[matwood]

> what are people actually using these for?

Off the top of my head from last night while cooking dinner:

* "hey google, add olive oil to the grocery list"

* "hey google, set a timer for 15 minutes for rice"

* "hey google, play some Christmas music"

* "hey google, how much time is left on the rice"

I could have fumbled with pulling out my iphone for all of these, but I would have had to stop prepping dinner, wash my hands, and then mess with the phone. Instead, it just fits in the flow of what I am doing.

[huehehue]

I soooo wish there was a way to define non-Amazon defaults for a lot of things, but I get why they'd want to lock it down. I don't suppose there's an open-source alternative to hack on?

"play some Christmas music" doesn't work so well if you want to use Spotify -- it has to become "play some Christmas music from Spotify", which feels awkward.

"order X" defaults to Amazon, where I might want to voice-order groceries using Instacart or order a pizza using GrubHub/Uber Eats/whatever.

[robbiemitchell]

As of a couple months ago, you can set Spotify as your default music player -- so you no longer have to do this.

[sikim]

I believe from iPhone 6S and above, there's an option to just say "Hey, Siri" to activate Siri without having to touch the phone, so you can basically do the same thing with iPhones.

[matwood]

There is, but my phone is either in my pocket or not right next to me. Google Home works fine across the room, and ties directly into Google Music. I can also tell it to cast to my better speakers if that's what I want it to do. Siri also has a weird way of doing multiple timers: http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2014/01/timers-and-reminder...

[drzaiusapelord]

But then he's listening to Christmas music via crappy phone speakers. I think people in this discussion are ignoring the advantage of having half-way decent speakers in Echo and Google Home.

Also, your phone may be deep in a pocket, in a coat, or in your purse in the other room. Echo/Home is right there in the kitchen waiting for you.

Lastly, you have no battery worries. Want 12+ hours of music in the kitchen? No problem.

[wmeredith]

"Hey Siri" doesn't work well, if at all, when the phone is in a pocket. I've tried.

[toxican]

5s had it as well, although it needed to be charging, which limited the usefulness of it greatly.

[mistermann]

> "hey google, play some Christmas music"

In Canada this just doers a google search, whereas "play Bruno Mars" fires up Spotify as expected.

[matwood]

I have Google Music so it finds music by matching on playlists/genre.

[FrancoDiaz]

Yeah, the hands free, walk around barking out commands to (Alexa in my case) is the big win IMO.