They're not commenting on the quality of Jarvis (an excellent project), but on the headline. One of the key features of Echo, and one which is essential for something like this, is a good microphone. Most off the shelf ones are useless for this, and so the Echo provides fantastic value by delivering not only the voice recognition/action platform, but the hardware to make it work well.

I'd challenge someone to make a practical device that leverages Jarvis. Most microphones just aren't up to it.