311–320 of 457 posts
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Why does FitBit have the responsibility of providing support for another company’s products? If they didn’t buy Pebble, it would’ve shuttered anyways and they might not even refund the preorders.
Because they bought the assets? Why should they be able to only get the good stuff, and not the responsibility?
Tldr: FitBit acquires( ) bankrupt pebble, lays of 60% of staff, cancels all pebble product lines. FitBit also cancels the warranties on already sold pebbles. FitBit may also have stiffed some holders of $27m of pebble's debt. ( ) due to legal shenanigans we must not call this an acquisition or an acqui-hire. Also, FitBit didn't do those things, a shell company created by this deal did, which is totally different some…
Why does FitBit have the responsibility of providing support for another company’s products? If they didn’t buy Pebble, it would’ve shuttered anyways and they might not even refund the preorders.
I can't believe this, just got a Pebble 2 a week ago and now they are literally saying it may not work in the future. If we rely on their cloud services for activity tracking and app downloads then it will be useless if FitBit doesn't maintain the platform. I have to say I'm really disappointed and this is a huge blow to people that invest in startups offering hardware. If the company fails forget about the smart stu…
I also have a Pebble 2, what cloud services? The android app checks for a firmware update when you pair but is otherwise standalone. I enabled sync to google fit because I hoped it would backup sleep data but that does nothing sensible, it's all stored locally (and in fact if you reinstall the Pebble app you lose all your data). ps: if anyone knows of some software to export these data from an android phone, I'd love…
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To be 100% clear, I totally agree with you that one shouldn't check their text messages while driving. That being said, the statistics don't support your claim that traffic fatalities have spiked. Through 2014 (the last year the IIHS published statistics) fatalities had either leveled off or continued their historical decline. http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general-statistics/fatalit...
Statistics are like bikinis: they show a lot but what they can hide is significant too. Fatalities overall have fallen and continue to fall, largely due to increased use of seatbelts, other safety features in cars improving and being more commonly available. Also in many areas the overcrowding of roads is making fatalities drop: if you can't get up to any sort of speed then and collisions you experience will be less…
While I don't doubt you are correct that the proportion of fatalities due to distracted driving is increasing, I'd still like to see a link or two to the studies you cited.
It's interesting that all 5 girls are at the front of company picture (bottom of page) with a sea of guys blending into the background obfuscating how male dominant this Pebble is. Serious question: Would more gender equality have improved this company's chances?
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They probably thought a big KS would convince investors to give them couple hundred million. What they should have done is cut costs and develop 10x fewer features, let the community grow slowly but organically and wait out the bad times.
"What they should have done is cut costs and develop 10x fewer features, let the community grow slowly but organically and wait out the bad times." It's easy to say that, but when you are up against the Apple/Samsung type companies who have much deeper pockets, don't have to wait out bad times, have the ability to lean on vendors, have contracts in place with manufacturing and the supply chain to efficiently deliver…
Sure there is. Just not while also being the dominant, or one of the dominant players in the industry when there is competition form a bit name. Pebble didn't have to be a dominant player, they could have positioned themselves differently if they wanted. Both paths are a gamble, but if it comes to a small company I own trying to compete with Apple/Samsung/Google and it's obvious their resources give them an edge (which they almost always do), then I think I would try to position myself to net necessarily compete with them directly (e.g. be the more hacker friendly device, don't shoot for the luxury market, find some cool thing they aren't offering, etc).
Man, you really can't tell whether a startup is doing well or not from outside. Everything's AWESOME all the time:
* Oct 31, 2016: Get Spooky with Halloween Pebble Faces!
* Oct 18, 2016: What’s New in Pebble’s 4.2 Firmware and Apps
* Oct 05, 2016: Pebble 2: Fit & Smart
* Sep 30, 2016: Pebble 2 Kickstarter Rewards Start Shipping
* Sep 14, 2016: Pebble Core = More Awesome with Amazon Alexa Expansion in the UK and Germany
... and then suddenly making big headline: "Dec 7, 2016: Pebble's next step".
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Why does FitBit have the responsibility of providing support for another company’s products? If they didn’t buy Pebble, it would’ve shuttered anyways and they might not even refund the preorders.
When you buy a company, you don't buy just the assets. You also acquire the liabilities, which include debt, warranties and support contracts.
Once the operations have failed the various creditors likely benefit from reasonably priced sales the assets.
I'm sad/angry/depressed as any Pebbler right now, so I won't repeat those comments. Instead, since this is HN after all, let me ask - what shall we do? In a year or two, when my current Pebble Time fails, I'd love an equivalent smartwatch to be available. Since the market doesn't seem to want it, how can we make it happen anyway? Features I'm looking for are, in order of priority: - always-on screen, preferably color…
Check out the Vector Watch [1]. It's a monochromatic smart watch with 30 days of battery life. [1] http://vectorwatch.com/
I'm quite angry. This sucks so bad. I "ordered" a Time 2 via Kickstarter. I'm glad they are refunding me, but that makes me think... WTF, did they not produce any Time 2's? Or are they all going to the landfill? How long have they been knowing that they are going to be insolvent? This doesn't happen overnight! Was the last Kickstarter a gamble? Why does everybody have to aim for total market dominance to be successfu…