[m3mnoch]

this actually reminds me a bit of the amazon echo in that it is completely and totally household dependent.

i have an echo and think it's completely amazing. my friend, basically has siri in his pocket and doesn't understand my crazy-love. the difference is that he's a single guy with his own apartment who always has his phone or computer within reach. i'm not.

my house is a family of four (me, the beautiful wife, a couple pre-teen boys) with a large common area filled with lots of traffic and commotion. the kids don't have phones. my wife and i have phones and computers, but they're not always in reach. whether she's making everyone's lunches in the morning, i'm playing munchkin with the boys, she's helping them with homework, i'm washing dishes after dinner, etc. -- it's rarely convenient (not to mention the poor social etiquette around the dinner table) to whip out a phone and do any 60-seconds-or-more task. with a family, you are kind of forced to be fully engaged most of the time.

this means we use the heck out of the amazon echo for the shopping list (also the music player, weather check, and timers for the boys) out of pure, unadulterated convenience.

in a busy household, it may sound cliche, but it's EXTREMELY convenient to just say "alexa, add sandwich bags to the shopping list" and the like while you're elbow-deep into putting away leftovers.

but having a free, physical button that magically reorders trash bags or detergent or paper towels placed in the very location where you would consume such things? magical!

because, again, in a busy household there are about a thousand other things you need to get to by the time you notice "oh, we're almost out of toilet paper" and inevitably, you'll catch yourself standing in costco next week trying to remember all the things you were almost out of.

and these are just the benefits to me -- for tide? this seems like a huge opportunity for brand lock-in and is probably even a joint venture between them and amazon.

[ghaff]

I'm single but I still like the Echo quite a bit. It understands my voice much better than Siri as well.

The shopping list is one win. It's also convenient just to ask the weather as I'm about to head out the door, for example.

[iak8god]

> but having a free, physical button that magically reorders trash bags or detergent or paper towels placed in the very location where you would consume such things? magical!

I don't get it. I keep tens of such things in my kitchen alone (paper towels, napkins, dish sponges, aluminum foil, plastic wrap, etc, etc). Does anyone really want a bank of these buttons lined up inside each cabinet? Wouldn't it be about 1000x more convenient to just have an app for this with all my Dash buttons running on the little computer that's always within arm's reach?

[m3mnoch]

more convenient? no.

i would certainly rather have a small bank of interchangeable buttons for the 1/2 dozen items below my sink (dishwasher pods, 408, windex, sponges, trash bags, dish soap) than having to (with wet hands) find my phone/app/screen/button/click. those, of course, would be different than the small bank of buttons near the shelf in the garage. which would be different than the small bank of buttons in the laundry room.

would it make the inside of the sink cabinet door nicer-looking to have an app in my pocket? probably. also, this isn't a zero-sum thing. we can have both!

[iak8god]

We'll have to agree to disagree then. I don't want a bank of buttons anywhere. Do you really want 30 different devices to set up and then worry about whether they've lost the connection to your wifi or run out of battery life or had their contacts corroded by your ever-soggy button presses?

I'd like an app with a lineup of Amazon Dash consumables. If my hands are filthy or wet I'll try to keep a single intention in my head for 30 seconds until that's no longer the case. And if I don't feel like doing that I can just write a note on a pad.

[pkoh]

Luckily along with the buttons they're putting out an API for doing exactly that (https://www.amazon.com/oc/dash-replenishment-service). I wouldn't be surprised if some apps pop up soon that do exactly what you described. The buttons are just easier to market to the general population.