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Pebble Smartwatch Is Coming To Best Buy On July 7 For $149.95

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Re: Pebble Smartwatch Is Coming To Best Buy On July 7 For $149.95

#51

Post by potatolicious »

jasonlotito wrote: post #50
potatolicious wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And here lies my greatest frustration with hardware Kickstarters. Despite Kickstarter's protestations, hardware kickstarters have been de facto preorders. The expectations here are vastly different than "I've never done this before, help me do this". Kickstarter introduced the "risks and challenges" section after some particularly infamous failures. This section is still routinely glossed over, and project owners con…

> Despite Kickstarter's protestations, hardware kickstarters have been de facto preorders. I hear this all the time, but from day one on KickStarter, it's made it clear what it was about (and this was before the Pebble KS). So, I keep hearing this, but I can't find any sympathy for the backers that complain about it. > This section is still routinely glossed over, I imagine most of it is glossed over by the backers.…

> "I imagine most of it is glossed over by the backers. =)"

I disagree heavily. There's never any honesty in this section - the thought that maybe, just maybe, this project can't be delivered at all, is never brought up.

This section is the Kickstarter equivalent of "what's your greatest weakness", where project owners do their best to downplay actual risks or not mention them at all. It's the place where you admit to your most softball, most mitigable risk and leave everything else behind the curtain.

If there were any honesty in this section at all, "none of us have manufactured anything before" would be top, in bold, in many of them.

> "but from day one on KickStarter, it's made it clear what it was about"

Who's making it clear though? It's obvious that Kickstarter themselves would rather be a funding machine than a preorder machine - but look at hardware kickstarters. Project owners routinely position their campaigns as presales or preorders, not simple crowdfunding.

The difference is more stark if you look at arts category kickstarters, where the reward tiers, as well as the language used, is much more obviously "support us and get a gift in return". Hardware kickstarters are, almost without fail, "come buy this thing".

In the hardware category at least, project owners have an opposing conflict of interest with Kickstarter.

Re: Pebble Smartwatch Is Coming To Best Buy On July 7 For $149.95

#52

Post by sigkill »

hypersoar wrote: post #43
akandiah wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a vibrating e-ink backlit display It's not an e-ink display!

"E-Paper" is the term they used. Yeah, it's an LCD, but it has the features one would want from e-ink in this context; namely, good daylight visibility and low power draw.

Hold on a minute. e-paper and LCD are two very different technologies. You could possibly charge them for misleading. Is it bistable?

Re: Pebble Smartwatch Is Coming To Best Buy On July 7 For $149.95

#54

Post by wvenable »

potatolicious wrote: post #42
kenbellows wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only been five months since Jan 31, but regardless, remember that Kickstarter projects are often run by people fairly (or completely) new to the manufacturing industry. It's no surprise that they wouldn't have properly planned for all the kinks and obstacles they would run into. It seems foolish to get upset at a group of guys who really had no way to know how long the process would actually take (having never d…

And here lies my greatest frustration with hardware Kickstarters. Despite Kickstarter's protestations, hardware kickstarters have been de facto preorders. The expectations here are vastly different than "I've never done this before, help me do this". Kickstarter introduced the "risks and challenges" section after some particularly infamous failures. This section is still routinely glossed over, and project owners con…

It seems like their biggest failure was offering multiple colors. It seems like for a kickstarter they should be working on the minimum viable product. In this case, that should be just a black version.

Re: Pebble Smartwatch Is Coming To Best Buy On July 7 For $149.95

#55

Post by mongol »

potatolicious wrote: post #42
kenbellows wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only been five months since Jan 31, but regardless, remember that Kickstarter projects are often run by people fairly (or completely) new to the manufacturing industry. It's no surprise that they wouldn't have properly planned for all the kinks and obstacles they would run into. It seems foolish to get upset at a group of guys who really had no way to know how long the process would actually take (having never d…

And here lies my greatest frustration with hardware Kickstarters. Despite Kickstarter's protestations, hardware kickstarters have been de facto preorders. The expectations here are vastly different than "I've never done this before, help me do this". Kickstarter introduced the "risks and challenges" section after some particularly infamous failures. This section is still routinely glossed over, and project owners con…

They have not been particularily open at all

Re: Pebble Smartwatch Is Coming To Best Buy On July 7 For $149.95

#57

Post by heyitsnick »

Zikes wrote: post #20

A year ago people were foaming at the mouth at the prospect of a watch that was a vibrating e-ink backlit display with buttons and customizable watch face options and a battery that could go a week between charges. Now it's getting panned for being nothing but a vibrating e-ink backlit display with buttons and customizable watch face options and a battery that could go a week between charges. Go figure. I backed them…

Isn't this the classic mistake of assuming "people" on the internet are a single homogeneous group? When Pebble had a kickstarter, a lot of proponents were vocal. Now its going into best-buy, those that are vocal are (a different set of) people who have the opportunity to criticize. Those who successfully funded the project and are proud users of Pebble maybe see less desire to be vocal.

There's nothing really to "go figure", its just different people being selectively vocal in their support/dismissal.

Re: Pebble Smartwatch Is Coming To Best Buy On July 7 For $149.95

#58

Post by jeroen94704 »

sigkill wrote: post #52
hypersoar wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"E-Paper" is the term they used. Yeah, it's an LCD, but it has the features one would want from e-ink in this context; namely, good daylight visibility and low power draw.

Hold on a minute. e-paper and LCD are two very different technologies. You could possibly charge them for misleading. Is it bistable?

There's this big discussion about what constitutes "e-paper". Apparently, in some circles, e-paper is any display technology that is low-power and readable in daylight. The display in a pebble is a low-power transflective LCD display manufactured by Sharp. In Sharp's product brochure, they don't use the term e-paper though. They only say the display is "paper-like".

Re: Pebble Smartwatch Is Coming To Best Buy On July 7 For $149.95

#59

Post by jeroen94704 »

SnowLprd wrote: post #2

Here's the product page: http://www.bestbuy.com/pebble This news makes me very disappointed in the company's handling of their KickStarter campaign. I backed their KickStarter campaign and ordered a white Pebble in May of last year, and I still haven't received it. So if I understand correctly, someone who walks into Best Buy next week will get a Pebble before I do? While I understand the desire to stay out in front…

Indeed. I didn't back them, but I pre-ordered a black Pebble many moons ago. My account page still insists they estimate shipping will start in late may (for those not keeping track, it is now early july).

Re: Pebble Smartwatch Is Coming To Best Buy On July 7 For $149.95

#60

Post by lukifer »

heyitsnick wrote: post #57
Zikes wrote: post #20

A year ago people were foaming at the mouth at the prospect of a watch that was a vibrating e-ink backlit display with buttons and customizable watch face options and a battery that could go a week between charges. Now it's getting panned for being nothing but a vibrating e-ink backlit display with buttons and customizable watch face options and a battery that could go a week between charges. Go figure. I backed them…

Isn't this the classic mistake of assuming "people" on the internet are a single homogeneous group? When Pebble had a kickstarter, a lot of proponents were vocal. Now its going into best-buy, those that are vocal are (a different set of) people who have the opportunity to criticize. Those who successfully funded the project and are proud users of Pebble maybe see less desire to be vocal. There's nothing really to "go…

This is spot-on, and an exceedingly common flaw in human cognition. It drives me crazy when I hear things like "Google wants to _____", "France believes _____", "The government is trying to _____", etc. While sometimes it's a linguistic proxy for something concrete (a specific leader, opinion polls, cultural zeitgeist), it's usually a victim of that insidious Dunbar number, and the brain's attempt to cope by treating a large, complex, heterogeneous institution or culture as though it were a single person.
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