[germinalphrase]

I feel exited about home assistants in the same way I am excited about home automation: the premise seems useful in a general way, but I struggle to think of use cases that have a meaningful effect on my lifestyle. Also - I can't shake the privacy concerns.

[slantyyz]

Putting aside the privacy concerns, the home automation + home assistant combo is actually pretty useful. It definitely beats fumbling through apps to do smart home stuff.

Since getting an Echo, I notice my wife constantly changing the temperature on the Nest because, well, it's so easy to bark out a command when you don't want to get up or don't have your phone handy.

Prior to getting an echo, I only used my Wemo switches for scheduling lights to come on and off when we were away. I use voice commands for turning groups on and off all the time now. Since it's dark when I take out the dogs in the a.m., I use a "good morning" routine that turns on my downstairs lights and tells me the outside temperature so I know which coat to wear. I'm surprised at how dependent I'm becoming on Alexa for otherwise mundane stuff.

Having said all of that, I guess I made the choice to value convenience/functionality over privacy. I see the Amazon/Google assistants as "Big Brother with benefits".

[mercer]

> I'm surprised at how dependent I'm becoming on Alexa for otherwise mundane stuff.

It's interesting that I had a similar experience with the AirPods I got as a gift. I would never have bought them myself, but now that I have them I keep discovering ways in which they solve a 'problem', however trivial, that I had in the past with wired earbuds/headphones, or offer a new use-case. I often find myself having one of the earbuds in throughout the day, and I wasn't too much of a headphone-user to begin with.

If they'd break, I'd probably buy new ones immediately, despite the price.

(Well, I'd research the possibility of cheaper bluetooth earbuds first)

[joshstrange]

I get the temperature from my Apple Watch 90% of the time but I have been using Alexa more and more now that I have Echo/Dot's everywhere because I don't put my watch on until the end of my morning routine. I'm growing quite fond of saying "Alexa, Good Morning" and my lights coming on, it giving me the temperature, and it playing the 2-3 "news brief"'s I've picked. I'm VERY close to removing a few daily short podcasts from my podcasting app (Overcast) because I just listen to them on Alexa now.

[slantyyz]

I find the Routines feature can be quite useful, especially if they are performing multiple tasks. I just added "start work" and "quitting time" to toggle my office lights. I wanted to use "work time" in place of "start work" but that sounded too much like "what time" to Alexa. Routines are also useful for controlling my TV and media devices with my Harmony Hubs (although don't get me started on how you have to use a third party service to control each additional Harmony Hub you have).

[jvolkman]

Yesterday I said "hey google, turn on the kitchen lights" because my hands were full and the switch was across the room. I wouldn't say it had a meaningful effect on my lifestyle, but it was useful at that moment.

[eddieroger]

That's my most common use of Alexa as well - turn on the lights, turn off the TV. Sometimes I will ask it to set a timer, but really it's a hub for my home automation. I would miss it if it was gone, but my life would go on.

[slantyyz]

If I were to look at the type of activities we use Alexa for in our household, most of our commands revolve around smart home, weather and lists/reminders. Once in a while we'll ask it to do a unit conversion or some search engine task, but that's few and far between.

[spike021]

>I struggle to think of use cases that have a meaningful effect on my lifestyle

My personal feeling about home assistants is that they aren't supposed to be "meaningful", at least not in any significant way. I recently bought a Google Home Mini and I only use it occasionally, but when I do it's very supplementary. Example being that I've been re-reading the Harry Potter books and I've come across British terms I didn't recognize, so I just ask the Mini what the term means and when it works (80% of the time, I'd say) it's pretty useful as a utility.

But I'm not going out of my way to use it in such a way that it replaces something significant in my life.

[untog]

I have Google Homes in my house and I agree that after the initial feeling of huge usability it really doesn't achieve all that much. Chromecast integration is both wonderful and awful - I can say "OK Google, play <TV Show> on the living room TV" and it'll do exactly that... but if I want to pause it I have to talk over the show I'm currently watching.

All that said, I wonder what it would offer an elderly person. If my Grandma were still alive I'd be very tempted to rewire all her light switches to be wi-fi enabled and set them up with a Google Home/Alexa. I can see it being a huge, huge benefit to the old and frail.

[bradbatt]

I'd be interested to see how older people interacted with the device. I know someone who got their parent a device and they kept "Alexa" written on a post-it because they couldn't remember the device name.

It's a big shift in technology, but since it is voice interactive, rather than computer/smart phone, I think it does provide an ease of use for older people who might not be as technology savvy.

SNL did a great skit on this … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvT_gqs5ETk

[MBCook]

Good news. The BomePod really appears to be a high quality speaker that they were forced to shove Siri functionality into.

No one is buying $350 home assistants, but if it’s a really high quality speaker (we’ll see) then the price is reasonable.

The marketing around it is really weird and confused. At this point I wonder what Apple even thinks it is.

[snuxoll]

The HomePod is also capable of being used as a HomeKit hub, so I think Apple is actually trying to push the home assistant angle some more now that there is three options to get into HomeKit proper (beyond simple in-home toggling of devices and reading sensors) depending on what products you want to buy (Apple TV, leave-at-home iPad and now HomePod).

Personally I'm really hoping to see them expand Siri over the coming year(s), especially given how...dumb...she is right now - expanding what can be done with SiriKit and allowing additional Siri functionality to be installed directly on the HomeKit would make my mind up on buying one easy (I'll still probably get one for a nice speaker to play music with, though).