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Pixel Watch 5

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261–270 of 401 posts

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#261
post #81

I overheard a conversation between someone on the Pixel Watch team and a woman I know. He was quizzing her at a party about what features she used - which were pretty much step counter and payment. He somewhat dismissively sneered, "Well, you're not exactly a power user, are you?" I'm trying to imagine what being a "power user" of a watch is like. Can anyone enlighten me? I think smart-watches are much like Alexa. Wh…

I love my analog watches too dearly to give them up for a smart watch. However, I just realized that analog watches also have "power users", and I am definitely not one of them. My favorite watch (excuse me, "chronograph") has a stopwatch with lap memory, a tachymeter, support for multiple time zones, and a bunch of other features I have not thought about since the week I purchased it. I don't really know how to use…

>My favorite watch (excuse me, "chronograph")

EXCUSE me... It's a time-piece!

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#262
post #8

Most useful bit of the announcement, coming to all Google wearables it seems: Blood pressure, sleep breathing, and insulin sensitivity trends > Built on state-of-the-art Health Foundation Models trained on billions of minutes of sensor data from opted-in users and rigorously validated against gold-standard clinical measurements, these models power three new monthly trend summaries: blood pressure trends, sleep breath…

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Re: Pixel Watch 5

#263
post #81

I overheard a conversation between someone on the Pixel Watch team and a woman I know. He was quizzing her at a party about what features she used - which were pretty much step counter and payment. He somewhat dismissively sneered, "Well, you're not exactly a power user, are you?" I'm trying to imagine what being a "power user" of a watch is like. Can anyone enlighten me? I think smart-watches are much like Alexa. Wh…

Pebble is the ultimate smartwatch because it knows what it is. Its a watch first and foremost, readable in any lighting conditions, waterproof, battery lasts for weeks. They made a watch first then added only the QOL features that most people need.

I've been really enjoying the reboot of Pebble with their new Time 2 for a few months now. I'm using ForecastWatch 2 watch face which crams calendar, watch and weather data into one screen and it's perfect. Lasts weeks on charge too. For apps their built-in workout apps etc are perfectly fine and I built some of my own apps quite easily.

My only complaint is that app limitation are apollo moon lander level of bad, like 128KB code and 256kb resources. I'm not particularly versed in optimizations patterns in here, but building fun stuff is really hard with these limitations. So what you have to do is roll a "companion app" android app that does all compute on the phone and streams it to the watch but that sucks.

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#264
post #81

I overheard a conversation between someone on the Pixel Watch team and a woman I know. He was quizzing her at a party about what features she used - which were pretty much step counter and payment. He somewhat dismissively sneered, "Well, you're not exactly a power user, are you?" I'm trying to imagine what being a "power user" of a watch is like. Can anyone enlighten me? I think smart-watches are much like Alexa. Wh…

"Power user?" Having a Pixel Watch 2 (or 3), I keep thinking no one working on this device really uses it. It's supposed to be a sports and health device but the stopwatch app doesn't even support laps.

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#265
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Listening to power users is the product management equivalent of armoring the places on the fighter plane where you find bullet holes. You should of course be looking for where the planes that didn't come back have damage. Smart watches become shelfware pretty easily. Especially when you don't have the Apple Watch cachet.

Great analogy - This phenomenon irks me, and I would never have thought of using survivorship bias as an apt description. Some of the most valuable feedback you will ever receive is from people that don't use your product/feature.

But if you go too far in that direction, you end up at the Mozilla school of design. Alienating your core users, and designing a product for users that aren't there. Look at them now.

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#266
post #81

I overheard a conversation between someone on the Pixel Watch team and a woman I know. He was quizzing her at a party about what features she used - which were pretty much step counter and payment. He somewhat dismissively sneered, "Well, you're not exactly a power user, are you?" I'm trying to imagine what being a "power user" of a watch is like. Can anyone enlighten me? I think smart-watches are much like Alexa. Wh…

I love my analog watches too dearly to give them up for a smart watch. However, I just realized that analog watches also have "power users", and I am definitely not one of them. My favorite watch (excuse me, "chronograph") has a stopwatch with lap memory, a tachymeter, support for multiple time zones, and a bunch of other features I have not thought about since the week I purchased it. I don't really know how to use…

Was going to reply that I would probably consider myself a power user of my Casio W-736. Features I use:

- Check the time (many times daily)

- Count-down timer (many times daily)

- Stop watch (weekly)

- Check date (a few times per month)

- Secondary time zone (rarely, since the people I care about are in the same time zone or 6h behind and easy enough to convert in my head)

I've had a fitbit in the past but had a hard time with having to charge it regularly, which often resulted in forgetting it at home. The added features did not outweigh the risk of being without it every now and then.

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#267
post #81

I overheard a conversation between someone on the Pixel Watch team and a woman I know. He was quizzing her at a party about what features she used - which were pretty much step counter and payment. He somewhat dismissively sneered, "Well, you're not exactly a power user, are you?" I'm trying to imagine what being a "power user" of a watch is like. Can anyone enlighten me? I think smart-watches are much like Alexa. Wh…

Pebble is the ultimate smartwatch because it knows what it is. Its a watch first and foremost, readable in any lighting conditions, waterproof, battery lasts for weeks. They made a watch first then added only the QOL features that most people need.

I assure you it's most certainly not waterproof in any reasonable sense of the word. The seals and glue on that thing is nowhere up to the standard of modern smartwatches.

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pebble is the ultimate smartwatch because it knows what it is. Its a watch first and foremost, readable in any lighting conditions, waterproof, battery lasts for weeks. They made a watch first then added only the QOL features that most people need.

I've been really enjoying the reboot of Pebble with their new Time 2 for a few months now. I'm using ForecastWatch 2 watch face which crams calendar, watch and weather data into one screen and it's perfect. Lasts weeks on charge too. For apps their built-in workout apps etc are perfectly fine and I built some of my own apps quite easily. My only complaint is that app limitation are apollo moon lander level of bad, li…

> but building fun stuff is really hard with these limitations

What is your idea of fun stuff? Code and data is cheap enough with these constraints, though fancy graphics are what will eat your budget.

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#269
post #81

I overheard a conversation between someone on the Pixel Watch team and a woman I know. He was quizzing her at a party about what features she used - which were pretty much step counter and payment. He somewhat dismissively sneered, "Well, you're not exactly a power user, are you?" I'm trying to imagine what being a "power user" of a watch is like. Can anyone enlighten me? I think smart-watches are much like Alexa. Wh…

This. Totally. I would say I'm quite a power user usually. I very carefully explored every feature my apple watch has and tried to incorporate as many of them as I could. Very, very few features stuck because they were genuinely helpful. Almost everything being pushed is a gimmick or a feature bullet point from some product manager. The actual good stuff: Time Workouts Payments The occasionally useful stuff: Notifica…

I listen to lots of music. Music controls are super useful to me.

I mainly own my watch for notifications and calendar reminders.

Timers, again every day.

To each their own.

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#270
post #81

I overheard a conversation between someone on the Pixel Watch team and a woman I know. He was quizzing her at a party about what features she used - which were pretty much step counter and payment. He somewhat dismissively sneered, "Well, you're not exactly a power user, are you?" I'm trying to imagine what being a "power user" of a watch is like. Can anyone enlighten me? I think smart-watches are much like Alexa. Wh…

Yes exactly, what i regularly use are: track workouts, steps, sleep, card payments (sometimes a backup), flashlight, hiking navigation (convenient than checking phone), alarm and camera remote. I cant stand anything with less a week battery life. so far Garmin works fine for me

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