Amazon releases screen-based Echo Show
James Vincent at The Verge:
Amazon has officially unveiled its latest Echo product: a touchscreen device with built-in Alexa called the Echo Show. The device was extensively leaked this week, but is now available to preorder from Amazon for $229.99.
I'll admit, I don't understand the "voice cannister" category of products that began about two years ago with Amazon's Echo. My own experience with Siri has probably discouraged me, since I find it unreliable for anything beyond setting a timer or asking for the score of a game.
Today, Amazon released a new device, Echo Show, which includes a display. This enables some new features like video calling, and now the Echo can display its answers (like showing the weather, or a product page on Amazon) in addition to just speaking. But I still find myself baffled by this product.
At AllThingsD in 2007, Steve Jobs said:
We’re getting to the point where everything’s a computer in a different form factor. So what, right? So what if it’s built with a computer inside it? It doesn’t matter. It’s—what is it? How do you use it? You know, how does the consumer approach it?
So what about Echo Show differentiates it from any other computer? Certainly, putting the voice UI front and center does. I suppose the form factor, being stationary as it is, also differentiates to some degree. Still, I don't feel this device is particularly differentiated from, say, an iPad, which of course can handle voice interaction, video calling, and all the rest. The Echo is unique in that it puts voice first, but it is hardly unique in what it does.
When I already have an Apple Watch on my wrist, an iPhone in my pocket, and iPads, Macs, and Apple TVs all around my house, it's hard for me to see the value in the Echo products. But, they seem to have found an audience and generated significant interest in this new category.