Yeah, well, do you?
Woz really loves his Echo…
Apple founder Steve Wozniak loves the Amazon Echo, a smart speaker that users can talk to.
In an interview with CNBC that aired Friday, he said he thought it was “the next big platform for the near future.”
“It’s become such a wonderful part of our life, not having to lift anything up and speak to things, and just speak to it anywhere across a room,” he said. “That is such a luxury and freedom.”
“I fell in love with speaking because I hate to memorize,” the Apple founder said, mentioning that he liked to use Apple’s Siri voice assistant as well. “With the Amazon Echo, you can just say, ‘Send me an Uber,’ and it does it.”
Oops that was supposed to read as “ne’r do wells”. I know how it sounds but not sure how to type it. Does that make sense?
Oops that was supposed to read as “ne’r do wells”. I know how it sounds but not sure how to type it. Does that make sense?
Apple founder Steve Wozniak loves the Amazon Echo, a smart speaker that users can talk to.
In an interview with CNBC that aired Friday, he said he thought it was “the next big platform for the near future.”
“It’s become such a wonderful part of our life, not having to lift anything up and speak to things, and just speak to it anywhere across a room,” he said. “That is such a luxury and freedom.”
“I fell in love with speaking because I hate to memorize,” the Apple founder said, mentioning that he liked to use Apple’s Siri voice assistant as well. “With the Amazon Echo, you can just say, ‘Send me an Uber,’ and it does it.”
If I tell it to “send me some money” do you think that will work too?
I thought you were using nerds to riff on ne’r do wells because it’s a geeky amazon product. :)
I wish I were that talented lolol.
I disagree with this. Not only does Echo get things wrong, it is extremely limited on what it can answer. If you word the question just right, and it’s something that it was programmed to know about it, it might get it right, but since it doesn’t have a screen where it can at least post some info, I often get responses it just doesn’t know. A great example is the English Premier League. Siri/Google does great with it and can answer pretty much anything, and at the very least give me a web search. Echo has no idea what the league is, who the teams are, players, etc. It can’t even give me a web search. But yes, I can ask what year Mt. Rushmore was finished and it will know, great. All too often it just has no clue.
Using it with my Hue lights is pretty cool. Except that you have to be very precise with your names and memorize how everything is set up because it won’t work unless you know the exact wording it wants (and ask it in just the right way). And even then, you can’t turn off groups, only turn them on. It will turn off all lights. That is a limitation of all the voice services of course, but I still have to repeat commands a lot with it, and it is very finicky.
Having owned an Echo for almost a year now the thing is basically an alarm clock and bluetooth speaker for podcasts (doesn’t sound that great for music when I have other options available). I like it, but the praise it seems to get lately on being better than alternatives boggles my mind.
And since when is Woz relevant on anything?
Hound is really really accurate compared to Cortana and Siri.
So, Google announced its Echo competitor, and it doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense. The one area where you could really put one over Amazon, I’d have thought, is fully opening up the API, and that’s precisely what they haven’t done. I’m willing to accept that it’s better at answering queries than Alexa, but, you know, so is my phone.
They are planning to, once they work things out. It’s still early on.
Also, did they not to a trademark search before naming these things? There’s already a chat app called Allo and a Siri-alike called Assistant.
I didn’t care for Chromcast compared to Roku and Amazon Fire TV. I’ll keep me eye on this one though.
Alexa and the Google Assistant seem to overlap a lot, but the demo video showed a person changing a dinner reservation, dictating a text message, and instructing Home to find a video on the TV (using just the phrase “show me what it looks like on the TV”). You can probably use Home as a speakerphone, if you can dictate texts. I don’t believe that the Echo devices can do those things.
Alexa and the Google Assistant seem to overlap a lot, but the demo video showed a person changing a dinner reservation, dictating a text message, and instructing Home to find a video on the TV (using just the phrase “show me what it looks like on the TV”). You can probably use Home as a speakerphone, if you can dictate texts. I was under the impression that the Echo devices couldn’t use those things.
Ignoring for now that the video was aspirational, my point is that none of those applications depend on having an Echo-clone speaker. You could do them just as well with your phone (and I look forward to doing so!). Amazon needed to have a speaker because nobody bought their crappy phone. Google doesn’t have that problem. Just build it into Android.
The whole point of Google Home and Amazon Echo is that they’re hands-free and always listening. And in the case of the Echo Dot, you can keep it plugged directly into your home theater system with an analog stereo cable.
I don’t use my Echo in the same way I use my phone. They have entirely different purposes.
Well, I bought one. But I’m stuck in Setup Hell. It’s plugged in and sitting right next to my router, and I held down the Action button until the orange light lit up and told me to proceed with Setup.
So I open the Android app and it tells me to connect to the Echo device’s internal wi-fi network. Which I can see listed on my phone, but while trying to connect to it the progress indicator just spins endlessly and never connects.
After disconnecting my phone from the network and shutting off the app and holding the Echo Start button down again, I go to my PC and open up alexa.amazon.com in my browser. I turn off all security blockers for the site and go through the above process again. This time I am able to connect to the Echo internal wi-fi network and it has a label, “No internet, open” which I assume means that I’m in the Echo now (ew) but I still have to instruct the Echo to connect to my home network.
But the little obelisk isn’t doing or saying anything and that orange light is still spinning around. I feel like a 2001 ape who has failed an intelligence test. And the stupid app is completely unhelpful.
Guess I’ll try doing an Echo factory restore next? Or is there another step or trick I’m unaware of?
Last time I changed routers. I had to complete unplug the Echo to get it to work again. About every few months, sometimes I have to unplug it because the router had a minor connection issue although that’s gotten better since I replaced that particular router.
Got it after rebooting the router and phone. Should have tried that right away. And at the words, “Alexa, play KFJC” she launched that TuneIn station without any confusion. I tried about a dozen radio station call letters that I knew, and she got (or TuneIn has) most of them. Then I told her to set an alarm for the morning, and she did. Except that she’s in the living room. Will have to think about that. But still, super pleased.