
Ask HN: Why isn't the Amazon Echo discussed as the huge sensation it is? - robg
Just seeing the reviews on Amazon (26k+ and avg rating of 4.5 stars), it&#x27;s amazing to me that it&#x27;s not common knowledge among my friends, tech-savvy and otherwise.  The majority have never heard of the Echo. Is Amazon just really bad at marketing products? Or have they gone slowly until the feature set is more mature and built out?
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gargravarr
As previously noted, the always-on microphone probably has something to do
with it. If it had come at a different, less paranoid time, I'm sure it would
be looked upon as the Star Trek computer we have always dreamed of. Yes, Siri
and Cortana are reasonably slick in their implementations, but they're
confined to your pockets for most of their lives. To be able to ask an empty
room a question and receive a response used to be cool, but now, not knowing
who's harvesting your conversations is a real gamechanger.

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chrisBob
You think its ok to have a device that is always with you and listening, but
not sitting in your kitchen and always listening? I don't understand your
distinction.

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falicon
I've played with it and hacked together a very generic app just to see how it
was...so I can say that I think it has much potential and an exciting
future...but...

1\. Amazon is still pushing out it's own ideas and features for it...they
haven't fully released it to the wild west of developers (many have learned to
wait until the dust settles before wasting time/energy on potential features
that will be blocked or taken over by the powers-that-be).

2\. The speaker bit is cool, but really it's just Siri in a speaker instead of
a phone (very cool but not a "wow" out of the box)...it's the next gen. that I
think everyone is really excited about and waiting for (when the SDK, and api
access, is baked into more than just one stand alone speaker - that is,
if/when it becomes the voice interaction for the internet of things; _that_
becomes super exciting and interesting)

3\. Not an adoption limitation, but I can say that having worked with the v1
of the tools for building on this stuff...it's still pretty clunky and
painful. I think they (AWS) are adopting and upgrading that quickly...but
there are some hurdles there as well before "anyone can build a voice
powered/interactive thing" can become a reality (and that's the HUGE sensation
IMHO)...

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Someone1234
The Amazon Echo is a niche product that attracts a niche audience.

The Echo only does limited things and is locked to Amazon's ecosystem. You're
paying $200 for an addon to Amazon Prime Music which is itself pretty mediocre
compared to the other services in the field (Pandora, Spotify, Google All
Access, Apple Music, etc). So really the only people who benefit from Echo are
people with large MP3 collections they've uploaded to Amazon's Music Cloud,
which itself is a niche thing to do now (unlimited streaming is "in" and MP3's
are "out").

Plus Amazon Echo is a music appliance that doesn't focus on the actual sound
quality. One speaker and one subwoofer, and even then they're muffled by the
casing. So really you wind up with a bit of a gimmick. Voice recognition and a
mediocre sound experience locked into Amazon's ecosystem for $200.

You can buy a $30 bluetooth speaker all over the place. The sound quality on
them is mediocre too, but you've only paid $30 and at least they don't worsen
the sound needlessly via the gimmicking round shape. The speakers as they are
are unobstructed. So why pay $200 for a bad experience when you can pay $30?

~~~
pjungwir
Is it really all about music? It seems like the Echo could become an IoT hub
also. Or since it has an app ecosystem, perhaps it will do things you'd do now
with Synology/FreeNAS. I would love to see "a server in every house", with a
rich app ecosystem, where it's easy for non-techies to run their own
music/video library, their own email server, their own blog, etc. It could be
like Sandstorm but not in the Cloud. The Echo might not be it, since Amazon
wants you to use their own cloud offerings, but I wonder if it is possible.

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davismwfl
My 2 cents is they have kept the marketing centered around a smaller group of
people initially with limited mass exposure. I think for the exact reason you
listed, while it is a way cool device it is also still finding its feature
set.

At the same time, I don't think Amazon is the best at marketing as they have
shown in the past with other devices. But I can't blame them with the echo
wanting to start slow and gain traction and expand it out.

As to their feature set, I signed up for the dev/api access for it over 6
months ago but still have never heard anything back from Amazon. So if they
want people to expand its feature set to make it better it would make sense to
approve dev access a bit more timely. I have heard a few others tell me the
same thing so I don't think it is just me.

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atmosx
Having all conversations hosted in a cloud and analyzed by AMZ is hardy
sensational for the privacy aware user...

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Spoom
Judging by past experiences, I am specifically avoiding Amazon-branded
electronic products. Amazon, the store, is great and very convenient. But
Amazon-branded stuff always tends toward lock-in and lacks interoperability
with other services. No thanks.

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J_Darnley
Are you a shill for the NSA or just Amazon? A device that is "always
listening" is a huge sensation but is is not amazing. It is awful. Why would
anyone want an always on microphone letting people eavesdrop, literally, on
everything they say?

