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Pebble's next step

blog.getpebble.com

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Re: Pebble's next step

#171

Post by iamatworknow »

Twirrim wrote: post #139
iamatworknow wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Making battery life a priority in a world of WiFi-enabled pressure cookers. I literally wear my Time Steel for 23 hours and 45 minutes per day. The only time it's charging and not on my wrist is when I'm in the shower, and over the course of a regular day it never drops below 80%. If I'm going away for a weekend I don't even have to bother with the charger.

I charge my first gen Pebble literally once a week. Monday morning, I get to work, and put my pebble on charge. By the time stand-up happens a couple of hours later (my first meeting of the day) it's back on my wrist and good to go for the next week. I was aiming to get a new Pebble after Christmas, as mine suffers from that screen corruption glitch that plagued the first gens. I expect this is actually part of the p…

I had the same screen glitch with my Kickstarter edition OG Pebble, then bounced around to other smart watches until I landed again on the Time Steel which has been nothing but perfect.

But you're right. Much like the cell phone market which appears to be slowing down, the minor improvements made in the tech for smart watches don't appear to actually be worth buying if you already have the current version that isn't broken. Unfortunately, the software Pebbles run is so straightforward that even planned obsolescence through required updates wouldn't have been a viable option like it is for cell phones. Y'know, the updates that correct dangerous security vulnerabilities while at the same time crippling old hardware by introducing new, unnecessary features in the software? No Pebble owner would've bought (for lack of a better word) that justification and upgraded.

Re: Pebble's next step

#172

Post by JonFish85 »

paulftw wrote: post #150
captainmuon wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but I meant a gamble on their side, not the buyers'. Like when MtGox lost their bitcoins and ran as a fractional reserve trying to cover what happened. Or an actual addicted gambler trying to cut their losses by playing more. I wonder when they learned they were going out of business, and if the last Kickstarter was just a Hail Mary...

They probably thought a big KS would convince investors to give them couple hundred million. What they should have done is cut costs and develop 10x fewer features, let the community grow slowly but organically and wait out the bad times.

"What they should have done is cut costs and develop 10x fewer features, let the community grow slowly but organically and wait out the bad times."

It's easy to say that, but when you are up against the Apple/Samsung type companies who have much deeper pockets, don't have to wait out bad times, have the ability to lean on vendors, have contracts in place with manufacturing and the supply chain to efficiently deliver the product, it might not be realistic to do that. On top that, as others here have said, once you take VC money, there isn't really an option to go slowly and let the community grow.

Re: Pebble's next step

#173

Post by mbesto »

victorvation wrote: post #70
captainmuon wrote: post #64

I'm quite angry. This sucks so bad. I "ordered" a Time 2 via Kickstarter. I'm glad they are refunding me, but that makes me think... WTF, did they not produce any Time 2's? Or are they all going to the landfill? How long have they been knowing that they are going to be insolvent? This doesn't happen overnight! Was the last Kickstarter a gamble? Why does everybody have to aim for total market dominance to be successfu…

> Was the last Kickstarter a gamble? _All_ Kickstarters are gambles. Their messaging[1] is pretty clear in the fact that you aren't buying a product, you're contributing money with the hope that the maker will deliver on their promises. [1] https://www.kickstarter.com/blog/kickstarter-is-not-a-store

Even though Kickstarter explicitly says it's not a store, it doesn't mean people don't think it is. Perception = reality. This news will most likely have the largest effect on Kickstarter, specifically in the tech category, more than anything else. There have been many failures of promises on Kickstarter, but when your top 4 most funded projects are all now dead, people are going to start thinking twice about backing companies.

Re: Pebble's next step

#174

Post by headgasket »

This is so sad. I had the new time2 with the core on kickstarter. This would have been a truly innovative product, why oh why? I see on crunchbase they had only raised 15M-- so theres G$ available for a nth round of evernote or dropbox and not a few M$ to help these guys see it to market? This is a terrible day for innovation.

Re: Pebble's next step

#175

Post by theatrus2 »

captainmuon wrote: post #64

I'm quite angry. This sucks so bad. I "ordered" a Time 2 via Kickstarter. I'm glad they are refunding me, but that makes me think... WTF, did they not produce any Time 2's? Or are they all going to the landfill? How long have they been knowing that they are going to be insolvent? This doesn't happen overnight! Was the last Kickstarter a gamble? Why does everybody have to aim for total market dominance to be successfu…

> I'm glad they are refunding me, but that makes me think... WTF, did they not produce any Time 2's? Or are they all going to the landfill?

The probably made some, but it takes money to turn any component inventory they may have into shippable products. They probably burned all of the money on mechanical tooling and part procurement already, and maybe hit a major issue in doing so (critical component is suddenly a very different price, etc). All of that inventory either is returned (if possible) or ends up liquidated on the secondary electronics component market for pennies on the dollar, to pay back the creditors. Custom parts, tools, etc have less of a resale market, but I'm sure a company in China will be happy to pick them up cheap to make smartwatches for the local market.

Re: Pebble's next step

#176

Post by TeMPOraL »

antoniuschan99 wrote: post #149
alonsonic wrote: post #47

I can't believe this, just got a Pebble 2 a week ago and now they are literally saying it may not work in the future. If we rely on their cloud services for activity tracking and app downloads then it will be useless if FitBit doesn't maintain the platform. I have to say I'm really disappointed and this is a huge blow to people that invest in startups offering hardware. If the company fails forget about the smart stu…

It would seem that fitbit would want to retain pebble customers. If they discontinue cloud support for pebble that won't be a good thing

From what I remember, Fitbit has ~30M customers, and Pebble has ~1M. That's just 3% of Fitbit's userbase, so pretty much a rounding error. I don't believe they will care.

Re: Pebble's next step

#177

Post by stingrae »

victorvation wrote: post #70
captainmuon wrote: post #64

I'm quite angry. This sucks so bad. I "ordered" a Time 2 via Kickstarter. I'm glad they are refunding me, but that makes me think... WTF, did they not produce any Time 2's? Or are they all going to the landfill? How long have they been knowing that they are going to be insolvent? This doesn't happen overnight! Was the last Kickstarter a gamble? Why does everybody have to aim for total market dominance to be successfu…

> Was the last Kickstarter a gamble? _All_ Kickstarters are gambles. Their messaging[1] is pretty clear in the fact that you aren't buying a product, you're contributing money with the hope that the maker will deliver on their promises. [1] https://www.kickstarter.com/blog/kickstarter-is-not-a-store

I think this is an example of an issue that some companies that do kickstarter/preorder campaigns have.

They try to do a Hardware project that pushes boundaries and try to collect money to early during the development process at a time when it is really impossible to set a ship date. (Also a factor is company inexperience with manufacturing) This is why so many projects have to delay shipments and sometimes eventually run out of money without getting to a shippable product.

Companies that are successful typically do their preorders at a point where they have already completed multiple production runs at a cm in china and are ready to ramp for mass production. the order count helps justify the costs of ordering mass production parts. The issue of course is that it means investors had to be willing to fund seed/series A without seeing any traction.

Re: Pebble's next step

#179

Post by this-dang-guy »

neonnoodle wrote: post #156
this-dang-guy wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree entirely. It's very rare that something fits a niche so nicely, while the competition misses it by miles. I have the same feeling about my simple sigma bike computer (though at least there's more options in that niche). I will use my pebble as long as it continues to work, then it'll get retired to my shelf of tech fails. Most of which failed FAR more spectacularly.

What else is on your tech fail shelf? I'm curious...

I have an Ouya, an OnLive, a cuecat, a SuperDisk LS-120, Commodore Plus 4, PS Vita (maybe a little early to call, but...), a DivX, a DreamCast, a Jornada, a Palm Tungsten, a GameBoy Advance e-card reader, probably some other stuff in there too.

Shelf is a euphemism, it's actually a small pile of boxes that I keep just to remind myself that even great ideas will die with poor implementation, planning, DRM, or bad support.

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