“This is getting ridiculous and I’m about to just toss the whole thing and move back to Google,” one Redditor said of the “full-volume” ads for Alexa+ on their Echo Show.
Oh sweet summer child, Google is NOT going to be any better at this. That will just be changing one corporate evil for another.
I assume that there’s a segment of the population that:
Does vaguely like the idea of at least some home automation.
Doesn’t have the technical expertise and/or time to wrangle with something like HomeAssistant. Wants something that works off-the-shelf.
Doesn’t want to spend much money up front on a system, which creates pressure for an ad-supported model.
I will say that I’m still more than a little fuzzy on what substantial practical benefits people are actually getting from their deployed systems, though.
For at least some of this, like having a voice command to check the weather, a smartphone has to be pretty widely-deployed competition.
The convenience is being able to sit your fat ass on the couch and yell vaguely in the direction of a smart assistant to turn off the lights without having to get off the couch.
The idea that a smart refrigerator could tell you when you’re about out of milk or coming up on the expiration date instead of having to open your fridge and take a look is cool but the privacy and other implications outweigh the benefits.
It’s a mild convenience that supposedly frees up extra time to do something else. The sad part is that something else is usually staying glued to your phone, social media, or TV.
I want to believe that the accumulation of not walking and moving because of smart home devices is offset by a shorter life expectancy and health issues.