Kahney's Korner: Amazon Echo

Hey Amazon, put adult diapers in Leander's shopping cart

Adult diapers added to your shopping list. That's pretty funny. Hi, I'm Leander Kinney, the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.com

This is another edition of Cane's Corner with coffee. This is Amazon Echo

It just became available to the public for the first time. It costs $1.89 for regular folks and $99 for Prime subscribers

And it's an odd device. It's a voice-controlled, speaker-cum-shopping tube that sits on your desk or in your kitchen

or in your living room or your dining room at home or even your bedroom

But it's actually really kind of great. And it does a bunch of things. It can be used for simple queries like, what's the weather or how's my commute today or what's

Barack Obama's middle name. It can be used as a music server to play music from a variety of sources, including Amazon

Prime Music or TuneIn Radio or Pandora. And of course, it's a shopping device because it's from Amazon

So you can use it to order and reorder stuff that you regularly get from Amazon

And it does a bunch of other things too, including you can check a Google Calendar

You can use it to control some smart devices in your home

Like if you have a Philips Hue, it'll turn the lights on or off or up or down

And you can turn off Wemo stuff from Belkin. I don't really have any of these, so I haven't been using that

But I've had it sit on my desk here for a couple of months now

And I really dig it. I've really, really got into it. And it's by far the best and easiest way to play music

So you can ask it all sorts of stuff about the weather, the commute, or just basic facts

Hey, Amazon, what's President Obama's middle name? Barack Obama's middle name is Hussein

And you can shop. And I've actually ordered a couple of things

The thing is you have to have stuff on your... You can only reorder stuff that's already on your Prime list

So it's kind of limited. And asking questions like what Obama's middle name is is kind of limited

But what I really like about this is that for playing music, for the stuff it does do

it's almost completely and utterly reliable. It gets it right every single time

And what it has done is it's given me a feel for if Apple did this with Siri and with HomeKit

And if you had a device like this from Apple that was actually integrated into a whole bunch of different..

Of services that you already use, Apple Music, your calendar, your to-do list, email, texts

and everything else you have going on in your digital life. If it was all controllable like this, it's totally Star Trek

It's just like talking to Oric from Blake 7. It really is a reliable and non-frustrating voice-active interface

And if Apple brings this to Siri and to the Home, oh my God, it's going to be completely amazing

So I asked it a bunch of questions about Tim Cook and Apple and Jeff Bezos. And I was trying to get some of those sly answers you sometimes get from Siri, those

sarcastic answers with personality. And unfortunately, it just doesn't even know what you're talking about

Hey, Amazon, are you friends with Apple? I wasn't able to understand the question I heard

Oh, f*** it. So that's one of the downfalls. But if they can bring this with some of Siri's personality and smarts, it was going to be

really great. That's been another Cane's Corner from Cult of Mac. And please check us out on the web at cultofmac.com

And don't forget to follow us on Instagram and on Twitter and on Facebook

Oh, and check out our podcast, CultCast. It's on iTunes. It's pretty good

Hey, Amazon, what's Apple's stock right now? Here's your flash briefing. In NPR news from Tulum

Okay, hey, Amazon. Pause. So it's not perfect