Alexa struggling
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-22/amazon-s-voice-controlled-smart-speaker-alexa-can-t-hold-customer-interest-docs #alexa #amazon
I was a beta tester. Dogfooding. It was so boring, I stopped after first week. Never even thought of buying it.
Why would someone leak all that to the press? It's not even that interesting. Guess people just love to expose internal docs to the press nowadays.
The development has been absolutely terrible. It certainly seems like the best device for out of the box smart home automation but it’s still basically a beta product in function. Basically every routine you setup is more of a hack than a nice normal automation routine in something more complex/DIY like home assistant. Still 10x better than Google’s ecosystem and from reviews it doesn’t seem like Apple is even in the ballpark.
I am in Apple ecosystem and I love it from a home automation standpoint. Yes, the devices supporting homekit are more expensive than alexa/google but I don’t find lack of functionality in anything. Care to share some examples?
My most recent annoyance with Alexa is getting my Ring Pro doorbell to display on Echo Show devices which works but getting it to stop has been inconsistent. I would like to have routines with different behaviors before or after sunset but you can only set a routine in a time window. You can trigger a light to turn on at sunset but you can’t have like an AND state like “Between sunset/sunrise AND motion detected, turn on light”. I also have like 20 Alexa devices in my house. Nearly every room has a stereo pair, subwoofer, and some echo shows plus mostly Zigbee devices. Echo audio is fantastic for a lifestyle speaker. Audible works great. I think think Amazon is trying to maintain compatibility but they should just make concessions for products they own like Echo Show <> Ring Devices should be a superb UX but it’s far from it. They do keep improving and for the most part I can make just about anything I want actually work and do it very cheaply. I bought a bunch of 4th Gen Echo with Premium sound on Black Friday and sold all my 3rd gens for $10 less each. Gotta love hardware that retains value!
Bummer. I worked on these devices for 5+ years from initial prototypes , but always felt the same way about them. The only useful feature imo was music and podcasts. But I guess they aren't really intended to "hold" your interest. More just brief interactions as needed
This reads like the future of metaverse. Some nutjobs claiming xyz is the future and a bunch of circle jerk around that with pundits and influencers. Anyone with any critical thinking could have predicted this
Oh wait.. I just interviewed at Alexa and the recruiter said they have multiple roles open.
It's a solution looking for a problem.
Nobody will ever shop on alexa. Stop trying.
Amazon keeps make it harder for you to shut off purchasing with Alexa by accident. They are trying everything. My 6 year old daughter asked to play a song, and she signed us up for that horrible 🍌 music. And since they don't put digital orders in the "orders" section, I didn't even notice.
That’s some shady design , why would you have ur credit on the account
Good to know but this is not really a news…
When was it not struggling?