Should Apple Build a Household Device?
I’ve heard the rumors that Apple is looking at offering a new product this fall in the mold of a household assistant. I don’t know if this is true or not, but I have to admit, I’m a little skeptical about it.
Assistants are by nature personal When you have an assistant, you speak to him or her in the first person. You never speak to your assistant in the third person. You simply say what you want. Bring me my mail, set up a meeting for next Tuesday, or make a list of the following items. Your assistant understands that you are the subject of the command because they work directly for you.
Assistants are by nature personal When you have an assistant, you speak to him or her in the first person. You never speak to your assistant in the third person. You simply say what you want. Bring me my mail, set up a meeting for next Tuesday, or make a list of the following items. Your assistant understands that you are the subject of the command because they work directly for you.
A household assistant would by its nature become complex. Who’s mail do I bring? or Whose meeting is it? Is this your shopping list or your wife’s? Since the assistant is no longer personal, you’ve transitioned into having to identify who the command relates to. An assistant that serves a group of people would be like your corporate IT help desk. You’ll first need to specify who you are so that they can properly route your ticket to the correct service. It seems to me that you lose more than you gain by moving to this paradigm.
Amazon’s Echo and Google’s Home are an inferior product form. What success the Echo has had thus far is due more to the fact that it’s always listening and you don’t have to pull your phone out of your pocket. For all the naysayers who said that the watch is dead because it's no big deal to pull out your phone, more proof that you're wrong. But I digress. When mobile phones first came out, they were incorporated directly into cars. Anyone remember those fancy cars with “car phones”? But now, that’s a relic of the old days. Who wants a phone that’s tethered to your car when you can carry one around with you?
Even if you did try and make the Echo everywhere you are and buy a bunch of devices, you’ve just multiplied the upgrade cost by a factor of what? Three, four, five? And it still won’t be with you out on a run or while you’re shopping. And they don’t talk to each other, so there’s a whole new set of problems.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to just have one device that goes everywhere you do? I would rather upgrade one watch rather than four or five consoles. No need to specify who’s talking, no need to segregate your devices by name, and no need to upgrade multiple devices at once.
What about the kids you may ask? What if they might need access to intelligent assistance now and then? This question keeps bringing me back to the Disney Cruise that my family took this Christmas. The first thing that Disney did was to assign each of my kids ID cards which detailed what their personal privileges and credits were. Also, an electronic wristband served as locator so that we could find our kid in the children’s area. Again, the advantages of a personal vs corporate device. I’ve heard some crazy people talk about buying Echos for every room in their house. I think it would make more sense to buy every person in the house their personal device.
It seems that today no one device is the ultimate assistant. They all have shortcomings in one or more areas. However, like mobile phones, in the end mobility and ease of access will trump all other forms.
Amazon’s Echo and Google’s Home are an inferior product form. What success the Echo has had thus far is due more to the fact that it’s always listening and you don’t have to pull your phone out of your pocket. For all the naysayers who said that the watch is dead because it's no big deal to pull out your phone, more proof that you're wrong. But I digress. When mobile phones first came out, they were incorporated directly into cars. Anyone remember those fancy cars with “car phones”? But now, that’s a relic of the old days. Who wants a phone that’s tethered to your car when you can carry one around with you?
Even if you did try and make the Echo everywhere you are and buy a bunch of devices, you’ve just multiplied the upgrade cost by a factor of what? Three, four, five? And it still won’t be with you out on a run or while you’re shopping. And they don’t talk to each other, so there’s a whole new set of problems.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to just have one device that goes everywhere you do? I would rather upgrade one watch rather than four or five consoles. No need to specify who’s talking, no need to segregate your devices by name, and no need to upgrade multiple devices at once.
What about the kids you may ask? What if they might need access to intelligent assistance now and then? This question keeps bringing me back to the Disney Cruise that my family took this Christmas. The first thing that Disney did was to assign each of my kids ID cards which detailed what their personal privileges and credits were. Also, an electronic wristband served as locator so that we could find our kid in the children’s area. Again, the advantages of a personal vs corporate device. I’ve heard some crazy people talk about buying Echos for every room in their house. I think it would make more sense to buy every person in the house their personal device.
It seems that today no one device is the ultimate assistant. They all have shortcomings in one or more areas. However, like mobile phones, in the end mobility and ease of access will trump all other forms.
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