When you have $ to burn, it’s easy to have confidence
Even though I am dumbfounded by Samsung’s continued attempts to make Bixby a thing, I have to admire their confidence in the attempt. After all, the value proposition provided by Google and Apple’s robot slave, er… um… AI assistant, is obvious to me. They have all my data (depending on ecosystem adherence) already, travel with me, and provide something besides a nice bit of hardware with substandard software.
Obviously I didn’t include Amazon’s Alexa in the mix, mostly because they also have something of a problem here. Don’t get me wrong, I like it (we have an Echo variant in most every room), but the value for me personally is mostly as a voice activated controller for my home automation system. It is soooo much less clever than Google, and the music service substandard, that where it matters we also have a Google Home.
Oh, I almost forgot why I started down this path. Samsung introduced the Bixby powered Galaxy Home smart speaker today. Very light on details, but it’s there. Honestly, I wish they’d just euthanize Bixby and do what they do best. Make a nice bit of hardware that I can use with Google’s AI.
The device is called the Galaxy Home, and at first blush it appears to be Samsung’s take on the rising trend that has seen the likes of Amazon, Google, Apple, and Sonos release home speakers with built-in digital assistants.