Setting a time, setting alarms, playing music, turning lights on and off, controlling media, (eg Netflix), checking the weather, etc. I'm just focusing on the universal use cases, and excluding varying degrees of niche usesnlike interactively displaying recipes and saying the rosary.
Especially in rooms where you don't already have a sound system, it's really a no-brainer. And I question that you've ever interacted with a smartphone if you think either the responsiveness or the convenience (not everybody is glued to their phone, and sometimes it's in the other room).
This need people have to think everything is either super-tubular-amazing or completely-useless-dross is _exhausting_. For anybody interested in understanding instead of posturing online to fill some emotional void, it's plainly obvious how smart speakers could be a modest improvement to QoL for many people.
I'm definitely in the middle ground somewhere. I do think they're mostly disappointing. That said, they understand properly phrased commands well enough and are somewhat useful, if hardly essential, for a variety of simple tasks.
>Especially in rooms where you don't already have a sound system, it's really a no-brainer.
I'm going to want some sort of speaker in my bedroom--used to have a CD player--and a smart speaker is as useful a candidate as anything, and it can function as an alarm clock as well.
Yea, it really is a no-brainer for a modest QoL improvement, unless you have objections to the privacy implications. I'm really just losing tolerance for this tendency to only express dumb, low-dimensional opinions that are so heavily detached from reality, like the GP comment's claim that they can't comprehend it having nonzero value to someone's workflows.
I wonder if it's the same dynamic that's contributing tk the polarization of political discourse: the structure of information flow in the social media era rewards being punchy, simplistic, and hysterical. The incentives feel inescapable for the masses of people out there that are too hollow to hold beliefs or engage with reality in any meaningful way.
Doing it on my phone involves taking my phone out of my pocket or figuring out where I left it. Doing it on my alexa devices means mindlessly speaking out loud anywhere in my house, also when my hands are full or messy.
It affects QOL when you get used to it along with a wide range of other features which are similarly tiny by themselves (turning the TV on/off; changing volume; searching for something on my FireTV instead of using the virtual keyboard; turning lights on/off; using it as an alarm clock; telling my son in his room upstairs that dinner is ready without yelling; having a single command to turn of the lights and turn on a playlist to fall asleep to) but that combined adds up to a whole lot reduced friction.
Yeah. Those are the sort of occasionally handy things that Alexa is somewhat useful for. But QoL? (I don't even generally use it as a timer in the kitchen as opposed to spending 5 seconds to set a timer by hand that shows me a countdown.)
Especially in rooms where you don't already have a sound system, it's really a no-brainer. And I question that you've ever interacted with a smartphone if you think either the responsiveness or the convenience (not everybody is glued to their phone, and sometimes it's in the other room).
This need people have to think everything is either super-tubular-amazing or completely-useless-dross is _exhausting_. For anybody interested in understanding instead of posturing online to fill some emotional void, it's plainly obvious how smart speakers could be a modest improvement to QoL for many people.