
Amazon Dash - sheri
https://fresh.amazon.com/dash
======
dotBen
HN'ers asking why this isn't a cell phone app take note - this exemplifies why
we _(geeks)_ don't make good use cases for consumer tech and we should always
be careful looking to our own habits and values when in a Product Development
role.

We're rarely the target customer and rarely behave like "average Joe". We're
naturally resistant to superfluous redundancy _( "My phone can already snap a
barcode, I don't need a separate device")_ when consumers don't even see the
duplication let alone the issue. They don't separate devices (or even apps)
has having layers of similarity and just see things for their end
functionality.

My mother would see a phone and apps as completely separate functionality to a
physical device like this. She probably would have the Amazon Fresh scanner,
the _(theoretical)_ Google Shopping Express scanner and the _(also
theoretical)_ Whole Foods scanner and wouldn't even consider the duplication,
let alone be frustrated by it. She doesn't care about the potential for an
"open standard"/"common standard".

She also has an AppleTV and a ChromeCast connected to the same smart-TV that
also has native apps within it _(she mostly uses the native apps)_. Again, she
sees no issue with that and might even buy an Amazon FireTV if she felt it was
more compelling for one use.

Ultimately we shouldn't assume consumers value convergence, especially when it
creates ever increasing complexity in user experience _(eg opening an app to
snap a barcode vs pressing a single button on an Amazon Fresh scanner)_

ADDED: If you don't have parents that also work in tech, go visit them and
just watch them use technology without prompting. Ask them about their
experiences, their frustrations, their decisions behind purchasing specific
equipment and downloading particular apps. It's very insightful.

~~~
zanny
Opening an app is, thankfully, something the tech industry has managed to
train the average consumer to do.

I'd argue though remembering where you put this thing, or "oh hey the wifi
password got changed why isn't the food scanner working?" adds lots more
complexity than hitting an app icon. The app route also enables you to have
multiple scanners - since the target audience of such a product is probably
already heavy on tech, and most probably have multiple cell phones.

I guess that last line might be the issue. It isn't really a cell phone, it is
a capacitive touch computer with a microphone and speaker, but that is
something we haven't yet conveyed well.

~~~
dotBen
Respectfully, there's geek-thinking again. Wifi password changing is a straw-
man argument - most households use the default SSID and password that came
with the router _(if you don 't believe me go to a residential area outside of
SF and see how many 2WireXXX or ATTXXXX SSID's there are)_. Those that do set
their own password never change it again.

Apps enabling multiple scanners - again assumes multiple smartphone ownership
in the house in order for everyone to use it vs just having a single dedicated
scanner that _(as Amazon suggests in their site)_ hangs on your refrigerator.

I'm not even sure the average consumer is sufficiently trained _yet_ about
opening apps. I heard a segment on NPR recently where multiple callers (and
the host) referred to a company's mobile-optimized website as an "app", many
normal people don't really know what an app really is. I'll dig out the Pew
Research study on mobile phones that said something like 20% of smartphone
owners don't install _any_ apps on their phones beyond those that came with
the device (perhaps because they're fuzzy on the concept).

UPDATE:
[http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2012-01-30/sm...](http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2012-01-30/smartphone-
app-usage/52891556/1) \- 17% of smartphone owners don't use any apps at all
according to Pew.

~~~
AdrianRossouw
I'm a geek and I don't use apps. I only use safari, flipboard (which is html
based), and comiczeal. I'm _actively_ building a streaming web-based
replacement for my comic book reader.

I think people who think their phone can replace a dedicated barcode scanner
should be forced to stand in a busy super market where all the checkout
counters are forced to use an app to scan everything.

------
dangrossman
Based on the comments, I'm guessing few poeople here have ever worked retail
and held a barcode scanner.

Break out your phone, load up your barcode scanning app (there's 20 seconds
right there even if the phone is in your pocket). Now try to actually scan
something with it. You'll spend another 30 seconds lining up the little on-
screen window with the code, rotating things, waiting for the camera to focus,
and even having to move to another location if you're not in bright lighting.
It's a _terrible_ experience and that's why you don't see stores checking
people out using the camera of an iPad.

A barcode scanner, on the other hand, just works. You point it in the general
vicinity of the barcode, press the button, and it's scanned. You don't have to
perfectly align anything, be in specific lighting, or wait for a camera and an
app. I'm sure you've seen cashiers run multiple things over a scanner in under
a second.

Amazon Dash isn't just a subset of your phone's functionality. It's a
dedicated barcode scanner, which is hardware you don't have on your phone.

~~~
mattmanser
In England we have a lot of self-serve counters with scanners built in. Is
that not something Americans have yet?

Anyway, it doesn't 'just work'. Often you stand there like a lemon trying to
scan again and again. You can pick out the people who've barely used them as
they always take an age to scan everything.

And each major supermarket has their own version of these things and they're
all equally as cumbersome to use, so I think barcode scanning gets easy with
practice but it definitely doesn't 'just work'.

~~~
jonknee
Lemons are a good example of something that works poorly for self checkout.
They are small and round which is hard to have a barcode label displayed on.
They're worried about weight and that you aren't stealing. It's often much
easier to scan a barcode when you're holding the scanner and not the object.

Though in this case, you could also just say "lemons" and be done with it.

~~~
mattmanser
Like a lemon's an idiom, sorry! I just meant that it takes a while to get good
at scanning.

------
alaskamiller
Number of steps to scan grocery by phone:

1\. Find your phone

2\. Unlock

3\. Swipe left to home page three or maybe four

4\. Visually scan for the AmazonFresh icon and tap

5\. Wait for loading

6\. Start scanning action

7\. Confirm and pay

Number of steps to scan grocery by Dash:

1\. Get device from drawer or pantry

2\. Press one button and scan

3\. Confirm and pay

For the target demo (30+, married, households with children), option 2 wins
hands down. Because you will easily be distracted and stop using option 1 and
not complete checkout.

Amazon knows CPG and commerce better than you do.

~~~
hansy
Not to be a pedant but you're neglecting steps in your Dash algorithm that you
implemented in the phone version (possibly creating a visual bias).

Number of steps to scan grocery by Dash:

1.) Find scanner

2.) Turn on scanner

3.) Start scanning action

4.) Find laptop (or mobile phone)

5.) Navigate to browser

6.) Sign in to Amazon Fresh Account

7.) Confirm and pay

I don't honestly think the Dash would provide a discernibly faster experience,
but I do believe it would be the option your target demographic opts for
simply because the Dash is explicitly designed for this type of task. Just
because my phone can turn on the television doesn't mean I won't reach for the
remote every time.

~~~
Too
1\. Do you have to find your frying pan every time you cook food also? This is
a kitchen utensil with a dedicated storage location. Its not comparable to
finding your phone which might still be left in your car even.

2\. I think its very unlikely a device like this in year 2014 will have a
power on button. Scan and power on will most likely be the same thing.
Charging battery of yet another device is still a hurdle though

4-7 is something you only do once a week, and this action could still be done
on the phone,

------
wehadfun
For some reason this made me thing of
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat)

~~~
dgarrett
The CueCat has a wire.

Possibly a case of doing one thing wrong that ruined the entire product. We'll
see.

~~~
chockablock
CueCat also required proprietary software to be installed on a PC or Mac. It
was not a standalone device.

And the industrial design! It was a chintzy elongated white plastic _cat_ ,
with an IR window across the mouth. And it was finicky as hell to use,
compared to a real barcode scanner.

------
bluthru
Listening to a young child carefully pronounce words for the narration was a
bit distracting and slightly irritating. A sentence or so would be fine, but
narrating the whole video was an exercise in patience.

Or do I just have a cold, black heart?

~~~
darkstar999
Sorry, you have a cold, black heart. I liked it.

~~~
AVTizzle
I thought it was adorable, and a stark contrast from a lot of Amazon's other
less-than-thrilling product videos

------
olalonde
My first thought: people are going to bring this to retail shops to get the
benefits of brick-and-mortars shopping while benefiting from the low prices /
delivery of Amazon.

A lot of people already kind of do this. They go to a shop, find the items
they like and look up on the web if they can get a cheaper price by ordering
online.

This version of the product might not be so practical for this use case though
since it requires a WiFi connection and can probably only scan AmazonFresh
barcodes.

~~~
r00fus
Exactly. Which Amazon smiles at currently and encourages through their barcode
scanning app (this will require internet access for Dash, though - unless it
comes with some variation of whispersync).

~~~
simcop2387
Says it needs an internet connection, but a cell phone as a hotspot would do
that pretty easily.

------
jameswilsterman
So assumedly this will work in a store also? Could I go 'grocery shopping' at
Whole Foods and end up having everything shipped to me by Amazon for cheaper?

Can easily see this evolving into an Amazon price comparison tool for mobile
use. Maybe I get a flash discount if the GPS has me standing in a Best Buy
already.

~~~
atwebb
Well there's no screen, maybe it could yell at you or alert your phone?

I actually thought that this is exactly what it was for when reading the first
few bullet points and didn't think of home first, just a "Oh wow, they're
making showroom shopping even easier."

------
donretag
"Dash ... works directly with your AmazonFresh account"

Which means it is only available in three locations (SoCal/SF/Seattle).

~~~
hyperbovine
Why, that's hardly 20 million people!

~~~
sukuriant
All software must work for at least 150 million people to be considered
remotely useful, haven't you heard? :D

------
revelation
Why is Amazon gold plating their fresh service when they didn't manage to
meaningfully expand it since 2007?

~~~
techsupporter
Even if they hadn't expanded beyond Seattle, Seattle is their "home market"
where lots of their employees live and a rather good market for a wide-
availability grocer. Fred Meyer stores nor its QFC sibling hold a candle to
any halfway-decent actual-Kroger from back home. Safeway is just Tom Thumb
with a 20% markup. This isn't exactly the Dallas/Fort Worth grocery region,
with 11 (yes, eleven) full-service grocery chains. Besides, having innovation
on a local scale probably matters as much to Amazon as innovation on a
national scale because it gets them shopping data and a "test platform" that
can serve as the basis for expansion.

~~~
revelation
Here is my problem: it's been in this perpetual beta mode since 2007.

At some point they should be done with all the market research there is to do
and either go big or stop wasting resources on building gadgets for it.

~~~
gaadd33
Why do they have to go big all at once? What other grocery delivery services
have even tried that in the past 10 years?

Freshdirect is NYC area and Philly, Peapod has a few markets but they are part
of a grocery chain so everything but the last mile is take care of logistics
wise. It seems like figuring out how to do it at scale and be competitive is
exactly what Amazon is doing. If they can make it almost as cheap but have
compelling additional features then it helps them roll it out wider.

------
mcintyre1994
I've been expecting Tesco (UK) to do this for ages. They have supermarkets
literally operating on this sort of device, you scan+bag as you go, and they
have a decent national delivery service.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I wonder if they tried it and found there are less opportunities to upsell so
it doesn't pay off: If I'm only scanning products I have then where's the
discovery and upsell?

~~~
ukoki
One discovery method could be the "free upgrade". You feel good that they
upgraded you to "premium" granola and when you run out, it's an easy upsell
since you can just scan the box.

They might even be able to get away with just giving you free stuff outright
as a discovery method too, given the huge amounts of consumer behaviour data
they must have — as long as their algorithms can predict you have a
profitable% chance of reordering the item.

------
mfrommil
Amazon needs to scale Fresh in order for it to be more successful. On a micro
level, scaling could come in one of 2 ways: (1)increase order frequency or
(2)average order size.

(1) Order frequency - Right now, a typical customer likely picks up groceries
when they're out and it's convenient. This very well could be on the commute
home from work, later at night, etc. With Dash sitting around the kitchen,
Amazon has now created a very tangible reminder in the form of the Dash device
to order your groceries, rather than waiting until it pops into your mind (and
possibly not buying on Amazon).

(2) Average order size - As someone posted above, it takes 1 or 2 button
clicks to reorder an item using Dash. Compared to the current way of online
grocery shopping, Dash eliminates a lot of possibilities of forgetting to
reorder something you intended to, because it is so simple. Compared to on the
PC when you may forget to browse the snacks category, for example, and you
forget to order chips and cookies. Way less likely to happen with Dash.

This doesn't address price concerns, but in terms of convenience for Amazon
Fresh customers & increasing Fresh orders/order size, this seems like a
massive win-win for Amazon and their customers.

------
asnyder
I wonder if this will lead to showrooming of groceries, like Amazon's done
with books. The only thing preventing this is the wifi requirement, but of
course one can already do this with their phone. Though it does make it even
easier.

~~~
patja
I'm not sure that would help them. Amazon Fresh doesn't have a great record
for beating grocery store pricing. See [http://www.cnet.com/news/amazonfresh-
vs-supermarket-a-hands-...](http://www.cnet.com/news/amazonfresh-vs-
supermarket-a-hands-on-shopping-test/) which matches my personal experience
when I've compared baskets of products my family commonly purchases.

I will say when we used it, the produce quality was very good which was one of
my concerns. Seems like they went above and beyond to address the fear of not
picking your own apple.

I can't see ever paying the $299 special prime membership they are requiring
in some markets though.

~~~
azernik
The $299 annual fee does give some sticker shock, but annualized that's only
about $6 per week (more like $4-5 if you already have a regular Prime
membership and deduct that existing cost). Especially if you're shopping for 2
or more, that comes out to a pretty small tax on your regular grocery bill.

~~~
mullingitover
I signed up for the free trial (because that's the _only_ way to see what they
have available for sale). Browsed the prices, immediately canceled the free
trial. I wouldn't use it even if it were free, tacking on $299 to pay for
overpriced groceries is a non-starter. Granted I live only a mile from a
grocery store, so it's not a compelling proposition to cut grocery store trips
out of my life for that price. However, the people who'd likely get the most
from this service (people living in rural areas) probably aren't going to have
this service available to them anytime soon, if ever.

~~~
azernik
The other group is people living in cities for whom transporting groceries
home is a serious burden. That's really the only context in which this makes
economic sense for both the user and the supplier.

One possible example of the target market is my grandmother, living in a
third-floor apartment in Haifa. She already uses a similar service, just less
convenient - she has to go the grocery store, buy her groceries and take them
to the register, and then order delivery at checkout.

Another target market is your standard techie with no car (e.g. me). In that
case, the choices are either a car-share (whose convenience varies with
distance to a car-share lot - in my case pretty high) or lugging stuff back by
hand (convenience varies both with distance to the grocery store and with the
number of hills in the way - in my case, I live on top of a gigantic hill).
Even so, I think this is only worth it if the subscription cost is split
between 2-4 people. I don't think this is for people with a car and a parking
spot, but there are a lot of people who don't, even with a high income.

When I did the free trial, the prices weren't all _that_ bad - generally if I
shopped around I could find stuff within 5-10% of Safeway prices, and
sometimes cheaper, and the convenience was amazing (for example, it also
replaced my pharmacy/Target runs). Note, I did find a way to browse their
selection before signing up - I just had to tell them what urban area I'm in.

------
aray
Anyone know the battery life/lifetime of these? If it's months, that's a lot
more convenient to keep in the pantry. As a kitchen appliance it makes a lot
of sense, but I don't have any muscle memory for "charging" appliances.

~~~
dgarrett
Here be speculation:

It looks fairly large (plenty of battery room), has no display (not sure about
scanner battery usage), and transmits little data over WiFi per use. With it's
simplicity, there's no reason they can't use the lowest power MCU and WiFi
modules they can find.

All of these have good usability implications, but it looks like battery life
was probably also a big design consideration.

------
joeld42
I hope that's a bottle opener on the top.

~~~
pcurve
hah! I think it's a genius design detail. They want you to hang it in the
kitchen somewhere, so it's always accessible.

------
justinpaulson
Why would they make a device rather than an app to do this? Seems pretty
awesome as a service though...if Amazon Fresh was available here.

~~~
zo1
Have you ever tried to scan barcodes with a cellphone? For anything other than
some sort of "novelty" "let's trying this cool new QR hipster app" type of
situation.

~~~
CrazedGeek
Er, I have. 1D barcode scanning has been working perfectly on phones for at
least a few years now.

------
chunkyslink
Nice try NSA!

Seriously though, it worries me that there are more and more 'listening
devices' in my home.

We've seen what has happened recently with the NSA listening to calls. What is
to stop the authorities getting a back door into all these devices and just
recording everything?

~~~
rsync
I really want nothing to do with 20 different cloud connected and voice-aware
devices in my home.

I'm not going to buy a Xbox One unless I can effectively mute the mic (not
just the UI telling me I did) and I'm not having a nest thermometer tied to
some weird social login/profile that I have to create in order to use it.

I'm certainly not going to stick some amazon listening device in my kitchen.

------
anigbrowl
I'm surprised this exists to be honest. Not because of smartphones, but
because I thought RFID chips would be sufficiently disposable by now that we'd
have smart refrigerators and trashcans. I had to buy a new refrigerator last
year and I was struck by how many different kinds of ice dispensers there were
(a feature in which I have no interest whatsoever) vs smart refrigerators. I
found exactly one of the latter - the unfortunately named T9000 from Samsung
(Komm vith me if you vant a snack...), which is really just a refrigerator
with a tablet stuck on the front, didn't do very much, was completely locked
down (understandable) and cost $4000.

~~~
notatoad
RFID chips are sufficiently disposable if you can find a use case for them,
but they don't really add anything to the average grocery shopping experience.
having to take every item out of your cart and pass it over a scanner is a
desirable pattern for the grocery store, as it's a great way to prevent theft.
They don't want to find a way to eliminate this interaction, so there hasn't
been a whole lot of reason put RFID tags on everything in the grocery store.

~~~
chockablock
Great point about the item-by-item interaction deterring theft. And of course
it's not clear how you can use RFID to smooth purchase of items sold in
bulk/by weight.

Checkout lines must also be a real profit center with all the high-margin
impulse buy items (magazines, snacks, etc) placed there.

------
elleferrer
I like how it's a separate device - it's too bad it's only available on the
west coast though. AmazonFresh reminds me of "Webvan". Webvan failed during
the dot com bubble, maybe Amazon is trying to start this kind of business
model up again. I think the grocery delivery service is a great idea,
especially now with everyone being so connected. Webvan only failed because
they expanded rapidy and weren't able to attract customers at their speedy
pace, plus back then not everyone was so connected.

------
lucb1e
Does anyone know how they connect to WiFi? There's like two buttons and one
beep for I/O.

(Half joking: Or is it a Speak Friend And Enter kind of thing, where you have
to speak the WiFi credentials.)

~~~
Zotabite
(Full-on joking: you enter the credentials in binary) You press one of the
buttons until it goes into AP mode and it beeps. Connect to it and provide
your actual WiFi credentials and away it goes.

Can't do speech recognition since that's done in the cloud and won't work
without a Internet connection.

------
blobbers
Has anyone else noticed that this completely rips off Hiku? Or is this
repackaging the same product?

[http://hiku.us/what-is-hiku/](http://hiku.us/what-is-hiku/)

~~~
svas
I wonder if this will be the death of Hiku? Amazon's product is definitely
going to be cheaper than $79 price for Hiku with (obvious) heavy ties into the
Amazon ecosystem.

I suppose they could try to pivot and cater to a different ecosystem (Google
shopping express, or the like), but seems like an uphill battle.

~~~
listic
Maybe Hiku could offer their services to the rest of the world? From its
homepage, I don't get it whether its business model requires tie-in with a
retailer.

------
vuzum
Best idea ever, wow what a great product and functionality! This should be in
every house! :-)

Amazon acts like a startup still. Good for them!

------
joshdance
Grocery stores should be worried. Amazon is predator that will take on any
market it thinks it can win. Pretty soon they will not only be competing
against the store next door, but the Amazon grocery warehouse with all the
advantages of scale and convenience.

------
binarysolo
How does this differ from people using the mobile app? Mainly for Amazon Fresh
integration?

~~~
suyash
Agree, they should have implemented this functionality on the app itself vs
creating yet another new proprietary device.

------
mandeepj
i think this is a big deal. When I am working in kitchen, i see lot of items
needing refill, reordering etc...it is little cumbersome to stop your work,
wash your hands and get the phone to take the note. Not to mention, once u
pick your phone there are 100 hundred things going on - facebook, mails, texts
etc to distract you for long time. Knowing this distraction, if I just say -
"OK, I will just remember in my brain and will not pick up phone" then you
know I never remember that task or things later. I think you can also use this
device as your note taker incase you want to buy from somewhere else. Enjoy
the convenience ;-)

------
tetrep
Why was a separate physical device needed for this? It seems like a simple
smartphone application would work just as well, if not better as I would
assume virtually all of the target audience for this service already have a
smartphone.

~~~
devicenull
Go scan a bunch of barcodes on your phone, in varying light levels and angles.
The process is pretty terrible, phone cameras cannot beat dedicated barcode
scanners at actually scanning barcodes.

------
jds375
This is a cool service to integrate with AmazonFresh. A similar promising
alternative is [https://www.rosieapp.com](https://www.rosieapp.com) ... It's a
pretty cool startup with similar goals.

------
pepijndevos
You could also take it to a store and scan things there. See what you get, pay
less.

I know someone who runs a book shop, and he frequently has people browse for
books, only to buy them online later for slightly less.

------
babesh
Wait till a 2 year old gets ahold of it and scans everything 10 times.

~~~
squintychino
I doubt Amazon would be stupid enough to leave this possibility unaccounted
for. Even the most basic purchase on Amazon requires you to put in a password
to confirm your purchase. Why would this be any different?

Or are you simply being a model HN contributor and nitpicking any little thing
that comes to mind?

~~~
babesh
Amazon has had one click purchase for years on the web:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click).
The whole point is to not require re entering a password each time. In fact
they hold the patent for it and have sued others for it.

You have attacked me for misinformation whereas you are the one misinformed.

EDIT: I am a Amazon Prime user and turned off one click because I saw my son
clicking on stuff he wanted. And there is confirmation email. You basically
have to rollback the purchase if you can. Sometimes you can't if it's shipped.

------
Dorian-Marie
And when you go to somebody else place, you like something, "ok, I will add it
to my Amazon shopping cart", etc... So many use cases this is amazing.

------
elevenfist
Sounds like this would only real be useful for packaged, processed goods. I'd
have trouble trusting the quality of perishable items over the internet...

~~~
Zotabite
Amazon Fresh is a little different.

The Fresh warehouses do have cold storage. They are delivered to you in
totes/containers with appropriate amount of dry ice.

Same day delivery by drivers that directly work for Amazon.

------
LeicaLatte
Now this feels like the future.

I am curious what the upgrade cycles of these products will end up being. Can
Amazon charge a subscription and keep giving me a new one?

------
alanh
The :cue cat lives!

------
ngoel36
I see absolutely no reason why this couldn't have been a mobile app with a bar
code scanner and voice recognition...

~~~
rb2k_
Probably because nobody wants to use mobile apps with bar code scanners.

Related:
[http://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com/](http://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com/)

~~~
ChuckMcM
Which is the conventional wisdom (no one scans anything) but its not actually
correct. I've done some QR tests which have picked up hits (not huge mind you
but non-zero). There was also the story of the guy[1], on Sharktank, where one
of his props was a QR code and he picked up customers who scanned it (from
their TV) while watching the show.

It isn't common, that is for sure. And the bar code folks don't make it easy
for folks. Simply publishing the bar code database would be a huge 'win' for
barcode adoption.

[1] [http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/04/how-a-startup-
accidentally-...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/04/how-a-startup-accidentally-
hacked-shark-tank-with-a-qr-code/?source=gravity)

~~~
Cyph0n
Interesting. Thanks for the link.

------
beejiu
How does the voice feature work? Is it computer voice recognition, or does
your voice get sent to a person to interpret?

~~~
gnews
actually it could be a combination of both. since amazon already have
mechanical turk, it might make sense to fallback on manual interpretation.

------
dgarrett
It'll be interesting to see what Amazon does to continue to get more
information on people's shopping habits.

------
suyash
If someone has an invite, can you please send me one as well. I don't have the
Invite Code needed to participate.

------
anandg
If its real, this is going to revolutionize grocery shopping. Also, open up a
new market for such devices.

~~~
zanny
It is only available in 3 cities, has technology easily deployable to
smartphones, and the prices apparently aren't any better.

I always wish I could try amazonfresh, but like Google Fiber they are snails
at deployment. And Amazon doesn't even have the "company has no experience
with end user distribution" since that is literally their primary business.

------
thomasmarriott
When food became mp3's — Amazon Dash / Fresh = Apple iPod / iTunes. Well done,
Jeff.

------
beamatronic
Didn't see this pointed out so far - The existing Amazon app can already scan
bar codes.

------
paul9290
So you zap your grocery needs with dash and flying robot delivers it within 24
hours....

------
cnaut
This is the CueCat done right! Technology is similar but their is a clear use
case.

------
plg
"Apples"

...

next day what shows up, exactly?

6 granny smith apples?

a 15 pound bag of golden delicious?

3 MacBooks pro?

ummm

~~~
davidcgl
_Dash connects to your home Wi-Fi network and works directly with your
AmazonFresh account. Say or scan items into your Dash, and then view the list
on your desktop or mobile device to purchase and schedule delivery._

You have to confirm the order.

------
EGreg
Amazon is making service backed devices. As opposed to selling them.

------
redditmigrant
I like the simplified dedicated device for creating a low friction experience,
however one downside of having this as a separate device rather than an app on
your phone is that you are more likely to loose it, forget where you kept it,
etc. etc.

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ahunt09
I can't believe this is not an April Fools' Joke.

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lechevalierd3on
Fruits and vegetables to not have a bare code, right ? How to make it simple
for those fresh products then ?

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ars
They do actually have a bar code. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_look-
up_code](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_look-up_code)

But it says you can also speak to it.

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ngoel36
How do I get a code?

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Aloisius
I imagine every single product you order from AmazonFresh would have one. This
would really be for re-orders.

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dgarrett
He's talking about the sign up code you need to order a free device.

I'd imagine they're sending these out to Amazon Fresh users.

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turisys
disruptive innovation at it's best.........

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cpezza85
hook it up with an invite code :)

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thebokehwokeh2
What a time to be alive.

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jhprks
People! amazon is known to be more sinister than google when it comes to april
fools jokes, first it was using quad-rotors for delivery (which was stupid
idea by the way) especially when it wasn't even april, now it is a little
stick-like device automatically ordering food for you? what's next? a flying
car? lol!

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jhprks
Nice april fools prank amazon!!! LMAO

