OpenVoiceOS
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From The Verge: When I buy a connected light bulb, I expect it to behave like a light bulb. When it breaks, I expect it to break in a way that a light bulb would normally break. Maybe the glass shatters when I drop it. Maybe the LED burns out. But the way connected devices break is completely different. They break, for example, when the smart home controller I use to manage that light bulb stops talking to that light bulb. Or maybe it breaks when the light bulb company goes out of business and stops providing software support. Or, as is the case with Philips Hue, which recently changed its policy to require users to create an account to use Philips Hue bulbs, they break when I decide I no longer want to abide by new terms implemented by the company that made the light bulb. Another example is my Echo smart speaker. We used to tell Alexa to “trigger dance party,” and our music and lights would turn on in our living room and kitchen. This broke last month, when Alexa stopped supporting its IFTTT integration. Even my garage door isn’t immune to failure thanks to the maker of my garage door opener’s decision to cut off API access to everyone. Lately, when my smart home fails, it’s because an executive somewhere has decided to change the terms of a business agreement governing how connected devices talk to each other. In the digital world, these sorts of contract disputes are common. Witness the recent fight over access to television programming during the US Open while Disney fought with Charter over cable fees. But in the physical world, we are used to products that break according to the laws of physics or chemistry, not contract law. As more devices get an internet connection and there are fewer devices sold without internet connections, the question of how to preserve functionality even as business agreements change will become more relevant. In many cases, the loss of features or functionality represents an annoyance, rather than the death of the product overall, which makes it even more challenging to figure out how to preserve the right of a buyer to get a product that behaves as anticipated. But we should try. It’s not right that the buyers of Samsung’s Family Hub fridges were originally able to use the Google Calendar feature to manage their day on their appliance and then lost that ability because Google changed its API around the calendar and Samsung took months to update its fridge’s software to account for the change. It’s also not right that I purchased the Chamberlain myQ garage opener because I could connect it to my Google Home app, only to later see that connection break after Google changed how it handles APIs and Chamberlain decided not to support that change. It’s not dramatic, but for those use cases, the device has broken. And there’s no sense of what might break next. So what can we do about this? There are a few things manufacturers could do, such as treat connected devices like a subscription rather than a one-time purchase, which will help set user expectations. Or manufacturers could set up payments and contracts with partners in advance that ensure a product works for a set amount of time after a user buys it. Another popular cry whenever a smart device dies or gets deprecated by a software update is that these products should all work locally, without having to connect to a remote server somewhere. Keeping everything on the local network is certainly an option for folks running certain types of networks or those who want to set up their own servers, but that’s not for everyone. We may see some improvements here as Matter gets adopted across the industry because it will bring newer devices into the home that can provide basic functionality locally. But consumers need solutions that will meet the needs of most consumers for most connected products. Think of it as establishing a baseline for good device behavior. And for that to happen, we need to update our laws and regulations. There are three potential policy options that currently exist or are being considered. The currently available option is for the Federal Trade Commission to use its power to get involved. The second option would rely on the upcoming cybersecurity labeling program from the Federal Communications Commission to create a robust guaranteed minimum support mandate for consumer IoT devices. The final option is some kind of federal right-to-repair law that addresses software and hardware. |
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Saw this in Reuters today...
Amazon devices unit morale wanes amid cuts, weak development pipeline
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The company – the world’s biggest online retailer - is holding a devices and services launch event on September 20 where it is expected to feature refreshed versions of some existing products like the Fire tablet, Fire TV stick and Kindle Scribe e-reader, among other announcements. Reuters was unable to determine Amazon’s full plans for the announcement.
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The news agency was able to identify five different new devices under development. These include a carbon monoxide detector and a household energy consumption monitor - both with Alexa built into them – as well as a home projector to make any surface a screen. Some of the sources mentioned other projects, the full details of which could not be confirmed.
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Amazon, the people said, is trying to address flagging interest in its Alexa voice assistant nearly a decade after it was launched and as it faces competition from AI chatbots from Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O) Google and a host of startups, including Microsoft-backed (MSFT.O) OpenAI. ChatGPT and other similar tools have dazzled consumers and investors since late last year with their ability to construct longform and coherent text answers to complex prompts, a format that is difficult to translate to a voice assistant.
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Alexa employees were included in rounds of layoffs beginning last year resulting in 27,000 job cuts across Amazon. Despite broadly popularizing voice assistants, Alexa, with 71.6 million users in 2022, trailed Google and Apple’s (AAPL.O) Siri, which had 81.5 million and 77.6 million, respectively, according to analysis firm Insider Intelligence.
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The challenge is users like Bruno Borges, 40, of Vancouver, Canada, who said he found he used his Echo only for its timer, music and weather updates.
“I would never shop on it because I cannot compare things like on the website, so I wonder if I‘m getting the best deal,” he said. He recently stowed his three-year-old device in a drawer and has no plans to continue using it.
Employees say leadership has in recent years shifted towards a drive to produce devices for cheaper to potentially make money on the sale of hardware itself.
That focus on price has caused delays for an advanced projector Amazon is developing to cast images around a room, turning regular surfaces into screens, according to five people familiar with the matter.
With the projector, a user could beam recipes on the wall above their stove or make Zoom calls that track them as they move. Amazon bought a startup called Lightform to help propel the project but has been bent on lowering the projector’s cost, previously offered by Lightform starting at $700, by hundreds of dollars before it could be sold.
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