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Amazon Said to Plan Premium Alexa Speaker With Large Screen (bloomberg.com)
Amazon's Echo speakers have garnered a lot of interest over the past few months. Many people believe that they like Amazon Echo because of how easy it's to operate -- there is no display, you talk with Alexa, Amazon's digital assistant, which is reasonably good at understanding your queries. But in what seems like a deviation from the idea that made Echos so popular, Amazon is reportedly working on an Echo-like speaker, only this time it is more premium and has a 7-inch display, too. From a report on Bloomberg: The new device will have a touchscreen measuring about seven inches, a major departure from Amazon's existing cylindrical home devices that are controlled and respond mostly through the company's voice-based Alexa digital assistant, according to two people familiar with the matter. This will make it easier to access content such as weather forecasts, calendar appointments, and news, the people said. The latest Amazon speaker will be larger and tilt upwards so the screen can be seen when it sits on a counter and the user is standing, one of the people said.
I am not a shill and I have a Tap because a friend of my had an Echo and I loved it, mostly b/c I use Prime Music a ton and my young kids can easily interact w/the device to play what they want. Several of my friends have purchased the devices after using mine.
I mean, popular? No, not nearly as much as Amazon may like you to believe; however, they are pretty great devices for what they are and I think the recognition software is world's better than Siri (which, IMO, is completely and utterly useless and I never use on my Mac or phone).
By all means, be skeptical, however it doesn't mean they're not being used by people and they're not any good.
I'm surprised by the negativity in these /. posts. Do you all own an Amazon Echo? I can honestly say that the Echo in our kitchen gets more use than our TV's and and Stereos. So if I were to rank our non-work related tech usage by hours each day:
1) iPhones (of course)
2) Laptops and iPads
3) Amazon Echo
4) TV's
5) Various CD/MP3/Radio/Stereo players
We use the Echo for music, news, kitchen timers, weather, podcasts, jokes, etc. I probably use the "flash news briefing" the most, followed by playing music. When you are cooking, the hands free control over your media is really important. e.g. "Alexa Pause", "Alexa set a timer for 10 minutes", "Alexa Louder", "Alexa Skip", "Alexa Play Pandora Fallout Boy", "Alexa how many tablespoons are in a cup", etc.
The Echo gets things "right" where Siri doesn't because Amazon focused on specific use cases and made sure they worked properly. I haven't had a single house guest who did not want an Echo after seeing it in action while we cooked dinner.