Apple Piles On the Features, and Users Say, 'Enough!' (nytimes.com)

In a few hours, Apple will kickstart its annual developer conference. At the event, the company is expected to announce new MacBook laptops, the next major updates for iOS and MacOS, new features of Siri, and a home-speaker. Ahead of the conference, The New York Times has run a story that talks some of the headline announcements that Apple announced last year: one of which was, the ability to order food, scribble doodles and send funny images known as stickers in chats on its Messages app. Speaking with users, engineers and industry insiders, the Times reports that many of its existing features -- including expansion of Messages -- are too complicated for many users to figure out (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternative source). From the report: The idea was to make Messages, one of the most popular apps on the iPhone, into an all-purpose tool like China's WeChat. But the process of finding and installing other apps in Messages is so tricky that most users have no idea they can even do it, developers and analysts say.

Comments

Re:What happened to "it just works"?

[ShanghaiBill]

But very few Alexa owners actually use it for shopping. Only 10% use it to order things.

I have never used mine to order anything. I buy toilet paper in bulk at Costco, not online, and the things I do buy from Amazon are rarely consumables.

So what do I use it for? First thing every morning while I am making tea: "Alexa, news report". While I am making dinner: "Alexa, set a timer for 5 minutes" and "Alexa, play a Willie Nelson song". I also use it to connect to my IoT hub: "Alexa, turn off the sink light" and "Alexa, lock the front door".