We're bringing Pebble back • Hacker News Board

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#161

Post by rconti » Mon, Jan 27, 2025, 10:18 PM UTC

tetromino_ wrote: post #91

taeric wrote: post #12

First, let me say it is always fun to see people having fun with hobbies like this. Cool to see them making headway and having fun! I'm curious what the specific pitch is on this device? I have, so far, avoided Garmin in the watch space, but I'm growing very short on justifications for that. Would love to hear what the general value add for other options is.

I went through two Garmins. Both failed in under 2 years (random freezes, random reboots, eventually leading to bricking). Fitness tracking and GPS would activate by themselves at random times for no visible reason. Buttons sometimes wouldn't register. The proprietary charging cable was terribly designed - after a couple months, the springs inevitably fail and it starts losing contact with the watch, needing fiddling…

Their software is pretty bad but the hardware has been pretty bulletproof for me and I've certainly never had one randomly freeze or reboot in the decade+ I've been using them. These are forerunners though. I haven't used their "fancier" watches.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#162

Post by abcd_f » Mon, Jan 27, 2025, 10:19 PM UTC

teruakohatu wrote: post #117

WD-42 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like my instinct, but Garmin is so locked down, less hackable than even an Apple Watch.

You can download the SDK and side load applications. No annual developer fee. Not sure how it’s more locked down.

Don’t know about Apple Watch development, but the scope of what you can do with Garmin's SDK is limited, apps run in a VM, ie no native code with respective performance issues and, as important, their developer support is a complete and utter garbage.

It's a lucky day when someone from Garmin graces Forums with their presence and bestows few sentences they think could pass for an answer.

In other words, yeah, the SDK is free, you can side-load and it’s not hard to write for, but you just can't write much.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#163

Post by zem » Mon, Jan 27, 2025, 10:19 PM UTC

taeric wrote: post #12

First, let me say it is always fun to see people having fun with hobbies like this. Cool to see them making headway and having fun! I'm curious what the specific pitch is on this device? I have, so far, avoided Garmin in the watch space, but I'm growing very short on justifications for that. Would love to hear what the general value add for other options is.

I've had a garmin for ~3 weeks now. amy #2 use for a watch (after telling the time, of course) is to read texts without pulling out my phone, and so far the garmin ux for that has been way worse than the pebble's. (not really used the fitness features much other than step tracking, which the pebble also did)

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#164

Post by pulkitpulkit » Mon, Jan 27, 2025, 10:19 PM UTC

please add a button to start a GPT voice mode conversation or start dictating / recording an audio note -- too things I'd love to be able to do more on-the-go without having to dive into my phone!

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#165

Post by DwnVoteHoneyPot » Mon, Jan 27, 2025, 10:19 PM UTC

foobarchu wrote: post #94

abraxas wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just gave away a very expensive Garmin to my son. Its feature set is to dream of. Its user interface is hot garbage. When I'm out on a hike or in the pool trying to just measure my fsking laps I need a single click option or something. Their paradigm of "button 1, button 3, button 5, long press button 4, button 1 again to confirm. Now you can push off the wall in 3... 2... 1" is beyond fucking stupid. Does anyone a…

On the positive side, I adore that they sell (sold?) the forerunner series with all physical buttons and no touchscreen. Garbage software, but being able to click through by muscle memory instead of dealing with a touch interface in sunny conditions is essential to me. Fitbits and apple watches have just always been too reliant on the touch method for my liking. The software is pretty crap though, and forerunner in p…

You have trouble with touch interface in sunny conditions??? Try cold conditions with gloves on, then you'll have real problems with the Apple Watch. Or wet conditions. Or fast conditions like on a bike where you rather not look to turn off the alarm. Sunny conditions is the only time my watch works fine.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#166

Post by abraxas » Mon, Jan 27, 2025, 10:22 PM UTC

llimllib wrote: post #140

abraxas wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just gave away a very expensive Garmin to my son. Its feature set is to dream of. Its user interface is hot garbage. When I'm out on a hike or in the pool trying to just measure my fsking laps I need a single click option or something. Their paradigm of "button 1, button 3, button 5, long press button 4, button 1 again to confirm. Now you can push off the wall in 3... 2... 1" is beyond fucking stupid. Does anyone a…

I don't swim, but I have done thousands of runs with my series of garmin watches and I can say that the UX for them is spectacular, everything is in a sensible place for me to do without thinking. Not sure what problems you've had with it specifically

Getting into the swim app itself takes a couple of different buttons presses. But then it tries to be both too smart and too stupid at the same time. All I wanted to begin with was lap counting with a big number on the centre of the display. Can't configure it and can't even start to get it to count laps without some ceremony of setting up interval training and it only gets more convoluted from there. It's useless for an amateur like me who is not a peak performance athlete who needs to track every minutiae of their swim stats. How many people are they targeting with these this UX? Just people getting ready for the Olympics? There are hundreds of them. Hundreds!

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#167

Post by whyenot » Mon, Jan 27, 2025, 10:22 PM UTC

I am super excited about this! Thank you Google + Eric + everyone! My old Pebble is long gone, so the possibility of maybe buying a new one is awesome.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#168

Post by MostlyStable » Mon, Jan 27, 2025, 10:22 PM UTC

tonymet wrote: post #123

wilg wrote: post #110

The Apple Watch is just okay but sells like 25x per year Pebble's entire lifetime sales. I guess people love their Pebbles but this seems like a lot of effort for something most people probably don't want.

capitalism serves all niches , not just "most people"

That's what we are usually taught, but it doesn't actually seem to be the case. In the smartphone market in particular, as the market itself has grown, the offerings have all seemed to converge on a relatively uniform feature set. Niche phones for niche markets have slowly been weeded out. I don't understand why this is the case, but empirically it seems to be so. That's not to say that there are no weird, niche phones anymore, but it does seem to be the case that there are fewer of them than in the past, when it seems to me that we should expect the opposite: as the market grows, the absolute size of proportionally tiny "niche" markets should also grow, which seems like it should support a greater diversity of weird phones.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#169

Post by KiwiJohnno » Mon, Jan 27, 2025, 10:23 PM UTC

hparadiz wrote: post #77

abraxas wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just gave away a very expensive Garmin to my son. Its feature set is to dream of. Its user interface is hot garbage. When I'm out on a hike or in the pool trying to just measure my fsking laps I need a single click option or something. Their paradigm of "button 1, button 3, button 5, long press button 4, button 1 again to confirm. Now you can push off the wall in 3... 2... 1" is beyond fucking stupid. Does anyone a…

All this plus not being able to see any data while offline. Super useful when you're 13,000 feet up on a mountain somewhere.

Its worth clarifying you are talking about the data on the phone app, which does require connectivity as nothing is stored on the phone app, its all on Garmin's servers.

However, most if not all of the data (recorded activities or health data) can be viewed directly on your watch, without any connectivity.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#170

Post by forty » Mon, Jan 27, 2025, 10:23 PM UTC

HaZeust wrote: post #155

jacobgkau wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's just a static redirect, it sent me to the Apple Watch page in Firefox on Linux. But I also wondered if it would shuffle between a few different brands or something (I guess not).

It looks like: - Chromium browsers (tested in Edge, Chrome, Brave) go to Pixel Watch, - Android devices go to Pixel Watch, - Apple devices go to Apple Watch, - Firefox brings you to Apple Watch. It might also be randomized, but that's what my tests got me, and only the Firefox one doesn't make humorous sense.

I got pixel with Firefox for Android