Assistant Frustration
This has been a frustrating week for me when it comes to digital assistants. I’m guessing that anybody reading this is already aware that I’m a huge fan of #Mycroft, but the market is currently dominated by Amazon and Google. This was not a good week in this regard.
On the first of July, Mycroft published their June 2020 update. They’ve been trying to be more transparent about their development process, and I appreciate that.
I appreciated most of what I read in the update. I wasn’t super happy about it, but I understand their reasoning, and I’m on board with what they’re doing.
In short, they’ve got new leadership, and the new leader is inspiring a new roadmap. Mycroft is not a hardware company, so they look at the Mycroft Mark X devices as a “reference” device. They’re moving Mycroft back from Beta to Alpha stage.
I don’t disagree with anything they’re doing. The part that frustrates me most about it is Mycroft is moving back from Beta to Alpha two days before I read that Alexa is being put into dimmer switches.
Amazon has done a great job with Alexa by putting it into just about everything. It’s what’s kept them ahead of Google when the Google Assistant is arguably a better assistant. Google has dropped the ball.
The problem is, Mycroft and the open source community’s versions of personal assistants are falling farther behind. At least it feels like it today.
Maybe tomorrow will be a better day.
Day 61 of the #100DaysToOffload Series:
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