is a senior reviewer with over twenty years of experience. She covers smart home, IoT, and connected tech, and has written previously for Wirecutter, Wired, Dwell, BBC, and US News.
Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
All the smart home news, reviews, and gadgets you need to know about
I’ve used Alexa to manage my shopping list for years. There are plenty of great list apps out there, but the convenience of adding items by voice anywhere in my house, pulling up the list on an Echo Show in the kitchen, and having it on my phone via the Alexa app has worked well for me. Until it didn’t.
Alexa Plus, combined with a redesign of the Alexa app that puts the generative AI-powered assistant front and center, has made the entire process so irritating that I’ve reluctantly switched to Apple’s Reminders app and Siri.
This is not what I wanted. I have Echos all over my house, but only a couple of HomePods, and Siri insists on saying my name every time I ask it to add something to the list: “Okay, Jennifer, apples are on your list.”
But at least when I pull up the list on my iPhone, it’s just a goddamn list. It’s not an ad for items I don’t want to buy from Whole Foods, or a way to try to get me to chat with Alexa Plus. Siri is annoying, but at least it stays in its lane.
The Alexa app shopping list has become increasingly more cluttered. By comparison, the Apple Reminders shopping list is clean and simple.
The list experience in the Alexa app has been changing in small ways for a while now. First, I started seeing more ads for the aforementioned Whole Foods products. Then I had to tap through two screens to add anything. Now, the new Alexa chatbot text box appears at the bottom of my list, prompting me to “Ask Alexa.”
It’s the worst place for it, as the instinct is to put what you want to add to your list in there. In the Reminders app, that’s where there’s a nice big plus sign to add an item. But when I typed “butter” into Alexa Plus, I got a guide to butter.
... continue reading