[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).