption but would have endless possibilities for monetization. What is condemning a lot of Alexa teams today is the complete inability for Alexa to be anything more than a music speaker that also tells you the weather and sets timers. It's tedious to interact with and it's impossible to monetize, just because of how limited the "interface" is. The Metaverse will never struggle with the same problems. It's not gonna work, but not because it can't be monetized.

My wager is that the devices are sold as a loss leader. Then on top the software development is fairly novel - so they're probably spending quite a bit on development efforts related to the devices. They're eating the costs for running the backend processing for all of these devices (they're sold as a one time fee, despite requiring services provided by Amazon servers). Finally - they were promoting the ever loving shit out of the development tooling to app developers for a long time with a lot of seminars, development guides, free services on aws, etc. --- My strong guess is they wanted them work out the same way Kindles have - loss leaders that more than make up for it by securing digital goods purchases. But personally - I spend lots of money on amazon for books for my Kindle, and I spend basically nothing related to Alexa (there's literally just nothing I want to buy through it). Lately my Alexa has started inserting promotional content into the standard voice responses (bs like "Alexa what time is it" returns the time, and then a "and it's a good time to watch the new Rings of Power tv show? should I tell you about it?"). They're going to go into the trash shortly at this rate. I'll switch to a self hosted replacement like mycroft or something.

Or my new favorite (Alexa): “It’s going to be 43° today with clear skies. … By the way, did you know I can tell you about great deals on gifts or everyday items? Just say ‘Alexa, tell me about Prime Savings’. Would you like to hear today’s?” Me: already down the hall cursing my smart speaker.

What apps on your roku? I had to whitelist a Hulu domain cause it froze when trying to load ads during commercials for example, but when I look at the logs it’s blocking a ton of telemetry and phoning home 24/7 by Roku and Alexa devices. Are you regularly updating your ad blocking filters? When ads start showing up on my phone I know it’s time to go hit the update button.

While I agree that the Alexa devices would cost more if they were a normal product, $115 is too high. The Apple HomePod Mini sells for $99 and Apple is known to maintain a higher margin (average 35%) on their products than most other manufacturers. Assuming a similar cost for the Alexa (likely cheaper as the HomePod is a better speaker) and a lower margin puts the most likely retail price for an Alexa at around $70-75.

Then she asked me if I'd like to hear tips about using timers? No. Then she told me I had two notifications, would I like to hear them? No. Are you saying this for comedic effect, or does the Alexa really do this? (I'd look it up myself, but good luck with that query...) To each their own, but I'd throw the device into the street if it pulled a stunt like that. Then I timed myself setting a timer on my phone, which took 9 seconds from pocket to running. To the Homepod or my Apple Watch: "hey, siri, tea timer for three minutes". "Three minute tea timer, starting now." I didn't think a product could screw that up. I would suppose it's a design decision between "assistant" and "servant that carries out my command without backtalk". There are times that I wish the Apple product were more "assistant" than "servant", but the Alexa product just sounds pushy.

I never really understood the use case, despite people I know wildly effusing the benefits. I have a google smart speaker thing precisely because it's the only device that I can integrate with my Nest cameras and devices (which I bought before the Google acquisition). It does 2 things: 1) announce door bell ringing, and 2) play Apple Music in my office. For everything else Siri, whilst demonstrably behind the curve of Amazon and Google, is perfectly functional - dictating short messages whilst walking, adding to a shared shopping list, setting timers. I already have the phone for other reasons, there's no use case for buying an Alexa device that I can see. I would never make a purchase from Amazon on an Alexa using my voice - there's simply too many variables that I can't control for. It might misunderstand (possibly catastrophically costing me a huge amount of money and inconvenience), the quality of goods on Amazon is too low and generally too variable to allow a an Amazon AI to be the arbiter of which product to buy for me, and even the manual purchase process changes too often and too subtly to have confidence that it won't add something that I don't want (i.e., a regular subscription to a product, pay on a credit arrangement, etc).

I absolutely concur. I think these are the creepiest pieces of spying one can have. I've never seen one do anything useful. I don't mind walking to my radio to play music and I like using my computer with keyboard and mouse to buy amazon stuff. Plus everyone's mobile device is already this anyhow.

There's this really interesting dynamic here, I would never buy an Alexa- why? Because it's an Amazon machine in your home optimized to bankrupt you. We all kind of know it, the aim is for Alexa to figure out ways to monetize you. But having said that, a smart speaker should make money! It's a bit of low margin consumer tech, massive volume. The only way you lose money on that is by.... hiring a load of AI engineers to figure out how to exploit your customers. It's also kind of funny, you sold all these devices at cost.... but why? Apple's homepod sucks, and you (hope) you're clearly differentiated against Google. So why not actually just make money selling it. I'm just mad once again, that I didn't get the benefit of venture subsidized consumer products.

It's bad for civilization for everyone to have far-field microphones in their residences. With cell phones, the microphones are a problem but the upside is compelling enough to put in the effort of mitigating some of the risk and accept the rest. With Alexa/Google Home/etc, on the other hand, the upside isn't there. The state of cybersecurity is simply not good enough for a company to credibly promise that it only listens after a wakeword. Not only won't I allow Alexa or its competitors into my home, if I visit someone and see that they have it, I'll tell them that's a faux pas. I suspect many others do the same.

To me the key question is the value of voice devices . There may be good use cases for voice assistants – but many of those interactions can take place via your phone, which is always close by. What do dedicated hardware devices like Alexa add above and beyond that? They have a nicer speaker for playing music, but there's a whole ecosystem of bluetooth speakers you can use your phone with. They can control smart lightbulbs which I think phones don't have the right antenna for... but it feels like that could be solved by a $20 Chromecast-like dongle that your phone talks to over wifi. Is there anything else left to justify separate hardware, especially hardware that's likely sold break-even or at a loss?

Most of my 30 something friends have ditched their Alexa's and Google assistant devices because of concerns around security and privacy. The ability to say "set a timer for 30 minutes" is nice, but not enough to invite always on microphones into private spaces

I presume they use that Microsoft technology to check for presence of too much skin tones in the shape of a human body ???. The problem is if the ML flags something and forward it to a human (even anonymized) to decide on for quality control purposes - that is why Alexa,Google and Apple smart speakers are banned in my house. I only allow dumb bluetooth speakers.