A lot of those cons are advantages for at least one target market, the elderly. It's much better for them if the device can't move and can't install new software.

▲ Telemakhos 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Every 65+ person I know has one of those alexa-speaker things. Nobody I know under 65 has one. I wonder if there's just some generational expectation for a fixed household object, like phones and televisions were for people in the twentieth century.

	▲	deinonychus 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		we all bought those for our parents, or just as likely, gave them to our parents after we were done with them
	▲	ssl-3 an hour ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		I still have them. I use them for kitchen timers, alarm clocks, a quick weather forecast, random maths and unit conversions, and whatever I want to activate with Home Assistant. There's one on the night stand with a clock on the front that I never need to set, that adjusts its brightness automatically based on ambient light, and which gets used as a Bluetooth speaker for the tablet that I watch dumb shit on YouTube with sometimes. So, like: The light switch in the garage is very inconveniently-located, and it's dark AF in there both at night and when I walk in from a bright sunny day. The lights can be activated by voice and that's pretty nice to have. They're also good when I want background music that's actually-in-the-background: I've got some very nice audio systems for when I want focus on listening to music, but they are much more successful at being involving than at being being ignored. The kinda-meh-sounding Alexa-type widget on the table over there does a better job for background noise. I'm not anywhere near 60 yet. I just find that stuff like this is useful. (Yeah, yeah. I could build or buy voice-controlled speaker-widgets that integrate with Home Assistant in an open-source way, and even use them with a local LLM if I wanted to. I'm disinterested in that kind of effort at this time.)
	▲	dd8601fn 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Funny. I had those for years and years (very early adoption), and have since gotten rid of them.

▲ TheOtherHobbes 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The screen is too small for the elderly. You're not going to get much information on there if you have to show large text, assuming that's even possible.

I think the idea is in the ballpark but the form factor is not ideal. The screen should be much bigger so notes can be left for others - maybe from scribbles rather than voice - and calendars and shopping lists can be seen from across the room.

This looks like someone at Apple took a recent Alexa and said "We should do one of those" instead of something more adventurous.

	▲	Johnny555 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		That depends on what they want to use it for, but we got an Echo Show 8 for my elderly mother in law years ago for video conferencing and she loves it. Other than video conferencing she mostly uses for voice tasks like checking the weather, setting a timer or playing music so the screen doesn't need to display any text. If not for the need for video conferencing, she'd have been fine with an audio only device.

▲ schmichael 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Fair but I also know plenty of people who give their elderly folks their old iPads. If you fit all the important apps on the home screen and tweak a couple things, I can't imagine the UX could be any more complex than for this device. Mobility and screen size is even more important for the elderly. They don't want to stand in their kitchen staring down at a little computer to talk to their grandchild on a tiny screen.

And finally, when they do have issues and ask you questions: now it's questions about an unfamiliar device you may not own yourself!

Old iPad still seems optimal for this demographic.

▲ Miraste 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Screen size is a good point. For the other things, I suppose I was thinking of my own grandparents, who had memory issues and would've benefited from a device that can't be misplaced.

▲ rjrjrjrj 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

iPad OS still has a zillion failure modes for the elderly. Long press, split screen and the other multitasking paradigms, multi-finger gestures, touch id, background audio from some tab in Safari... there's just no end of features that can throw them off. And it isn't multi-user.

Not sure if HomeView is the answer, but some aspects of the video were interesting. eg super-fast user switching with no explicit login; and how it puts Siri forward as the primary UI in a way that the iPad doesn't, even if the iPad technically has the same capabilities.

That they drilled a hole through the kitchen island table top for the power cord was hilarious. Exactly zero people in the real world are going to do that.

	▲	smikhanov 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		`Exactly zero people` You are wrong! I was redoing my kitchen recently and there’s a huge variety of accessories that kitchen worktop suppliers offer that have to do with using electronics on a worktop. A round hole with a lid to thread the power cable through is a very common thing that kitchen planner software includes nowadays, especially for kitchen islands. You can even have a completely flush wireless charging pad on your kitchen worktop if you want.

▲ slashdave 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yup. And a real market: "hip" kids buying such a device for their parents.