The same was said about iPads. Pretty much word for word.
My kids use the echos in the house to look things up (and annoy me jokingly) all the time. Text is good but sometimes visuals are even better.
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Amazon to Unveil New Echo Speaker With Touchscreen as Soon as Tomorrow
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The same was said about iPads. Pretty much word for word.
My kids use the echos in the house to look things up (and annoy me jokingly) all the time. Text is good but sometimes visuals are even better.
I see nothing that suggests Apple is slow and lazy.
Left behind by who? How many Alexa and Echo units have been sold? It's not like they are rivals to Apple's core business.
Microsoft? Does it matter if they let their foot off the gas if they were only going about 35 in a 70 mph zone? The Surface has not brought them any appreciable market share.
Not sure if joking. Yes, lots of us on the forum.
Our house has an Echo and two Dots. Even our adult babysitter has two of her own for taking to the beach with her own young daughter and playing music.
We mostly use ours for home control, Prime music, and asking the usual weather and oddball questions that come up.
Oh stop. Amazon's devices even have a hardware microphone disable button, so they can't possibly be remotely turned on like, oh say, our Android and iOS devices.
Besides, NSA isn't tasked for internal ops unless you're talking to someone outside the US. It's internal agencies like the FBI that you should wear your foil hat for
And there's also Microsoft's/Harman Kardon's Invoke with built-in calling via Skype
Where are you, Apple?
Where are you, Apple?
Bezos is just more focused than Tim Cook...and it's really starting to show.
Apple's product line as of this exact moment looks a bit sedate. Nothing really stands out like prior years when Apple led nearly every segment in terms of product excitement.
Let's face it, the true competition will start once Apple enters the market, just like when they released the Apple Watch.
7" too small? Dude. 7" is the ideal size. Think about it.... 7-Elevens. 7 dwarves. 7, man, that's the number.
7 chipmunks twirlin' on a branch, eatin' lots of sunflowers on my uncle's ranch. You know that old children's tale from the sea.
Not with Siri. Apple kicked off the digital assistant AI movement, and you'd never know it because Siri is god damn horrible compared to Alexa.
Even after the last so-called Siri update, it actually sucked worse.
Amazon has sold over 11 million Echo devices since mid 2015 when it was made available to everyone (not just Prime members). It was the best selling device this past holiday season, and on several occasions it was listed as being sold out.
It's estimated that Amazon and Google will sell over 24 million units (combined) of their devices in 2017 alone.
Apple is missing out.
Apple won't outsell them combined but they'll outsell Amazon and Google individually adjusting for launch dates ..yadda yadda yadda
The Watch is deeply tied to iOS systems, and nobody else is allowed the same access. So it directly competes with nothing outside Apple's walled garden.
So the question is, will Apple stick with that rather closed model, or make something more open and broadly compatible to reach a bigger market?
I have an echo, I love it, but mostly just for listening to music. It has a really great "room filling" sound. You can sorta tell the direction the sound is coming from, but can't pinpoint it.
I have yet to unlock any other "skills" since I don't order anything via voice, own any smart "things", or feel like playing jeopardy just yet.
The phone angle could be interesting feature. Video like skype, camera like their look, touch like their tablets, might just work. Good someone pushing, willing to gamble, on new innovative products.
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I have an echo. It works well. It isn't amazing and doesn't get a ton of use, but it does work well.
What's funny is that Siri can do more with the same access. For example, with my hue lights I can tell Siri turn the lights on, 50% luminosity in red and it works. With the echo it's relegated to on or off.
But Siri also spazzes out, randomly cuts off, needs repeating and it can be a pain in the ass. If I had the option to not use Siri I might not.
But the issue is that Apple does everything in house and the best advancements in speech to text are part of consortiums and that's something Apple doesn't want to do and they don't exactly recruit well. I'm in a Phd program in a related field at a top university and they don't give two ***** about us or even bother to talk to us.
Give it a rest already, look again how large that population is inside those walls. Amazon wants to sell you products, Google wants windows to your soul, Apple makes devices and software that many, if not you, want.
no difference! greedy companies trying to make a useless product, with zero effort and innovation, in the hope that some will bite and buy it.
If Apple makes something that only works well within its own ecosystem, it'd be like back when the iPod only worked with a Mac.
I can definitely see a use for a screen. There have been a number of times that more information is available. For example, if you ask about a personality (or anything that Wikipedia can provide info for) Echo will tell you a brief bio but for more detailed information you'd have to go to the Wikipedia page. It would be nice to have the screen to continue reading. It would also be very useful for recipes, sports schedules and scores. And if they add a camera which I suspect they will, you can make video calls using various services.
I personally always thought that having a screen would make the device even more useful.