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Actually, the concept of a display screen controlled by voice has instant applicability. Imagine this: "Alexa, show me the nieman marcus cookie recipe." As you are making the cookie dough, you need to scroll down the page for further instructions. But your hands are a mess with flour and egg all over them. You don't want to wash your hands just to scroll down the screen! Sooo... "Alexa, scroll down." Whether the assistant is built into the display (a natural) or 'cast' over, it should still do this as a matter of course.

Actually, no it doesn't. If you have to remind your assistant to remind you of something that occurs daily or weekly, or on any predetermined schedule, you lose virtually all the benefits of an assistant! Here's something I programmed in Tasker that should be easily doable with something like Alexa. A ) automatically speak out garbage/rubbish/yard waste/recycling at 6:30 am on the appropriate day. So if it's Wednesday, it says "please take out garbage and recycling"; on Monday it says "please take out garbage and yard waste". B ) it does the above unless the day in question is a holiday. It checks the google holiday calendar against the holidays taken by my town's sanitation service, and it they coincide it does not blurt out any reminder at all. So it will be silent on Labor Day, but on Columbus Day they still pick up the trash - so it automatically speaks the reminder. C ) if you ask "ok google, what is the next garbage pickup?", on a Saturday, for example, it takes all the above into account. If the impending Monday is a holiday, it replies "wednesday, garbage and recycling". If I ask on the second to last Tuesday of this year, it will reply "Friday, garbage and rubbish" because that Tuesday is the 24th and the next Wednesday is Xmas which has no sanitation pickup. So hypothetically, (C ) is doable as an Alexa skill. But (A,B ) is what an assistant should be doing - reminding you in timely fashion, without you having to ask! Alexa doesn't even show up as a 'that' in IFTTT. You can't make it respond to any external inputs.