It’s not hardware per se, but Alexa has proven to be one of Amazon’s most important moves in the consumer product space. And the now ubiquitous voice assistant debuted within the first Echo speaker. It came five years after Siri, but upon arrival, Alexa was noticeably more helpful and fun than Apple’s voice assistant, as she could reach far more to Internet knowledge banks.
The first Echo speaker is also the device that made Alexa a well-known name and brought conversational computing to the masses. Ask a question, do you get an answer? It seemed new at the time, but it also clearly signaled the future. And this became the future pretty soon after Amazon started bombarding dozens of Echo variants and licensing voice technology in ways that would allow other hardware manufacturers to put Alexa on their own speakers … and alarm clocks, light bulbs, shower heads, microwaves, headphones and smart watches. Of course, Alexa’s limitations as a conversation partner make her seem astute even today, but the types of computer interactions that Alexa popularized now seem completely normal. Today we just talk to our computers! Big head.
2017: Echo Look
In April 2017, Amazon revealed what was perhaps its strangest device at the time: the Echo Look, a phallic smart camera with a set of four microphones that would allow you to take hands-free photos of your dresses. and tell you what to put on. This is no joke. The camera was only available by invitation, although one of the WIRED writers managed to buy an eBay and review it for another post at the time.
Ultimately, the Echo Look gave us a look at the future of computer vision. He used machine learning to make recommendations, as many consumer products do today, but he also got many wrong “personalized” suggestions and alarmed privacy advocates. In the spring of 2020, Amazon said it would stop using Echo Look and that the camera would stop working as of July 2020.
2017-2020: Echo … Everything
Here we break from our usual chronology. On a sunny Seattle morning in late September 2017, the tech press gathered at Amazon headquarters for … well, we didn’t know what to expect. It turns out that Amazon decided to team up with its tech brothers to organize an official hardware launch. That day, and again in the years that followed, Amazon vomited countless new products (both hardware and software).
We have tried to list some key products here: Echo Plus; a shorter, thicker Eco; Echo Spot; Echo buttons; Echo Connect; a Big Mouth Billy Bass with Alexa (again, that’s no joke); Echo Auto; Echo Sub; Eco wall clock; Amazon Basics Microwave (more information on Amazon appliances below); Echo Link; Fire TV Refast; Ring Stick-Up Cam; Echo Dot Kids; new Eero routers; Touch the car alarm, car camera, and car connection; a spherical echo; and a cloud gaming service called Luna. Have we forgotten something? Just kidding. We definitely did.
2017: Echo Show
One of the products that arrived that day in September 2017 was the first Echo Show. It was a “smart screen,” essentially a small tablet-like screen with speakers to play music, a microphone to capture Alexa’s commands, and a camera to … wait, what was the camera for? To use it with a new Alexa-based communication platform, which allows users to send audio, video and text to anyone who has an Alexa device or the Alexa app on their phones.
That chat service didn’t really come out and all the camera did was get people out. The Echo Show program was successful in showing how much more useful Alexa could be when integrated into a dedicated touch screen. Smart screens became a hit. Google created its own version that worked with its Google Assistant, and both companies licensed the technology to other hardware manufacturers that helped proliferate these desktop devices. Fortunately, there are many options today that include camera shutdown switches.
2018: Anell
