
Alexa: Amazon's Operating System - misiti3780
https://stratechery.com/2017/amazons-operating-system/
======
JoeCortopassi
Alexa has a fundamental short coming that stops them from being a robust
operating system like the writer describes: the cognitive load in memorizing
all possible variations of 3rd party apps on their platform. Siri might have
greater difficulty with natural language processing than Alexa, but I never
have to think much about the word order or phrasing. With Alexa, I'm
constantly feeling like I'm playing MadLibs with my eyes closed.

That being said, the openness of their platform is a huge benefit, and the
main reason I have one. I for one am very interested in seeing which improves
first: Siri's natural language processing, or Alexa's contextual matching of
their api.

I know Google Now wins in a lot of areas, and there is a group of people that
have no problem using them, but overall sentiment seems to be one of distrust
in giving them an always on microphone

~~~
throwaway2016a
I made my own app and I can't even remember how to use it. I keep saying the
wrong trigger word. It's my one gripe with Alexa is that the app name needs to
be a prefixed.

What I want to say:

> Alexa, open the garage door

What I actually need to say

> Alexa, tell Some App Name to open the garage door

~~~
theseanstewart
This is also a big gripe of mine. I created an app that can be used as a fun
"neutral" third-party when instructing my toddler to do something.

What I want it to say:

> Alexa, tell %NAME% it's time (for a nap|to go to bed|to eat dinner)

What I have to say:

> Alexa, tell Toddler Boss to tell %NAME% it's time to go to bed.

It's not natural sounding at all.

~~~
sp00ls
Russ Hanneman?

This is what he did on HBO's Silicon Valley. It was quite..weird.

~~~
TheOneTrueKyle
He's disrupting parenting!

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TWAndrews
We got an Echo over the holidays, and watching my 7, 5 and 3 year old
daughters interact with it has given me a glimpse of what bringing home a
black-and-white TV in the 50s must have been like: Objectively it's pretty
limited, but it (voice-driven interaction, rather than the Echo specifically)
is so obviously the future it's striking.

Separately, I've told my daughters that they probably won't ever need to learn
to drive--cars will probably do it for them by the time they are driving age.

They've put two and two together, and the other day I overheard them saying
"Someday we'll be able to call an Alexa car and have it take us where ever we
want."

~~~
sakabaro
I think we still far away from "Someday we'll be able to call an Alexa car and
have it take us where ever we want.". It might or might not be possible. We
need anyway several leap in AI innovations to achieve that.

~~~
sjg007
brb.. going to start self driving car company called "a lexa".

~~~
Haydos585x2
"Alexa, get a lexa car"

"A lexus car has been purchased with Amazon One-Speak™. You have been charged
$72,040. Delivery will be between 7 to 14 days."

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makecheck
They have to remove branding from Alexa "skills" so that more natural requests
are possible. The #1 thing preventing me from installing most "skills" is that
invariably I would have to speak "Alexa, ask <ridiculously-named product> to
X" instead of just "do X". I should also be able to use the app to write the
exact command text I want to use.

~~~
taeric
How would you prevent this from being a back door into a person's house? Or,
more directly, how do you prevent applications from stealing phrases from each
other?

That is, you are basically saying that you want everything in $PATH. This
would be like if git had decided that "log" should just do "git log".
Certainly could make sense. And I agree that users should be able to allow
this.

However, the applications? I'm not as sold. You are basically allowing a
situation where the fundamental behavior of the system would change from
installing a single skill. And it might not be clear on how or why it changed.
(Certainly not to most users.)

~~~
dv_dt
Perhaps they could let users set a skill alias.

~~~
lewisl9029
This and custom voice training for device names are on the top of my wishlist
for the Echo.

For some reason my Echo has a really hard time recognizing some of the rather
obvious names I give to my devices, like "LG TV". It'd be great if we could
train the voice recognition engine to associate certain pronunciations with a
specific device name.

~~~
dv_dt
The Alexa app does have a generic voice training selection...

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walterbell
Alexa currently requires memorization of command sequences. Can take a while
for older users to learn.

E.g. there's a skill (AskMyBuddy) that sends a preprogrammed text to a list of
cellphones, typically a request for help. But the user needs to be trained to
remember the exact command ("Alexa Ask My Buddy to send help"), which might be
forgotten if someone is in a stressful situation.

Anecdote: tried to create a todo list with one item, "buy milk", but Alexa
would not accept this item unless you setup the ability to purchase items from
Amazon.

Weather does not work outside the US (needs a US address).

~~~
danso
However, its NLP is quite good. Having my (Vietnamese-born) parents try the
Echo Dot, I was struck by how awful their English actually is, at least in
comparison to how my brain has come accustomed to their speech patterns. For
one thing, they enunciate "Alexa" much differently than I do. And then where I
would say, "What's the weather today", they say, "What weather today is?" or
"What day this week will be snow?" To my surprise, Alexa actually understood
their convoluted phrasing, at least for the built-in skills that Alexa has had
well-honed out of the box.

~~~
Eridrus
Thanks for this comment, I hadn't really thought about how NLP may fail ESL
speakers.

Do you think your parents would be more comfortable talking to it in
Vietnamese if it was possible? I'm mostly wondering if handling good
Vietnamese is easier than handling English with poor grammar.

~~~
danso
Definitely. Their English even after 30+ years in America is at the level
where our English-English conversations are probably at the elementary grade
level (except with a few more proper nouns). I used to think that they were at
least better in understanding _my_ natural English conversation, but I've
realized that I reflexively shift to using much simpler sentences when
speaking to them. But when they're with Vietnamese friends or family, they
have conversations (in Vietnamese) just as normal adults typically do in their
native language.

Conversely, I've since realized that the Vietnamese that I _think_ I
understand is probably at the toddler level. For a very long time, I just
assumed the Vietnamese language lacked features such as pronouns and articles.
But then I realized that when my parents tell me to go wash the dishes, my
brain just fixates on "wash dishes" and ignores all the other connective
words. So I know a lot of verbs and nouns but very few words that are part of
everyday conversational speech in Vietnamese. I imagine that's what Alexa
feels like :)

Your comment made me curious how well the Google Translate app can deal with
foreign languages. I was stunned to see that it could understand my attempts
at Vietnamese. So other than a proportionately smaller dataset to learn from
(Vietnamese usage vs English usage of Google or Amazon), seems like Alexa and
Google Home could competently deal with foreign languages.

------
DannyB2
As of last week, Alexa cannot tell me how many inches per second is an atto
parsec per micro fortnight.

Google can.

Alexa can tell me how many sides a hexagon has. But cannot tell me the name of
a six sided polygon.

~~~
petra
Sure, Google offers a better technical solution.

But do they have enough incentives ? A good business model to be willing to
offer it for almost free for people ? The will to push it as hard as Amazon
does ? It doesn't seem so.

~~~
ehsankia
Maybe not as heavily as Amazon (literally adding items to your Amazon cart for
items you need), but indirectly, they do. Since Google Home is integrated with
all Google products (calendar, keep, maps, Youtube, chromecast, Android and
more to come), this keeps the user in the Google eco-system.

~~~
wstrange
Right. And it is a gateway to future Google services. Car hailing, flight
booking, etc.

------
zie
Another problem with Alexa as an OS here is Alexa, Siri, and OK Google will
never work for some classes of disability. Myself I'm Deaf/Mute, so I can't
talk to any of these things, or hear their responses, so they are 100%
completely useless to me. There is a good reason text interfaces are so
ubiquitous, they can easily be changed into Assistive Devices (like say spoken
word for the blind).

~~~
BatFastard
That may be true, but really they are a interface to decision making logic( AI
). The AI looks for text to power it, that might be spoken word, or in your
case in a few years I can see a camera reading your signing and having the
ability to sign back to you.

~~~
lazaroclapp
Would it sign back or simply display written text? Seems to me that signing
back is just an artifact of the limitations of human body movements as an
output channel... or are there many people who can read sign language faster
than they can read letters? (honest question, I don't know the answer)

~~~
dikdik
yes, many people can "read" sign faster than text. The language is not a
1-for-1 translation of English among other reasons.

~~~
Splines
Sometimes this goes horribly wrong:
[https://i.imgur.com/uxcATG6.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/uxcATG6.jpg)

------
ikeboy
>. First, no company could ever build enough phones for the world, and
secondly, to serve every customer would ruin the profit margins that make the
business model so successful.

Both seem wrong? They could produce more models at lower price points and
lower costs and maintain similar margins, like Samsung. Probably the branding
effect on margin would be smaller but would still be a healthy margin.

Am I missing the point here?

------
trequartista
Don't think that the "operating system" for the internet of things is fully
defined yet. Amazon is simply the first and the biggest mover. Google has also
launched Home. Apple has Homekit. Interesting to see how it pans out

~~~
pwthornton
Homekit is really interesting when stuff works with it (which is not a lot),
and when you can use your voice with it (which is limited).

If Apple could really get more people onboard with Homekit and build
standalone Siri devices it could be in the pole position here, but Apple
doesn't seem to get what it has with either Homekit or Siri.

Homekit makes it really easy to set up different scenes with different smart
devices and interactions. Setting these up requires good user interfaces
beyond voice. Apple gets this.

Unfortunately, Homekit is really limited right now.

------
amorphid
I can't talk about Elixir in front of Alexa. It is always chiming in "I'm
sorry, I didn't get that."

~~~
canadaj
I haven't had Alexa for long, but I haven't had it trigger off of Alexa-
sounding words yet. I did do the training in the app a couple of times when I
first got it, though. Have you tried doing the training yet?

~~~
amorphid
It belongs to a friend, so I haven't trained it. But I will probably buy one
soon, and then figure out how to use it well. I could always use a unique
phrase...

"27ffe8a1-4cd0-4739-bc46-9ad51a9c14ba, turn on the living room lights."

~~~
Arelius
No... you can't... there are only a couple pre-programmed wake-words "Alexa",
"Echo" and something or another.

~~~
krallja
The third wake word is "Amazon".

------
CodeSheikh
"The concept of an operating system is pretty straightforward: it is a piece
of software that manages a computer, making said computer’s hardware
resources"

So the author luxuriously simplified a sophisticated piece of software like an
OS to simply prove his point that Alexa can be classified as an OS because it
is a software that also manages hardware resources.

Someone please correct but I was under the impression that Alexa is merely a
facade OS and behind the scenes it is an amalgamation of sophisticated
intertwining of web services and data crunching. Can Alexa still be at its
100% without internet?

Edit 1: Grammar

~~~
DonaldFisk
Alexa runs on top of Amazon Echo, which runs on top of Amazon FireOS, which
runs on top of Android, which runs on top of Linux, which runs directly on the
hardware. Linux itself is a rewrite of Unix, which is a very pared-down
variant of MULTICS, a system developed in the 1960s.

Something which doesn't run directly on the hardware, but instead communicates
with it through several layers of intervening software, isn't an operating
system by any stretch of the imagination, however impressive it might
otherwise be.

I'm disappointed that large high-tech companies such as Amazon, Google, and
Facebook don't develop their own operating systems from scratch like Microsoft
did, but instead just take advantage of the hard (but not particularly
innovative) work put in by Linus Torvalds and other open source developers.
Building something better, using lessons learned in the intervening decades,
should be well within their grasp.

~~~
wstrange
It is hard to bootstrap a new O/S ecosystem.

Check out Google's Fuschia for an alternative

~~~
DonaldFisk
[https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/magenta/+/master/docs/mg_an...](https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/magenta/+/master/docs/mg_and_lk.md)

Yes, that's different (and, with capability-based security, a step in the
right direction). Thanks for pointing it out.

I'm not sure how Tansley's concept of ecosystems applies to software (it's
just a buzzword to me), but if you mean how to get software running on
existing systems to run on a new system, that would take time and effort. If
the operating system is intended to run on specific devices (like
Magenta/Fuchsia), it might need its own "ecosystem" anyway.

------
3am_hackernews
Slightly tangential to the post: Does anyone know how to make diagrams
(watercolor style) like the ones in OPs article and blog?

~~~
alexbilbie
I believe he uses Paper -
[https://www.fiftythree.com](https://www.fiftythree.com)

~~~
danso
This comment totally sidetracked my day. I've been searching for a way to
quickly do diagrams, but without the use of full-blown Visio-like flowchart
software. I downloaded Paper back in the day and remember when it came out
with its "Smart Shape" feature, but didn't ever think to use it for easily
sketching charts.

------
RickHull
> _More fundamentally, Amazon sought to sell the phone through hardware and OS
> differentiation, much like Apple, but the company could not be more
> different organizationally and culturally from the iPhone maker; you don’t
> make good products because you really want to, you make good products by
> fostering the conditions in which great products can be made, and Amazon’s
> deeply rooted culture of modularity and services was completely ill-suited
> for building a highly differentiated physical product._

Eh, Amazon hit it out of the park with _something_ in the Kindle line, no
matter your e-book-reading taste. They have good reason to believe they can
design products for the masses.

------
FatAmericanDev
How do I make diagrams and charts in this style?

~~~
holyjaw
Looks like that was done with Paper [1].

1:
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id506003812?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id506003812?mt=8)

------
roadnottaken
>"The Internet made the operating system of the computer used to access it
irrelevant"

Hyperbolic statements like this one make me stop reading. There's still PLENTY
of important Desktop computing.

~~~
robterrell
I don't think he's saying desktop computing is irrelevant. I think he's saying
which OS you use to access the internet is irrelevant.

I read your comment on a mobile device, and switched to my laptop to write
this comment. Two different operating systems, same internet.

~~~
roadnottaken
Yeah, I'm not saying smartphones aren't good or significant. Just that they
haven't _replaced_ desktop-computing -- just added to it. The article says
things like

"Android and iOS have replaced Windows in importance"

But Windows still seems plenty-important, to me. I don't see how one replaced
the other, it's just that mobile is under more dynamic development right now
because it's new.

~~~
TarpitCarnivore
The article is not saying desktop computing is irrelevant, they're saying the
choice of operating system is.

------
bkbridge
Was at an Alexa meetup. One of the senior Alexa developers was speaking. What
was said blew my mind:

We want you to use conversational UI, on any device, Apple's, MSFT, Google,
anyone you like. We think in the end, you'll have the best experience with
Echo.

How often does a mega tech company encourage you to use the competitions
products?

Think Amazon hit out of the park. Hey Google, just does not cut it for me.

Alexa, and that sultry voice, just no comparisons. (IMHO).

------
Zigurd
Having worked on voice control systems, I was impressed by the consistency
with which Alexa switches among tasks. If you are not attuned to what's going
on, it feels perfectly natural to interrupt some tasks and return to them,
while ending other tasks after briefly diverting to them. It's a
voice/media/data access task management system that needs no visual
indicators.

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youdontknowtho
digerati type overhypes over hyped tech...news at 11.

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gbrown_
How is the on the front page? There is nothing of merit in the article.

Edit: HN title has been corrected.

