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You're almost speaking to my point, Apple did create one of the best and widely adopted computing platforms out there with the Smart Phone. And yet... even you describe it as a 'computing device'. Echo/Alexa is the first step to that ubiquitous IoT future, where computing is sort of removed from the terminology and services are just available on demand in the most natural of human interfaces -- voice. Similar to that first moment of watching a 5 year old ( or 60 year old ) accessing YouTube on an Ipad ( simplified touch interface ) when the first i-devices came out. The voice interface will be just as transformative, if not more so. The moment for me was when my 2 year old niece screamed, "Alexa, play the gummy bear song"... and it started playing, and she started dancing. That was a game changing moment for me, to realize that this device opens the doors for the young, the old, the impaired, and even the tech averse to access all kinds of cool tech that we take for granted. Hell even for me, "Alexa, play the latest 'how I built this' podcast" Don't get me wrong, typing and touch is infinitely more efficient and powerful, but voice will be infinitely more accessible. Touch devices, as simple as they are, still require a mental model of which icons provide which services, clicking through and typing out requests and looking at results, versus what my 2 year old niece was able to do with Alexa. |
I disagree that the most natural of human interfaces is voice. It's like saying that listening to an audiobook will always be a better way to consume media than watching a video. Audio only is great for some use cases, but not most. Humans developed the ability to see, touch, hear, and speak for a reason. After all, radios predated television by a long shot. Then when televisions were released, they pretty much cannibalized the sale of the home radio, because it added the ability to see in real time what you were listening to.
Speech is most certainly an important part of communication for humans, but it's just one, and only best for certain things. Simple queries like "what's the weather today?" or "play some music" is better said than typed, I would agree. But for lots of other tasks its just not efficient. I'd rather pull out my phone and search for restaurant recommendations than try and fumble around communicating by voice. When I pull up the Yelp app, I can instantly view a list of many of restaurants and because I'm used to the interface and visual cues, like the number of stars, location, and reviews, I can discern what I think I'd like very quickly. Now imagine a human trying to describe what they saw on that app to me. It'd be impossible to do. It's just very difficult to convey subtleties with voice only.
As an aside, if Apple wanted to get into the IoT business and pose a threat to Amazon, I think if they released some sort of "Always On" listening mode and began giving developers the ability to build apps which responded to it, they'd already be caught up. If I could say "play some music" or "Face Time Dave" and it solved the simple query problem, I don't know that I'd ever use my Echo again (I maybe use it once or twice a week now).