The demo videos I have watched on the Amazon Echo make Siri look less powerful Seems Apple has a bit of catching up to do. I'm in Canada and can't buy the Amazon Echo officially and I don't feel like spending all that money on something which may not work 100%.
I have been watching how the beta Amazon Echo support works on the ISY994i and looks real good and as soon as available in Canada I would maybe buy - but considering that, after I enabled HomeKit support on my ISY994i with HomeBridge, the novelty of voice control has sorta worn off I am not so sure now. Wife and kids think I'm strange talking to the lights and of course it NEVER seems to work when I try to demo it - silly Siri!!! I do like having ability to turn lights on everywhere with my Apple Watch though which is always with me. To do this with Amazon Echo, I would need about 3 or 4 of them around the house.
So far from my experience with the Amazon Echo it's leaps ahead of Siri, which is smart in its own right, just different. Alexa is always on and just there, no hassling with picking up the iPhone and "Hey Siri" doesn't work nearly as well, not sure if it's just the listening piece or what but it doesn't wake up half the time and when it does, it doesn't seem to understand the commands nearly as well as Alexa and there's always the awkward pause. Comparing the two with Philips Hue bulbs Alexa won hands down.
I think Siri has potential but it's not nearly ubiquitous enough, there's a lot of products out there that Apple refuses to work with for some reason, most other home automation products play well with each other. Additionally, the framework for Siri with no interface is frankly confusing, in my experience I always find myself reverting to the app.
Seems like Apple is falling behind in this quickly evolving market. IMO Alexa is the coolest piece of tech since the invention of the iPhone.