Seriously? Who buys this crap! If you’re unfamiliar, the Amazon Echo is a $180 USD piece of equipment that acts as a digital assistant and it’s all the rage. If you know absolutely nothing about the current tech industry; at first glance it looks like an amazing piece of equipment. It’s beautiful sleek design is completely voice activated and can respond to you from anywhere in the room, advising what the weather is outside (because windows are hard). It can even manage things like your Google Calendar (if anyone’s still buying Google products – They’re jokes people! Lighten up).
However, chances are you know something about technology. I mean, why else would you buy a $500 smartphone to play FlappyBird on? Smartphones are a pretty common device that’s become a necessity to the majority of first world human beings. Kids are getting smartphones so their parents can track them and with as many pictures of your cat as I’ve seen I wouldn’t be surprised if the damn furball has its own iPhone 6 and Instagram account.
I wouldn’t be completely out of line to say everyone has a smartphone. The convenience of having Facebook in your pocket at all times to see how depressed Vince is because he left his DiGorno pizza in the oven a little too long (maybe if you didn’t get distracted with Facebook, Vince!) is unbeatable. So much that the smartphone industry is killing the personal computer industry. Mac sales are down, PC sales are trying to stay afloat, and even laptops are being replaced with smartphones and tablets.
Smartphones have advanced over their preteen lifespan. They’ve gone from Blackberries that can respond to emails to retweet machines to voice activated devices that can tell you the weather and manage your digital calendar.
Wait, what was that? That’s right! The latest trend in the smartphone industry (latest as in 2 freaking years ago) was to equip your already convenient device with a even more convenient feature. No longer do you need to burn those fractions of a calorie to reach for your phone and move your finger to stay connected to the world. You can just use your God given voice-box to control your phone – which is what your life is revolving around anyways. Just about every smartphone has it. Google has Google Now. Apple has Siri. Shit, even Windows Phone and the PC’s Windows 10 has Cortana (suck it haters!). It’s nuts.
So now that voice activated feature that comes standard on the $500 device you already own what is there left to do in the tech world? Well, according to Amazon and consumers; it’s to repackage the one feature everyone loved into a $180 standalone device. That’s right! And the god damned device is selling like hot cakes. It’s a thriving product that people are spending close to $200 for a fraction of something they already have in their hands. For the same price you can build yourself a low end PC with Cortana, and play NES games on it!
What’s next? A $600 arcade cabinet that lets you reply to emails? A $4,000 scooter that lets your tweet-on-the-go? A $1,200 toilet that takes pictures of your poop?