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Star Trek fans have a new reason to buy an Amazon Echo

They've done what you all wanted

Star Trek fans have a new reason to buy an Amazon Echo
Danielle de Wolfe
24 January 2017

Devices that you can talk to, space missions to Mars, hoverboards that actually work – we’re literally living in the future aren’t we?

But, of course, science fiction predicted all this stuff years ago, so it’s only right that tech firms tip their hats occasionally to our visionary forefathers when reality catches up with their forward-thinking.

And a neat little addition to Amazon’s Echo is what every Star Trek fan has wanted since the launch of the product: you can now wake it up by saying ‘computer’.

Yes, that’s right, you can now pretend that your humble abode is, in fact, the Starship Enterprise, by shouting ‘computer’ and then instructing your machine to play a tune or read the news, or whatever else you want it to do.

The option has been rolled out over the last week or so - if you’re one of the lucky ones, you can change your wake word via the Alex app, where it now appears as an option alongside Alexa, Amazon or Echo.

The move comes as no surprise given that Amazon executives have previously admitted that the Enterprise’s computer inspired the making of Alexa. The company’s CEO Jeff Bezos is also a huge Trekkie and was even given a cameo in Justin Lin’s Star Trek Beyond.

[via Mashable]