Amazon is bricking primary feature on $160 Echo device after 1 year

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/08/amazon-is-bricking-primary-feature-on-160-echo-device-after-1-year/

by duxup • 2 years ago

77 61 2 years ago

arstechnica.com

duxup3• 2 years ago

I think they should have opted for a more sinister move.

Use AI to Photoshop the family into new clothing and offer a discount on that clothing.

Or use AI to Photoshop them at vacation spots and advertise those spots.

You can all go on vacation! Book now! Grandma (who has been dead for years) looks like she is having the time of her life!

pknomad• 2 years ago

Don't give them ideas lmao.

droopyEyelids• 2 years ago

We’re overloading the term Bricking now?

morninglight• 2 years ago

"Bait and Switch" still has its original meaning.

duxup3• 2 years ago

Yeah I wasn't fond of the use of that word in the title but it was the title.

amatecha3• 2 years ago

Yeah this case is definitely a stretch of the applicability of the term... It would be more accurate to say something like "canceling", "removing", or "retracting".

josefritzishere• 2 years ago

Stop buying this junk. Turn off the service. Only revenue loss will motivate better corporate behavior

alwa• 2 years ago

That’s what makes this sting: the buyers already did pay a price premium (and subscription) to motivate behavior consistent with their preferences.

And even after accepting that premium, the company is just choosing not to deliver on its end anymore. And to be clear, “its end” here is refraining from pushing ads: a twisted state of affairs where the default condition is the company doing the work to force you to see ads, and you’re paying the company not to abuse you.

PaulHoule• 2 years ago

this reminded me to cancel my Prime free trial. I quit Prime a while back and then got continually harassed with lights-on-nobody-home sales pitches like ‘You spent $42.31 on shipping last year’ (like that’s a reason to buy a subscription that costs 3-4x as much!)

They say you can only get one free trial a year so I figured taking one and canceling might let me shop on AMZN for another 11 months without harassment.

… now I gotta move my last few things in AWS to Azure…

amatecha3• 2 years ago

Right, basically a legal form of extortion. "Pay up or we'll employ our best psychological manipulation techniques (invasive ads) to ensure you spend more money with us in the future". Paying to remove ads is such a grotesque result of hyper-capitalism.

jajko2• 2 years ago

What has been done is done, no point wasting time waiting for miracles from amoral companies, accept losses and move on.

Want long term quality without ads? Dont look at biggest corporations milking ads where they can, any words they say are just farts in the wind, long term behavior is the only thing that matters. Either find a long term moral manufacturer and pay accordingly, or hack it together yourself if you can.

If none of above is possible, throw it out, its a gimmick at best. I live in Switzerland among pretty wealthy people and in 2024 know absolutely 0 people having any such device. Happiness and quality of life lies completely elsewhere.

MyFedora2• 2 years ago

A price premium? Are you aware that Amazon sells these at a loss? Amazon wants to kill Alexa because they couldn't find a way to monetize it.

tomjen3• 2 years ago

Amazon is not making money on Alex. Thats the problem. They assumed that people would buy a lot more this way, but in reality people just want a robot servant that sets timers and play music.

blantonl2• 2 years ago

I've had a number of Amazon Echo devices in my household for years, using the platform as a smart home devices. But lately they've been opting each device automatically into new ad related features, and now I see "Sponsored" advertisements on my rotating home screens that are impossible to turn off.

I'm pretty close to removing them because there is literally no way to turn off these ads. I understood the privacy trade off for convenience of the platform, but to essentially see these have been turned into Amazon billboards in my home, that I paid good money for, is a step to far.

This is a classic case of the enshitification of a platform.

sethops1• 2 years ago

It's not a "step to far" if you're only _pretty close_ to removing them. Actually remove them.

blantonl2• 2 years ago

Is one not allowed to evaluate their relationship with technology over time?

Maybe Amazon will provide us an option to turn off the ads after enough outcry?

sweeter• 2 years ago

OpenHome has a great system with good TTS.

donatj• 2 years ago

Being able to yell "Alexa, turn my lights off" has been handy.

Alexa recently interrupting me with notifications that are just "Hey, some garbage you don't want is on sale" has me thinking about throwing the thing out.

jamifsud• 2 years ago

I switched to HomePods for exactly this reason, Alexa was constantly upselling me on features and Amazon products. Threw it out.

fullwaza• 2 years ago

I did exactly the same and haven't missed it one bit.

prepend• 2 years ago

I tried the same but I have multiple people in my house so about 20% of the time when I say “turn off the lights” it responds with “who is talking” and goes through a voice calibration exercise.

It’s super infuriating because I guess they want to personalize to the speaker, even when it doesn’t matter. And I suppose I sound similarly to others in my household.

import• 2 years ago

Same here. I have one echo left and using as a fancy kitchen timer with clock.

consteval• 2 years ago

The nice (ish) thing about Apple is that since they price everything stupidly high, I have some faith they're making a profit.

I don't think Alexa makes money. I'm pretty sure the hardware is sold at a loss, with the intention it gets you to buy shit through Amazon with it. Which - obviously - no. Nobody is shopping via voice, that was always a stupid idea.

talldayo• 2 years ago

The only thing that keeps me on my FireTV is the ability to sideload random APK files. Smarttube is just about the only thing that makes my Smart TV feel smart anymore: https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTube

djeastm• 2 years ago

has me thinking about throwing the thing out

Me, as well, but there's got to be someone whose job it is to calculate just how often it can interrupt people with ads without them throwing the device away because I've been saying this for years and I still have my glorified alarm clock/light switch around.

krunck• 2 years ago

There is no reason why your needs require a datacenter backed device.

minorbug• 2 years ago

Are there any open source projects that mimic some of the functionality of the Show line?

SoftTalker• 2 years ago

A screen that shows photos? Absolutely anything. A Raspberry Pi or other SBC can do that with a variety of "screensaver" programs. Or a cheap Android tablet, stick it in a nice picture frame if you want. Or any number of purpose built "digital picture frame" devices (not sure if any of those are open source, per se).

lupusreal• 2 years ago

but cost $10 more. Why? Because of its ability to show photos on the home screen for as long as you want—if you signed up for a $2 monthly subscription to Amazon's PhotosPlus.

Ahahaha imagine paying a subscription fee to display photos on a screen. I bought my gran a "digital picture frame" 15 years ago for 30 bucks which she still uses. $24 a year for 15 years, that would be $360 LMAO

Amazon never explained why owners of the standard Echo Show 8 couldn't use PhotosPlus or the photo-forward mode. The devices looked identical. It's possible that the Photos Edition used extra hardware...

Why is Ars even humoring such an absurd premise. Extra hardware to... display user images instead of ads? Give me a break.

ransom15382• 2 years ago

Alexa should just use chatgpt, you would have a trillion dollar empire in 10 minutes. That would useful. Otherwise, alexa is usually dumber than my dog.

akmarinov3• 2 years ago

How? There’s no monetizing Alexa or ChatGPT in its current form

ransom15382• 2 years ago

To have a useful alexa instead of 3 of them unplugged in the garage? I mean... its a step towards making money.

chgs• 2 years ago

This is the inevitable endpoint from treacherous computing. If you don’t own the equipment or the software then you are a slave.

Hopefully over the next few years as we see more of this in the post zero interest rate world we will have a new generation of people who learn the hard way that they need sovereignty over the code they run.

mrweasel4• 2 years ago

Is Amazon actively trying to kill of their Echo/Alexa business? Every story about Alexa for the past six months, maybe a little more, have been about Amazon taking steps to dismantling anything with in their business or product line up that could potentially be useful.

If they aren't making money, and don't believe that they ever will, then why not simply shutdown the whole thing? Is this some weird way of doing that, while not upsetting the stock market for the next quarter?

danielbln2• 2 years ago

I need it to turn on/off lights, tell me time/weather, set timers and that's pretty much it. They can shut off everything else for all care. Maybe provide me with a GPT level conversational agent, hell, I take some Llama3.1 with function calling on Amazon Bedrock.

danielbln2• 2 years ago

akmarinov3• 2 years ago

That loses them money and with no way to monetize- they have no incentive to keep it around

MyFedora2• 2 years ago

There never was a business here to begin with. Amazon wants to kill Alexa because they couldn't find a way to monetize it.

mrweasel4• 2 years ago

But then why not just shut the whole thing down? Tell customers that the services will be shutdown January 1st. 2026 and yank the remaining device from the store? That's where we're heading anyway.

Workaccount2• 2 years ago

Amazon thought people would say "Hey Alexa, buy more paper towels, a pack of soap, rent breaking bad season one, and tell me about the top rated blender in the store"

Instead people say "Hey Alexa, set a timer for 10:00"

jorvi• 2 years ago

The funny thing is, if it wasn't Amazon that Alexa was ordering stuff from, you could bet your ass people would have been using it like that.

But because Amazon sells used diapers, counterfeit items, can have gigantic price swings for some items, and has reviews that are gamed to the gills, no one would ever want to order from there blindly.

duxup3• 2 years ago

By a mile set timer is my most frequent Siri command.

beambot• 2 years ago

Yet another reminder about how an OSS option like Chumby was ahead of its time...

akmarinov3• 2 years ago

Who would pay $2 a month to have a digital photo frame?

That’s like the episode of Always sunny where they rent their couch

belval• 2 years ago

This article made me aware of this monstruosity: https://www.wired.com/review/amazon-smart-oven/ honestly this gives such a weird unfocused company vibe.

Regarding the Echo show displaying ads, I would advocate anyone to throw it out. It's mind-numbing to me that you can pay for a product only for it to display unwanted ads.

alistairSH• 2 years ago

How is "photos as home screen" not just a built-in feature? Like, every device with a screen that I've owned for 20 years has this in some form. No cloud services required. What a farce.

notinmykernel2• 2 years ago

It was, until Alexa decided to charge for every "built-in" feature. It's similar to the "perks" of Amazon Prime.

Both products (Alexa and Prime) are subpar, predatory offerings. I've moved on from both. I encourage everyone to do the same.

jmward01• 2 years ago

I only use mine as a timer/clock and even that is becoming more rare. Every other feature is so add encumbered as to be useless. Echo is dying, quickly.

oliwarner• 2 years ago

This feels like a pretty fundamental change in capability. I get that this was an extension by subscription, but a device that can now only blast advertising into my house feels like a substantial loss in value.

They've got to offer a refund, right?

croes• 2 years ago

No sympathy from me.

If you buy things with unnecessary cloud features it's your fault.

Amazon is bricking primary feature on $160 Echo device after 1 year

Related Stories