I had an Echo Show on my nightstand, hoping it would be a nice alarm, clock, photo viewer, and weather viewer machine. While it does do those things, I ended up unplugging it. Two fatal flaws (for me) is that the LCD "black" background never got dark enough, and it pesters me CONSTANTLY with ads for things I don't want, like children's jokes, suggestions to buy random things on Amazon, etc. You can't turn that content off either. It just became too much. I still use the Echo Dots, and Standby on my iPhone is going to be my new clock-radio.
Also, what the crap? $1700 for an Eero 7 3-pack? Are they insane?
Honestly, I’ve given some thought to setting up a Raspberry Pi as a similar ”home dashboard” concept. But that’s not for everyone, since it definitely involves some coding. (I think I’d probably do it in Electron and React, myself, since I have more experience with them than with C++ and GTK. Weather, RSS, subway status information, the sorts of things I might want to know very first thing in the morning.)
The big drawback for me has been bedside space and power outlet space, but you brought up an issue I hadn’t yet considered, and that’s LCD light leakage. Ultimately, though, I’ve been trying to make it a point not to have screens in my bedroom (or at least in bed), so the only tech I keep in my bedroom is an air purifier, my watch to charge it while I sleep (it also serves as an alarm clock), and a HomePod mini.
The screen in the Echo Show is obviously something Apple doesn’t really have an answer to, but is it actually useful (apart from the LCD light leakage)? I could see the screen maybe being useful in the kitchen (where you could look up recipes online or YouTube tutorials while you cook), but that’s such a niche situation, and my phone works well enough for that already (though hands-free would be better). It seems like most of the time, I’d rather a larger screen or a more transportable screen. But people buy enough of them to justify releasing a new model (unlike Meta’s Portal device so far, it seems), so maybe there’s something to it. At any rate, though, I definitely trust Apple more than Amazon (though I also trust Amazon/Alexa more than I trust Google*).
* Apple’s typically selling me a device (and they’ve stuck to their privacy guns even when it hurts Siri’s competitiveness). Amazon is selling me stuff on Amazon (which I do do a lot of shopping on, but I don’t like the idea of accidentally buying something with my voice**, and I don’t typically window shop Amazon while logged in, I only log in to buy, generally). And Google’s trying to sell me to advertisers. If there was a worthwhile YouTube competitor, I’d probably finally make a clean break from Google***.
** I have to be mindful of impulse control as is when it comes to online shopping, it would probably be worse if I could buy stuff by voice and not even see the price.
*** Well, with the exception of the devices I own that use Android, though none of them are strictly 100% stock Android, though they do have Play Services. I actually own a Chinese made Android based e-ink ebook reader because I reckoned that that concoction of distrust (Google because of Android, CCP because of China****) is probably less worse than Amazon’s concoction of distrust and the Kindles I own (I can download books and apps from multiple sources and can read DRM free books, so I’m not locked into Amazon’s ecosystem but can still use it when it’s convenient).
**** I don’t live in China. If I did, I’d probably trust Amazon over a Chinese owned company. I don’t exactly trust either, but DRM free books and all the world of Android reading apps is a strong pull, and I reckon that the CCP doesn’t particularly care about me as a random westerner, even as a CCP skeptic (as long as I don’t use it for work related reasons, Chinese corporate espionage probably would actually have an interest in me).
