Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Pebble's next step

blog.getpebble.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 457 posts

Re: Pebble's next step

#361

Post by VLM »

arjie wrote: post #233
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 think Kickstarter isn't for you, man. You just have different expectations for the site than what you're going to get.

Kickstarter is like the blind men talking about the elephant, its just too big. Cutting edge hardware? Gonna be risky, it almost always fails. On the other hand the board game and RPG scene on KS is reliable as the worlds slowest amazon-like fulfillment store, it always arrives in ten short months (after having been promised six). I swear board game developers are as bad as software devs at estimating delivery dates.

Of course that's kind of a mis-use of the kickstarter site... you've been in the euro/war/rpg board gaming business for over 25 years and you've had 8 completely successful kickstarters and now you're starting your 9th... I'm not naming names, but come on, you're not "kickstarting" anything, this is just your online store.

Re: Pebble's next step

#362

Post by this-dang-guy »

bradyo wrote: post #340
this-dang-guy wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point me to an F/OSS and Open Hardware version and I'm there. Seriously, I'm always backing those sorts of devices over proprietary ones every chance I get - though it's rare as heck.

Pretty sure this is still under active development, but it's supposed to be a completely open fitness tracker: http://openhealth.wemaketotem.org/ There's also the FOSS smart watch OS Asteroid OS: http://asteroidos.org/

Thanks! Not sure that the tracker is what I'm looking for (or I'd be into the fitbit move), but Asteroid looks intriguing. I'm following both now.

Appreciate the tip!

Re: Pebble's next step

#363

Post by Ezhik »

wenbin wrote: post #317

Just read previous posts on https://blog.getpebble.com/ . Man, you really can't tell whether a startup is doing well or not from outside. Everything's AWESOME all the time: * Oct 31, 2016: Get Spooky with Halloween Pebble Faces! * Oct 18, 2016: What’s New in Pebble’s 4.2 Firmware and Apps * Oct 05, 2016: Pebble 2: Fit & Smart * Sep 30, 2016: Pebble 2 Kickstarter Rewards Start Shipping * Sep 14, 2016: Pebble Core = Mo…

Apparently if they don't blog for a while, things are bad.

Re: Pebble's next step

#364

Post by fma »

dashoffset wrote: post #323
fma wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like how they announce it after Black Friday and Thanksgiving sales. I'm sure they knew of it during the acquisition as it would be all laid out, but they wanted to squeeze in more sales. Hopefully the average consumer gets wind of this and return their product.

I'm really thinking about returning mine. I just don't know what I would get instead since the competition is either crap or crazy expensive.

I think it's likely their product will reduce in price for fire sale, like the HP Touchpad.

At least with HP Touchpad you could flash the ROM and change the OS.

It is a difficult sell to have someone pay full price for a product when the manufacturer openly states they won't support it anymore, and may even reduce functionality in the future.

You can keep yours till the end of the return period and see if the price drops. Or maybe pebble will change their own, or open source their software (but now you paid full price for a product with no hardware support). Depending on where you bought, some stores have extended returns for the holidays.

Re: Pebble's next step

#365

Post by ausjke »

what's the core reason, wearable is not as popular as it is thought to be? too early for the generic public? Apple iwatch competition? something else?

Re: Pebble's next step

#366

Post by Relys »

fest wrote: post #268
TeMPOraL wrote: post #202

I'm sad/angry/depressed as any Pebbler right now, so I won't repeat those comments. Instead, since this is HN after all, let me ask - what shall we do? In a year or two, when my current Pebble Time fails, I'd love an equivalent smartwatch to be available. Since the market doesn't seem to want it, how can we make it happen anyway? Features I'm looking for are, in order of priority: - always-on screen, preferably color…

There are Chinese companies working on similar products, for example WeLoop[0], Goclever[1]. People are already working on open-source firmware for some of these watches[2], so I think there's a reasonably good chance that either some of these companies will create a decent alternative to pebble, or at least good enough hardware which can be used with community-developed firmware (and even more importantly: apps on t…

It doesn't look like either of these are in production anymore. :(

Re: Pebble's next step

#367

Post by djsumdog »

nerfhammer wrote: post #267
TeMPOraL wrote: post #202

I'm sad/angry/depressed as any Pebbler right now, so I won't repeat those comments. Instead, since this is HN after all, let me ask - what shall we do? In a year or two, when my current Pebble Time fails, I'd love an equivalent smartwatch to be available. Since the market doesn't seem to want it, how can we make it happen anyway? Features I'm looking for are, in order of priority: - always-on screen, preferably color…

I've been working on a DIY watch off and on a bit. One of the bigger obstacles for me personally has been bluetooth notifications. I have found surprisingly few examples online of people getting it to actually work, and if you read through their work more closely, it only very barely works. I've tried to reproduce what other people have done and had it actually work even less than that. I was thinking of selling a pr…

You might want to reverse engineer the current Pebble app and see what they do?

Re: Pebble's next step

#368

Post by darklajid »

dlevine wrote: post #339
darklajid wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they're three times the price. That's a bit hard to swallow, honestly. A Pebble is a nice gadget. The Garmin (looking at garmin.com, clicking the first thing that looks like a watch) is close to a month of rent. I believe you when you state that you're satisfied. On the other hand, I really don't feel that this is in the Pebble replacement league.

The Garmin Vivoactive HR (which supports their app platform, has GPS and optical HR) was on sale for $170 on Black Friday. It periodically will go on sale for this price.

Thanks for that. Looking at the specs it seems to have equivalent battery life (ignoring GPS, which is fair), is just as water proof and generally looks like an alternative.

I'm not sure I like the looks of the thing (but then again, pictures are bad and I should get my hands on one first) and I've no idea about their app platform yet.

Do you happen to know if this works completely offline, ignoring cloud offerings? Can I track whatever I want to track and keep it on the device and/or my phone only?

Re: Pebble's next step

#369

Post by djsumdog »

sumitgt wrote: post #239
JonFish85 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Had they came to the community and said, "hey we are losing sales and we need everyone to pitch in $10 / year for software support (maybe a web interface for fitness or something) I guarantee a few hundred thousand people would have done it." What is this based on? I'd be shocked if that worked. I think it'd be a sign of blood in the water, and signal the end (if vendors see this, they're going to want to be paid u…

I would gladly pay around $10 a year, maybe even $15. My Pebble has been worth it. However, I am now going to return it because if the next Android update breaks the app, it will become a paper weight.

I really love my Pebble Steel. It still works, does everything I want it to do and has a cool look to it (I got the fancy linked metal wristband).

I mostly just use it with cycling (MapMyRide supports it) and for the music app. I realize their servers/app store will shut down eventually (I hope they at least decide to take whatever money they have left and keep the servers running as long as possible after paying off people/debts) and at that point it will be difficult, if not impossible, to get it working with new phones.

I'm going to do what I can to keep mine working until then though. I prefer the simplicity of a Pebble to any of the Google/Apple offerings.

Re: Pebble's next step

#370

Post by djsumdog »

nepfvkej wrote: post #348
mike-cardwell wrote: post #198

Somebody pointed this out to me the other day: https://github.com/Freeyourgadget/Gadgetbridge I've not looked into it yet, but it is described as: "A free and cloudless replacement for your gadget vendors' closed source Android applications. Pebble and Mi Band supported." The feature list seems substantial. So hopefully we'll be able to continue to use our pebbles for some time.

I don't know whether to applaud or criticize those who create open source software on unstable proprietary platforms, but if nothing else it shows what potential good greater openness would serve users.

Um...have you paid attention to the open source space for the past decade?

Audium/Pidgin/libpurple all were originally created to have open source interfaces to close systems (MSN, AIM, Yahoo Messenger, etc). Most of the OSS work is about reverse engineering and creating open yet compatible tools to use with or in place of closed systems.

If anything, projects like this can help keep Pebble watches alive after the demise of the company.

Post reply on HN