Virtual Assistants aka Smart Speakers

[mutantdonut]

Thinking about buying one for parents, possibly the Alexa. Just wondering if anyone here owns one and whether they appreciably give your life more convenience, luxury, or whatever. If so, which smart speaker do you own or recommend? What features do you most often use from your assistants? Do you actually find them practical or more like a luxury?

 

[Mila_]

I don’t have a virtual assistant other than Siri and with the latest update they put the Siri button on the right edge of the touchbar on the MacBook and I constantly touch it accidentally with my pinky when typing which is so infuriating and annoying... I dislike them and don’t understand the purpose

 

[Lelo1]

The Echo and Echo Plus have larger speakers then Google Home, Which makes it a more popular choice for a Smart Speaker. Some people add more echos down the line to get better sound or to spread the music through their hole house.

Another popular use is smart home. But that's really only as useful as all the compatible IOT devices in the home. Smart switches, door locks, garage door opener, lawn more, doorbell, vacuum, thermostat, extra.

 

[Lintilla]

I have Google Home devices in every room besides my bathroom. I use them to control my Hue lights and my Chromecast. They're also great as speakers to play my music, news, and podcasts. I like being able to control those by voice while I'm cooking or cleaning. Google Assistant is handy when I want an answer to some random trivia, or need to do some quick math or unit conversion in the kitchen. Definitely saves me from having to sit down at my computer or grab my phone for simple things. That's worth it, to me. The other most amazing function is that I can broadcast a message to other rooms in my home and confuse the hell out of my cats.

 

[Slapstick]

If your parents stream lots of music and/or podcasts and search the web frequently for answers and weather info etc. they will probably find it useful. As with all tech gadgets it makes things someone already does easier, it will not necessarily make people do new things.

As for the device to get it really depends on their tech eco-system. We are an Apple household so we use Siri via iPhones and Apple TVs.

I don’t have a virtual assistant other than Siri and with the latest update they put the Siri button on the right edge of the touchbar on the MacBook and I constantly touch it accidentally with my pinky when typing which is so infuriating and annoying... I dislike them and don’t understand the purpose

Hmmmm, I am just about to order a new MacBook and I'm leery of the new touch bar. However, if you haven't found it yet, you can remove Siri from the TouchBar.

 

[Mila_]

If your parents stream lots of music and/or podcasts and search the web frequently for answers and weather info etc. they will probably find it useful. As with all tech gadgets it makes things someone already does easier, it will not necessarily make people do new things.

As for the device to get it really depends on their tech eco-system. We are an Apple household so we use Siri via iPhones and Apple TVs.


Hmmmm, I am just about to order a new MacBook and I'm leery of the new touch bar. However, if you haven't found it yet, you can remove Siri from the TouchBar.

DONT! I have been a Mac user for 10 years and this is the computer that turned me away from Apple, my next computer will be a PC.

Problems:
1) The Touchbar is hideous not only does it have the Siri problem I mentioned on the right end, but on the left it is the 'esc' button that you end up hitting with your pinky constantly. Guess what happens when you are writing a very long document and hit 'esc' or any other such thing.
2) It HEATS UP and crashes when you use it on your actual lap. Forget about using it on your bed or on a table with a thick tablecloth.
3) It HEATS UP and crashes when you do too many demanding tasks at once like running OBS with 2 window capture layers, or using photoshop and final cut at the same time.
4) The USB-C ports are a nightmare, you can't even charge your own iPhone on your computer anymore without a dongle, and if you have many peripherals like I do (webcam, mic, ethernet cord, charger, streamdeck) then you simply have to pick because you can't use all of them. The dongles disconnect sometimes, even the apple ones, or if you get other brands like mophie they will be too thick to plug 2 things at once.
5) The top portion of the laptop is too light so it isn't study, it wont stay in place what I mean is if you touch it, it does this vibration thing which for most people is okay unless you rest your webcam on your laptop like I do and then it's earthquake city every time I brush the laptop or touch the table.
6) These shallow keys SUCK, they get stuck for no reason at all and you have to constantly clean the keyboard with a special product to fix it... I lost all functionality on letter H for a while when I had only been using the computer for a month.
7) My first macbook of these I got lasted about 6 months, it died when it ran a software update on it's own and it gave an error so that it would restart and begin the software update again upon starting only to give the same error over and over again in an endless loop. Nothing I did saved it, formatting was useless, I sold it and got another one of the same model because I was in denial about having to learn Windows again after 10 years

BTW removing Siri is not better cause what occupies it's place is the mute button so when I am camming with music on and hit that with my pinky all music is gone. I hate it, I wish they had kept the old exterior and keyboard

 

[SaffronBurke]

I don't trust these devices and accounts I've heard of them just turning on and doing random shit on their own unsettles me kind of a LOT.

I'll avoid saying more and just go with this.

 

[Emberblaze]

I'd

I don't trust these devices and accounts I've heard of them just turning on and doing random shit on their own unsettles me kind of a LOT.

I'll avoid saying more and just go with this.

View attachment 79704

I actually came here to ask if I was the only one that was refusing to buy one for tinfoil hat reasons. If I'm logged in to any of my Google accounts on my personal computer (where I don't use Facebook or messenger for security reasons) and I look things up once I go back to my phone I'll have Facebook and Amazon ads for the same shit.

Like, I get that I'll have Google ads but...

Same as anything I search on Amazon I'll have ads on every other platform for.

And if I got one of these devices and announced I wanted some cheese and started getting cheese ads I would toss that thing right out the patio door.

I'm just picturing my bf and I banging and me telling him to cum in me and then getting ads for pregnancy tests and plan b.

 

[Cassiequinn]

I don't trust these devices and accounts I've heard of them just turning on and doing random shit on their own unsettles me kind of a LOT.

I'll avoid saying more and just go with this.

View attachment 79704

My husband won't let me get one because of the weird Shit it does.

My sister has a Google mini and I love it. She can play music on her TV from the mini. That's really the only reason I'd want one. But she does use it a lot.

 

[DJ_Pioneer]

2) It HEATS UP and crashes when you use it on your actual lap. Forget about using it on your bed or on a table with a thick tablecloth.
3) It HEATS UP and crashes when you do too many demanding tasks at once like running OBS with 2 window capture layers, or using photoshop and final cut at the same time.

Maybe you should try water cooling it like this.


On a serious note judging by this years CES most new smart home devices being released seems to have Google Home integration so I would go with that.

 

[Mila_]

I'd


I actually came here to ask if I was the only one that was refusing to buy one for tinfoil hat reasons. If I'm logged in to any of my Google accounts on my personal computer (where I don't use Facebook or messenger for security reasons) and I look things up once I go back to my phone I'll have Facebook and Amazon ads for the same shit.

Like, I get that I'll have Google ads but...

Same as anything I search on Amazon I'll have ads on every other platform for.

And if I got one of these devices and announced I wanted some cheese and started getting cheese ads I would toss that thing right out the patio door.

I'm just picturing my bf and I banging and me telling him to cum in me and then getting ads for pregnancy tests and plan b.

Wrap your head around this.. my neighbor has a ginger cat called Pipi with a terrible case of wanderlust and one day she slipped into my apartment when I opened the door for amazon and ran to my closet all the way to the back of my apartment so I was calling her "Pipi! Come here! Pipi! come on Pipi I have some delicious milk for ya" etc... it took me like an hour to catch her. That night Amazon was recommending me the Pipi Longstocking 1960s movie on DVD.

 

[Emberblaze]

Wrap your head around this.. my neighbor has a ginger cat called Pipi with a terrible case of wanderlust and one day she slipped into my apartment when I opened the door for amazon and ran to my closet all the way to the back of my apartment so I was calling her "Pipi! Come here! Pipi! come on Pipi I have some delicious milk for ya" etc... it took me like an hour to catch her. That night Amazon was recommending me the Pipi Longstocking 1960s movie on DVD.

SEE! No thanks.
*Puts tinfoil hat on her and her plush dog*

 

[SaffronBurke]

SEE! No thanks.
*Puts tinfoil hat on her and her plush dog*

*puts on a second tin foil hat*

 

[Mara_Jayne]

I have a Google mini. I love it. I went with Google because I have a Google phone. Im so used to talking to it that if for whatever reason it's not plugged in I miss it lol. I'll ask it something and get no response several times before it hits me that it's not plugged in.

It's very convenient for quite a few simple things. My favs are asking the time or weather and asking her to add items to a shopping list when I think of it. Also good for listening to music. I keep mine in the kitchen so I can ask her about recipes, ingredient substitutes and the like. It's all things my little phone can do but hands free for the most part. (Sometimes she'll hit me with the "for more info click on the link on your Google home app" when there's too much for her to recite back.

My friend has an Alexa and she loves being able to control her lights with it. Not sure if Google can or not cause I never had a reason to look into it.

OH and I almost forgot my most favorite and convenient feature is to ask where my phone is whenever I lose it. She rings it on full volume for me. I misplace my phone a lot so it's a handy feature especially if you keep it on silent rendering another person's call too it pointless.

 

[SaffronBurke]

The closest I've come to having something like this is when I had a Kinect for my 360. It was nice being able to navigate without a controller, and I felt a little bit like I was on Star Trek, but it would sometimes just follow you across the room, which was creepy. It wound up dying, and I never felt the need to replace it.

 

[DFT]

It's the fun of living a sci-fi life, but forget the cost, what benefit?

In the 70s it was the cool new thing to call a phone number to get the time and temp. That was Buck Rogers level stuff. Really it was! We didn't think about AT&T compiling data on us as we used it, but they did, then sold it. That part is the same today, nothing new. Simple analysis would show waking/sleep times, what family members (anonymized data) used the phone when, when each were most time conscious, even dinner times - and we wondered how early telemarketers knew just when to call. Of course it was faster to just look out the window to check the weather, but we were living in the future and blissfully ignorant what we were giving up.

Latest version is handier than looking outside. The tracking side, well...