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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.
The idea is that you use it for giving Jeff Bezos more money
Did Amazon just invent a tablet?
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
I've bought pretty much all my audio CDs from Amazon (well, CDNow, originally) since about 1997. I buy a lot of music on disc. Turns out it's kind of hard to pirate contemporary classical music. In any case, I had a massive library of content available through Amazon's Cloud starting from the day they announced that everyone's music purchases would be put in there. That stuff just plays through the Dot. That's kind of great, really. I say "Alexa, play Kevin Puts And Legions Will Rise" and Kevin Puts plays. "Alexa, play Pandora; Alexa and set a sleep timer for 30 minutes." and I get a half hour of music random music.
Something else that's great? "Alexa, give me a news briefing" No more timing my shower so I catch the news at the top of the hour while I'm getting ready for work.
I can do that stuff about 10 different ways in my house, but the voice activation is legitimately handy. Especially since it's one step closer to getting to be Deckard in the middle of Blade Runner. Easily worth $50, anyway.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
So it will be a 7" tablet with a huge speaker bulging at its back :) great design choice :) So, just thinking here, if you were to release a 7" regular tablet with all Alexa functions that could connect to a bluetooth speaker, so you could put the tablet and the speaker wherever you please, now, by all means, that would be the most revolutionary product ever :)
:P
Now the only thing left to try to decode is what the freaking hell "this time it is more premium" means. Maybe they will make a less premium, a premium, a more premium and a supremely premium version, and maybe the latter will have a 60" screen with speakers on it that you could watch from your couch.
Gee, so many possibilities for innovation here, your head just keeps spinning
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Like all Alexa, utterly pointless.
Like all "Telephone" products, utterly pointless.
I thought the same, and worse. Until I started caring for someone who is a quadraplegic. Dragon works on his laptop, but there are times where a "Heh, Alexa" fits in nicely.
I come here for the love
Right so how exactly is this different from a Fire 7" tablet, and perhaps a Bluetooth speaker nearby? Well other than having a bigger speaker in an integrated unit that is.
I haven't tried them. Are any of these particularly useful? Will they act as hands free interfaces while driving? Can they truly parse human language? If I ask it how much a ten inch by ten inch by ten inch cube of water weighs, can it put together an answer?
I've bought pretty much all my audio CDs from Amazon (well, CDNow, originally) since about 1997
That's the problem with this. It's only useful if you put your eggs in one basket. If it could connect to my NAS and index my ID3 tags and stream my own local library, that would be truly useful - I don't want to pay them to store music far away just to cost me more bandwidth.
I've bought pretty much all my audio CDs from Amazon (well, CDNow, originally) since about 1997. I buy a lot of music on disc. Turns out it's kind of hard to pirate contemporary classical music. In any case, I had a massive library of content available through Amazon's Cloud starting from the day they announced that everyone's music purchases would be put in there. That stuff just plays through the Dot. That's kind of great, really. I say "Alexa, play Kevin Puts And Legions Will Rise" and Kevin Puts plays. "Alexa, play Pandora; Alexa and set a sleep timer for 30 minutes." and I get a half hour of music random music.
Something else that's great? "Alexa, give me a news briefing" No more timing my shower so I catch the news at the top of the hour while I'm getting ready for work.
I can do that stuff about 10 different ways in my house, but the voice activation is legitimately handy. Especially since it's one step closer to getting to be Deckard in the middle of Blade Runner. Easily worth $50, anyway.
A high-quality microphone that is always listening and voice recognition are useful right up to the point where they are used against you.
Oh, what's that, version 2 of this hardware will give you video calling support? Gee, an always-on video camera...can't think of a better thing to pair with an always-on microphone.
And people wonder why I still buy CDs to play in my old "dumb" hardware...
There IS a kitchen market. I currently have speakers in my kitchen that I connect to an iPod, with the eventual plan of a Pi with a touch screen taking its place. Cutting vegetables or stirring a pan can get boring. I do hate using a phone for research/recipes because I constantly have to unlock it and turn the screen back on.
However, their product is not going to catch on. They're making yet another walled garden in a post-AOL world. If it doesn't connect to your other gadgets and the home tech ecosystem, it's just not as relevant as it could be.
Screen stays on, wall power. Always-active voice control. I can see a use for something like this, but I can't see a use for the way Amazon wants to do it.
If you notice fewer and fewer relevant stories are making it onto the front page of slashdot and the firehose is largely full of shit (Not that it hasn't always been). I think we're starting to see the beginnings of SlashDot's death spiral
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Like all Pet Rocks, utterly pointless.
/ Pet Rocks are great for throwing at home invaders.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
The next iteration after that will feature a keyboard and a pointing device! Amazon will eventually take us back to using a desktop computer.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
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.
Don't be "that guy".
Straight out of the marketing materials. Seriously, who needs to do that while cooking? You marketing people need to join the real world.
So very sorry that as an active user of the devices my experience is counter to your opinion.
I like how this got posted right next to the article about UK legalizing mass surveillance. Between the government on one side and consumerism on the other we may yet get to 1984!
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
It's basically a glorified bluetooth speaker costing 5x as much as some others. Oh and it does a bunch of other things that can be done much better by other means.
Funny. We know that it's you guys in the alt right that pretend to work yourselves up about eugenics even though you want basically the same thing but through genocide. Bezos has never favored eugenics -- you know it, I know it. What's your game man? About surveillance, why don't you ask your soon to be government not to expand surveillance like many in the incoming cabinet have said they lwant to do.
Nah, there is always "that guy" who has one and knows "lots of others" that has them too. I mentioned that in my OP.
Wow. That's neat. In return for those cute little gimmicks, Amazon has a complete recording of everything that happens in your house. And, then they sell that to other companies. You're OK with that? Really?
You must be half deaf then, because the quality of the Alexa speaks for playing music is horrible. And you know what - the brain needs to have some rest. The instant gratification of doing 10 things at a time is nothing more than addiction. There is this concept called mindfulness, check it out, it really improves your life, though I'm afraid if your only spare time to get some news is in the shower, you may not have any. Stop giving in to all this BS all the corporations are trying to put you into. Take your time, think about what you do, live in the moment, not in 10 difference places in 10 different days somewhere in the next 6 months. Those corporate bastards can really do without the greed of ever increasing profits. The world will not end if there isn't "growth" for a day, for a month, or for a year.
Nope. Amazon is perfectly agreeable with you downloading the music you buy as well as making it available for you to stream via the dot and sister devices. They make it trivially easy.
You can do whatever you like with your music as purchased from Amazon. I download everything I buy. There's even a bulk-download capability. it's awesome.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
He said he had a Dot, which can connect to external speakers.
Oh, you mean that smartphone you've been carrying in your pocket for years now? That high quality microphone? That voice-recognition? That always-on connection to the world?
The Echo and Amazon brethren are the least of our problems here. Also, as currently implemented, these devices recognize their names locally, and then talks to the world. I have watched the network traffic quite carefully -- that's how it works. For now, anyway.
I'm considerably more concerned with the smartphones. They're much more powerful, and the concern I have isn't so much what a corporation might do with my speech (try to sell me somehting?), but what the government might do with it. Because generally, a corporation can dangle temptation, but a government can do you direct and consequential harm.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Uh, well, from what I've seen iPhone is not popular, Android users outnumbering em at least 15:1.
Or maybe anecdotal, personal samples are not representative? I've seen a Surface and an Echo up close outside a store.
It is interesting that after you mentioned it I had to scroll practically to the bottom of the Amazon product page to find that indeed the dot has 3.5mm jack. Definitely outside of the area I would look for that.
It is not in the product photos on the top, but still there is no information for the DAC or if there is a toslink integrated into the 3.5mm jack. Amazon really failed marketing this properly at least to me.
I've interacted with the original tall echo speaker and was really disappointed by that.
"Alexa Play Pandora Fallout Boy", "Alexa how many tablespoons are in a cup"
I'm struggling to figure out which of these two is the more retarded request.
That's why I won't get an echo. I'll get a google home. This way I can cloud save my entire music collection without having to expressly buy it from google.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
They actually do have sane free limits. However, they seem to "match" to deduplicate and use their own copy unless you manually make exceptions for each song...individually. And that's no good if you meticulously correct your metadata and add high-quality album art (or your preferred cover for an album with multiple releases).
This problem also exists with Amazon and Apple, but at least with Google it's free.
I pay $2/month on top of Prime for functionally unlimited (250,000 tracks) music storage. I'm ok with that. I also have a 144TB file server in my spare bedroom that has all the music I could ever dream of hearing on it and a bunch of Kodi devices where I can play content. But you you know what I can't do with that stuff? I can't talk to it and have it do something.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
Where do you get that the anonymous coward is alt-right?
It's usually the left worried about corporations over-extending and abusing the rights of its consumers.
Or now that a republican is back in office is it corporations evil than government?
I do all that with my phone while I'm cooking... but I don't need another device because I do all that with my phone.
But you you know what I can't do with that stuff? I can't talk to it and have it do something.
And that's because Amazon won't support that, not because they can't. And paying money to store something I already have stored is not something I will do no matter how cheap. I also have my own metadata entered and don't want it replaced with Amazon's, since they do matching and de-dup (maybe won't matter as much on a device with no GUI).
I'm glad you have something that works for you and no one is taking that way from you. But most people don't want disparate walled garden silos. I would much rather buy things and have them work together via some sort of interoperability standard. For music, that can be as simple as standard file formats, ID3 tags and SMB. Or even DLNA support.
alt-right is just a generic insult that doesn't mean anything anymore. It's a way to play certain cards while avoiding the stigma of being someone who pulls those same cards in every discussion.
Oh man, have I been waiting for something like this... Guys, if you're at someone's home with one of these gizmos, try to get alone with it, then: "Hey dumb box, order me 50 pounds of cat food, overnight it...every month, from now on..."
They couldn't afford to offer the service at the price they do without de-duplication. That's what makes it feasible to offer so much storage for so little money - they're not actually storing anywhere near the number of bits that they appear to be storing.
I have seen plenty of Surfaces in the wild. I even recently spotted a DJ using a Surface Book rather than a computer with a glowing fruit on the back.
15:1 is not accurate overall, though I can't say what your personal sample looks like. Worldwide Apple has about 15% of the smartphone market, which makes it a bit less than 7:1 Android. In the US, Apple has about 40% of the market; 52% is Android and the rest is all other platforms (Windows Phone, people still hanging on to their BlackBerry).
Alexa DOES connect to your home tech ecosystem. There are Alexa skills for controlling a lot of home automation products. Currently, it is the most capable of the voice assistant products in that regard, though Google intends to catch up.
Key word being products. Not DLNA / SMB / HLS or any standard streaming / file access / media sharing standards. Only if it's a retail standalone product.
And also, it's hard to call cloud-based hardware "home tech." Amazon's devices aren't connecting to devices on your LAN directly at all.
The main obstacle to making such a thing isn't Amazon. It's that there isn't a big enough market for large e-ink displays to create a mass market for them. As a result, the displays are very expensive, and the result is that such an e-reader is too expensive to be popular.
Another problem is the lack of color. Many current textbooks use a lot of it.
Finally, there is the competition from tablets. If a large e-reader costs as much as a Microsoft Surface, most people will buy the Surface instead because it does more. People can justify an additional $100 device like a Kindle Paperwhite, but fewer can justify an additional $500 or $1000 device.
My guess is that a large e-reader would have to sell for $250 or less to have a chance of widespread success. Currently it is impossible to hit that price point because the display costs too much. And until a large e-reader or some other product creates significant demand for large e-ink screens, the display will always cost too much.
That's my entire point. I knew the correct figure was somewhere between 1/2 and 1/3 in America, but since my circle of friends and family is mostly a mixture of Apple-hating geeks and relatively poor people (and also I told my family early on that they are getting zero tech support from me if they choose to buy Apple products), my own personal experience is skewed.
So, if the binary guy (10010110 whatever) wants to smugly pretend that the world revolves around his own personal life experience instead of looking for sales figures for the Surface or Echo, that's his prerogative, but he should be called out on it.