These things can not do anything except of delivering some adware to be honest. I will change my mind when it become possible to do anything in REPL using this kind of screenless device. And, of course, author tells nothing about online-only devices.

I'm not sure if you mean me by "author" or the article's author, but I think we have different base thoughts. Mine would need to be online.

I'd like to be able to get information, store information, get and receive calls, texts, slack messages, make appointments, etc. I started with "what do I want to be able to do on a regular basis, from anywhere I am?" Then I go to "does a technology exist which allows me to do that without a screen?" Google Assistant is close-ish, but there's still a lot of work to be done to get past "the Beat up Martin -> Eat up Martha problem," and TBH I don't think they're putting much work into it anymore, progress seems stalled.

> "author"

The article's author. I agree with the every single point of the article and I want to develop author's idea here because it resonates with some ideas of mine.

> I'd like to be able to get information, store information, get and receive calls, texts, slack messages, make appointments, etc.

This is what Iphone does maybe in the best possible way. My needs are: to write, to program, to use Vim and Emacs, to be as close to body as possible, to be able to control others computers and screens in my house.

> the Beat up Martin -> Eat up Martha problem

That's why author's poind about keyboard-centric device is timeless.

But Google was never close to the computer the author describes (in my opinion). Perfect listening (recognizing everything with no errors) is not a big deal if you already have a perfect keyboard but perfect sounding of anything happening on the screen is where the progress is absent.

Imagine working with CLI using sound only in such a way which make your CLI experience better than GUI.

well, my point was that the technology exists. Obviously it doesn't replace the traditional computer or a phone but you can do things like making phone calls, setting reminders, timers, alarms, playing songs etc. for some of these tasks you don't need wifi connection on.

> my point was that the technology exists

> for some of these tasks you don't need wifi connection on

And all of this abilities are literally baked in chip. For example, if Google (or user/owner of the device) decides to change "OK Google" to "OK Alphabet" than all the old chips will be unable to support such a newcoming. So, I do not agree that the technology exists, these are way closer to speaking dolls than to computers.

> And all of this abilities are literally baked in chip. For example, if Google (or user/owner of the device) decides to change "OK Google" to "OK Alphabet" than all the old chips will be unable to support such a newcoming.

Its not baked into chip, its software and gets updated just like your phone or computer when its connected to the internet.

Software is too slow for this task, especially if that speaking doll does not have a powerful CPU. It is way cheaper to produce a lot of cheap ASICs which can recognize very fast only the "ok google" keyword, maybe few most common phonemes also, but otherwise it just throws recorded sound on the server. So, all the software for recognizing unusual phrases is usually running on cloud and the speaking doll has nothing to update.

GA doesn't do -exactly- what I'm saying. It's close, but not all the way there. The interactions and context would need to be seamless. And my experience with Alexa is that it's a steaming pile of garbage. YMMV.