I think there are certainly reasons to have your "hands-free conversational interaction" device also be able to show you things.
It seems like the big pitch they're making right now is on communications, but there are loads of reasons why I can imagine it being useful. Most mornings, I ask Alexa about the weather. Usually, the voice response is all I need, but occasionally, there are storms in the forecast, and there's a big difference between "60% chance of thunderstorms" and "here's the radar image".
Traffic is another good example. You want to know that there's a 30 minute delay on your route to work, but it's more important to know where so you can plan your route around it.
Just look at human interactions. We mostly communicate by voice, but that doesn't mean that we attempt to provide every answer as spoken conversation. If I ask my hypothetical assistant what a lemur looks like, he or she would grab an image from Google -- not spend 5 minutes giving me descriptions of dimensions and colors.
> Traffic is another good example. You want to know that there's a 30 minute delay on your route to work, but it's more important to know where so you can plan your route around it.
Back when I used Android, Google Now seemed to really do this right (if creepily): it figured out when/where you commuted and would give you a heads-up before you left, offering to plan a route around the trouble. More useful since you take your phone with you. Also you didn't have to ask.
Yes, I have the exact same feeling. I like seeing all the places I've been, but I hate that google also sees all the places I've been.
I've recently installed Owntracks on my phone and have started logging all my location updates, so soon I may be able to just drop the google location tracking.
I agree with you that an assistant with the ability to show you things is more useful, but if I wanted to see a radar image I would just pull out my phone and ask it in the first place.
The selling point of this genre of devices seems to rest on the utility of voice control, but this products only innovation is a built in display.
Well, you could pull your phone out and use it to do literally any task that an Echo-like device could do. The entire selling point is the convenience of "talk to the air and things happen". I'm not sure why there should be some arbitrary line drawn where you only want to use voice for input when voice is sufficient for output.
It seems like the big pitch they're making right now is on communications, but there are loads of reasons why I can imagine it being useful. Most mornings, I ask Alexa about the weather. Usually, the voice response is all I need, but occasionally, there are storms in the forecast, and there's a big difference between "60% chance of thunderstorms" and "here's the radar image".
Traffic is another good example. You want to know that there's a 30 minute delay on your route to work, but it's more important to know where so you can plan your route around it.
Just look at human interactions. We mostly communicate by voice, but that doesn't mean that we attempt to provide every answer as spoken conversation. If I ask my hypothetical assistant what a lemur looks like, he or she would grab an image from Google -- not spend 5 minutes giving me descriptions of dimensions and colors.