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Alphabet in bid to buy Fitbit

reuters.com

61–70 of 538 posts

Re: Alphabet in bid to buy Fitbit

#61
Like the Palm Pilot, Fitbit was a great idea in its time, but there are many competitors today that are better built and better supported. For example, Samsung makes a fitness bracelet that Consumer Reports rates as the best of breed, though it's expensive.

After an unsuccessful foray into Android watches a few years ago, I finally broke down and got a $15 remaindered Fitbit Flex on Ebay. It was advertised as "new/other", but the battery is obviously shot and doesn't hold a charge longer than a day or two, so they refunded my money.

But I still wear it occasionally, to understand the user experience, despite the inconvenience of needing to charge it every day. It's a clever design and does one thing pretty well -- recording your motion and sync'ing to your phone when in Bluetooth range.

For a while I toyed with investing more in a new Fitbit that would capture heart rate, but given how much better Apple watches are both in build quality and likelihood of remaining in business, I think I'll just hold out for one of those, for when I switch from Android to an iPhone 11 or 12 next autumn.

Though, Google might reinvigorate Fitbit, who knows. But Google also shelves products with distressing frequency so it might be a meaningless acquisition. Fitness trackers have become a commodity, with a few high end quality offerings from Samsung and others, Fitbit struggling to retain its market leader status, and dozens of Chinese knock-offs in the $8-$20 range that are mediocre but the price is right.

Re: Alphabet in bid to buy Fitbit

#62
post #5
post #2

Yay, can't wait for my FitBit to be EOL'd randomly.

I can't wait for my already EOL'd Pebble that was acquired by FitBit to be resurrected as a surveillance/adtech nightmare by Google.

Given that your EOL'd Pebble currently uses servers maintained by an independent nonprofit using an open source stack, it's about as far from Google's influence as anything can be.

Re: Alphabet in bid to buy Fitbit

#63
post #5
post #2

Yay, can't wait for my FitBit to be EOL'd randomly.

I can't wait for my already EOL'd Pebble that was acquired by FitBit to be resurrected as a surveillance/adtech nightmare by Google.

Get your EOL'd Pebble unEOL'd with Rebble! https://rebble.io/

Re: Alphabet in bid to buy Fitbit

#64
post #15

I'd still love to hear a convincing argument from someone as to the benefits of counting steps and measuring heart rate with a wrist band- Are people feeling like they are more fit because they walked to lunch "the long way" so they can reach the 10000 step goal that Fred from accounting has set for them? Do they feel healthier because they were regularly watching their heart rate reading during their hour in the gym…

I've been wearing an Apple Watch since it launched in 2015. The activity tracking and workout metrics are useful for keeping track of how active I am. It's not life changing.

The heart rate monitoring has been incredibly useful for me. Over the last year, I've had 2-3 instances where my heart rate got rather high while sedentary. Those moments were times when I was having panic attacks. I could feel my heart racing, my thoughts were spiraling, and I knew something was wrong. When this happens, the Apple Watch notified me that my heart rate was irregular. I consulted my primary doctor about this, showed him the graphs and explained the stressful situations, and he helped get me in contact with someone who could better help me to deal with this.

I know it's a minor thing, but it made a big difference and got me talking with the right kinds of medical professionals for an issue I was seemingly avoiding. Yea, it took almost 4 years of wearing this device, but it's made a difference.

Re: Alphabet in bid to buy Fitbit

#65

Great now google can track my biometrics

If you thought Google knew a lot about you before...

There are massive potential benefits to mass medical data collection and analysis. From early detection and prevention of epidemics to individualized, detailed, precise medical advice (e.g. you, specifically, might be fine eating lots of fat, but have an obscure risk factor involving, say, olives or almonds or something.)

To me it seems clearly insane to give that much power to such a relatively unaccountable entity.

There's a competitor to Fitbit and one thing coming down their pipeline can detect blood alcohol level. They are about to enter a market in a staunchly Muslim nation. See the potential for problems?

Re: Alphabet in bid to buy Fitbit

#66

Damn. I like my Fitbit. I wouldn't be looking forward to having it stop working with no notice because Google decided to just shut down the servers on a random Tuesday and shutter the product line...

Does it really require access to a server, if you're just synching it to one phone?

Re: Alphabet in bid to buy Fitbit

#68

My Fitbit Versa is my favorite smartwatch (and I have two Android Wear watches in a drawer that couldn't get one full WORK day of battery) I'd love to see the Pebble hardware running Android Wear (maybe fixed by Fitbit to last longer) with Pixel branding. I'm hopeful.

Pebble hardware could never run Android Wear. It has 256 kilobytes of RAM! Android Wear requires two thousand times more RAM than that. That's the really impressive achievement of Pebble. They built a smartwatch software platform that was orders of magnitude more efficient than Apple or Google, but still a joy to use. That efficiency gave them the flexibility to make hardware design choices (e.g. 7 day battery or 7.5…

Not only that, despite the extreme technical limitations underpinning the device, they built a dev environment that was a joy to use, and an API that was intuitive and powerful, supported by great documentation. Pebble really was something special.

Re: Alphabet in bid to buy Fitbit

#70
I don't really get what Fitbit offers to Google...seems like they could easily build from scratch what Fitbit currently offers. And the Fitbit brand doesn't seem particularly strong right now...
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