I really like my Basis smartwarch - I've only not worn it about 5 days in the last 6 months (since it arrived). I hope they keep the web software running for years to come, the thing is very cloud dependant!
Intel Acquires Basis Watch
31–40 of 43 posts
Re: Intel Acquires Basis Watch
#32How does the Basis rank against the other smart watches out there ? I see it's priced higher, $199, where others come in at $100 - $150. The one difference I see is that it can do heart rate monitoring, and a lot of the competition can't (yet). It's nice to see that they have an API to export your data too.
It also measures your perspiration. They focused on gamification and achievements you can unlock ("slept full 8 hours" etc). However it lacks any wireless connectivity, so you need to plug to your computer to download data every day. I thought it's the most interesting of all smart devices, but I was looking for next gen which hopefully would be wireless and smaller.
they all came with bluetooth AFAIK - just took a (always wired) firmware upgrade to the early ones to activate it.
I regularly sync mine with my iPhone.
Re: Intel Acquires Basis Watch
#33Can someone explain to me Intel's continued fascination with being a consumer company? From constant B2C advertising to their TV and wearable endeavors, they seem to be fixated on being something they're not. Is it corporate vanity? Is there a strategic motivation? If so, have any of their consumer endeavors ever actually borne fruit? I guess it's reminiscent of Microsoft, who don't seem to understand that Windows wa…
They need to keep their fabs running at a reasonably high capacity to keep per chip production costs down. That enables them to keep the nice high margins on premium parts like server chips.
Re: Intel Acquires Basis Watch
#34How does the Basis rank against the other smart watches out there ? I see it's priced higher, $199, where others come in at $100 - $150. The one difference I see is that it can do heart rate monitoring, and a lot of the competition can't (yet). It's nice to see that they have an API to export your data too.
FYI, there's no API. Heart rate monitoring is a bit of a sham, if you're looking to use it during exercise. It's designed to gather more of an average rate throughout the day than give an accurate reading while you're exercising. The Basis tracks sleep without you having to put it in sleep mode (e.g jawbone UP), which is pretty handy. They recently added some features that attempt to recognize walking/running/biking…
While not publicly announced, a RESTy JSON API has been available since day one since that's what the web interface uses - it's very easy to access and there are plenty of open source libs like https://github.com/btroia/basis-data-export
Heart rate isn't exercise-class (like the Mio Alpha) but is using the same green LED photometry, just not running at a very high temporal resolution.
Agree that the Bluetooth implementation is terrible on iOS. Slightly better on Android, but I still end up using their (proprietary! ugh) cable to sync more often than not.
The Basis is unique in the sense that besides the (Jawbone acquired) BodyMedia devices, it's the only multi-modal fitness sensor on the market right now, and IMO the photometry heart rate tracking, and the habits are a big step in the right direction.
That being said, Basis seems to have made surprisingly slow progress and I have a feeling that Apple will eat their lunch sooner rather than later.
Re: Intel Acquires Basis Watch
#35Can someone explain to me Intel's continued fascination with being a consumer company? From constant B2C advertising to their TV and wearable endeavors, they seem to be fixated on being something they're not. Is it corporate vanity? Is there a strategic motivation? If so, have any of their consumer endeavors ever actually borne fruit? I guess it's reminiscent of Microsoft, who don't seem to understand that Windows wa…
Is any of this affecting their products? I can't think of any Intel product I've ever owned that wasn't extremely well-made. Their prices are also good. $350 for a 22nm 4-core chip with with 8M of cache? That's nothing. I also like their SSDs and Xeon processors. The Haswell integrated graphics are also very, very good. (My $600 NVidia card has major issues with MST DisplayPort monitors. The Intel chipset Just Works.…
I haven't heard anything about Intel selling ARM manufacturers fab time, even on obsolete processes. AFAIK Intel has not really been in the foundry business until very recently. And even that has been with extremely high margin products that don't compete with Intel, such as FPGAs.
Even if they were fabbing some ARM chip, I don't think it could be one of the big players. For example Qualcomm, Nvidia, and TI use TSMC. Apple and Samsung use Samsung's fabs.
Re: Intel Acquires Basis Watch
#36My husband has one and wrote some Nagios checks which download the data over the web. He's basically put himself on Nagios. We just gotta pay attention to the "heart rate is CRITICAL" alerts now :P http://tomsalmon.eu/2013/12/data-download-and-nagios-plugin-...
Are you a bot or something? You posted the exact same comment 4 times.
Nope, just copy & pasted the same comment to promote it, in all the places it's relevant.
Re: Intel Acquires Basis Watch
#37Can someone explain to me Intel's continued fascination with being a consumer company? From constant B2C advertising to their TV and wearable endeavors, they seem to be fixated on being something they're not. Is it corporate vanity? Is there a strategic motivation? If so, have any of their consumer endeavors ever actually borne fruit? I guess it's reminiscent of Microsoft, who don't seem to understand that Windows wa…
the key-word/phrase is "internet of things"
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/16/technology/intels-sharp-ey...
Re: Intel Acquires Basis Watch
#38Can someone explain to me Intel's continued fascination with being a consumer company? From constant B2C advertising to their TV and wearable endeavors, they seem to be fixated on being something they're not. Is it corporate vanity? Is there a strategic motivation? If so, have any of their consumer endeavors ever actually borne fruit? I guess it's reminiscent of Microsoft, who don't seem to understand that Windows wa…
Can someone explain to me Intel's continued fascination with being a consumer company?
I suspect that Intel is buying companies and products like this for the same reason that Microsoft bought Nokia -- they see some markets moving away from them, and rather than convincing other manufacturers and fighting competing inertia, they're going to try to make the market themselves.
That isn't to be dismissive of Intel at all -- they are a tremendous company, and their products are virtually always class leading (in capability and quality). But they were making so much money on the fat processor market they got lured into the classic fallacy of thinking that they were their own biggest competitor, and now the whole ARM ecosystem has turned into a remarkably capable foe.
Re: Intel Acquires Basis Watch
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is any of this affecting their products? I can't think of any Intel product I've ever owned that wasn't extremely well-made. Their prices are also good. $350 for a 22nm 4-core chip with with 8M of cache? That's nothing. I also like their SSDs and Xeon processors. The Haswell integrated graphics are also very, very good. (My $600 NVidia card has major issues with MST DisplayPort monitors. The Intel chipset Just Works.…
I haven't heard anything about Intel selling ARM manufacturers fab time, even on obsolete processes. AFAIK Intel has not really been in the foundry business until very recently. And even that has been with extremely high margin products that don't compete with Intel, such as FPGAs. Even if they were fabbing some ARM chip, I don't think it could be one of the big players. For example Qualcomm, Nvidia, and TI use TSMC.…
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7473/intel-to-fab-altera-fpgas...
You're mostly right about it not being one of the big players. Altera is a big player in the FPGA market, but not the ARM market. The chips in question cost thousands of dollars; the ARM core is a very small portion of the chip.
Re: Intel Acquires Basis Watch
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think Intel's "strategic motivation" is simple. The US stock market demands ever increasing revenues and earnings from a company. In order to achieve that, often companies do something that the great Peter Lynch called "diworsification" [0]: The term was coined by legendary investor Peter Lynch in his book, "One Up Wall Street," where he suggested that a business that diversifies too widely, risks destroying their…
It's a shame that the one time event of going public dooms a company for perpetuity to being subject to the unreasonable demands of shareholders, so often ironically resulting in the downfall of the very value that was supposed to rise as a result of said demands.
The alternative to diworsification would be share buybacks. That's a way to increase your EPS without having to grow your earnings numbers.
Intel's diversification probably has more to do with internalization of the mantra "if you're not growing, you're dying" than pressure from Wall Street.