Ben Thompson: belief

Transcript context

…Why should I want a tech device in my home at all? Take Alexa — I don’t have one, I’m pretty happy, my life is simple. I don’t want anyone or anything listening to me. What does it do for me? I know I can tell it to play me a song or buy something on Amazon, but that’s one-click shopping anyway, could hardly be simpler. Why do devices in the home have any future at all? The reality is — particularly when it comes to consumer products — is that in the long run, convenience always wins. I think people will have them in their homes, and they’ll become more popular because it’s convenient. You can be doing whatever you want; you can say something like, “Set a timer five minutes,” or “What temperature should I grill my steak to?” And you’ll get an answer with your hands busy, and altogether it’s going to be a more convenient answer than it would’ve been otherwise. Right now, is it always more convenient? No. To get everything working together, all the different pieces . . . but again, that’s very normal in the development of something new. At the beginning everyone’s figuring it out, and then someone’s going to nail it. Then it will grow from there. If you don’t want to have it, you can not have it. That’s going to be fine. But I think a lot of people will choose to have it because people love convenience. So answering your questions is the main thing it will do for you in the home?…

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