Amazon’s Vision of Computing’s Future: An Information Appliance

Amazon’s Vision of Computing’s Future: An Information Appliance
It’s becoming the model for a new kind of communal, household computer — a resurrection of Mr. Raskin’s
idea of an information appliance, as opposed to Mr. Jobs’s vision of an all-purpose PC.
For one thing, the Echo Show is designed to be used just with your voice — the screen adds extra information,
but you have to look at it only when you specifically ask for visual information (such as when you want a video).
Another reason a tablet interface wouldn’t have worked is
that it felt too much like a computer, and one overriding design goal of the Echo and the Echo Show was to hide any relationship to anything computerlike.
Mr. Raskin started a project at Apple to realize his vision — the first cheap, easy-to-use computer for everyone.
But what it does do — play music and videos, make video calls, tell you the news, tell you the time
and weather, and shop at Amazon — it does with such surpassing ease that it feels like a magic trick.