[piker]

My father is one of the last generation to be affected by the polio virus. As he is increasing in age, his body is failing, but his mind is sharp. We got him an Echo Dot for Christmas hoping that the ecosystem will build out a feature set on the device that will make his life better as he continues to lose his manual dexterity. My guess is there are a number of similarly situated people who could benefit if this platform delivers on potential. The addressable market may be small, but maybe the voice-recognition front-end is relatively trivial once you have the text API down. (Haven't had much experience with it yet, but optimistic based on his interest in the product.)

[Retric]

You can use most websites in voice only mode with the right software. If he was blind then voice only is more compelling, but he is probably better of with a full PC.

[BraveNewCurency]

Apples and Oranges.

Have you ever seen someone talk to a PC from across the room? Is there any popular PC voice software that is "always on" and doesn't get itself into bad states? ("dragondictate.exe has stopped")

I personally have taken 100's of pictures of Windows dialog boxes on giant advertising/airport displays. If people who are paid big bucks to manage a display can't keep it running flawlessly, how will someone who has bad motor skills and bad eyesight?

I'm not saying Alexa is more useful than a PC. But I am saying that Alexa is zero maintenance, and a PC is not. It's the same reason Chromebooks outsell laptops -- it's not that they do more than laptops, but what they can do, chromebooks do "better".

[daveguy]

I wish alexa was zero maintenance. It gets itself into a bad state about 1/4 of the time. Where bad state means having to guess some obscure word to get it to work properly (alexa stop, alexa cancel, alexa exit, alexa pause). You're right though, for poor motor skills and eyesight it is still probably better than a PC. I wouldn't depend on that MyBuddy app for anyone who actually needed it though. It is too unreliable. If you are counting on that, much better to get a wearable (monitor or self-activated).

[Retric]

There are 10 of thousands of people that interact with there PC's purely or 98% through voice due to heath issues. It's slower than a keyboard and far from perfect, but it's more useful than alexia right now. In 5 or 10 years who knows, but there is little reason to wait, IMO.

I do think Alexia is great for several things, but shopping for example benefits from more feedback.

[piker]

Yes, but it seems like Amazon might be interested in removing one of those layers of abstraction and encouraging development of voice-only applications--which is a benefit to him. I'm excited about it.