41–50 of 81 posts
Honest question: Has anyone actually found a good use for their Pebble? I wore mine once the day after it arrived, felt totally ridiculous, and it hasn't left the drawer since.
I got back to learning C so that I can make a space invaders watch face. I look forward to the satisfaction of wearing my accomplishment on my sleeve... eventually.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/secretlabs/agent-the-wor...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"A little more time" is a bit of an understatement. The Pebbles started shipping Jan 31 this year. It's been a full six months and the final colors haven't shown up yet. Not to mention the original timeline called for the watches to start shipping in Sep 2012. I can appreciate that the folks at Pebble are doing their damndest, but there's no other way to cut it: this product has been extremely late across nearly all…
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…
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 continue to project authority and confidence, even if in reality the "I have no idea what I'm doing" meme dog is more appropriate.
I do not back hardware kickstarters as a rule. I backed Pebble because I knew the founder, and knew that he has a track record delivering hardware - and for the most part this has held true. Hardware Kickstarters that are later or failing to deliver anything resembling the original pitch are depressingly common.
Pebble can't be fairly singled out here, this is a huge problem with crowdfunding hardware projects in general.
> "And, as you mentioned, they've been surprisingly open about all their problems throughout the process."
The bulk of the process complaints here have been from color backers (I was one, until I switched to black), and that's telling. The Pebble team was extremely on top of the ball prior to the black watches shipping out. Lots of detailed updates about where they are and what the expected schedule is.
Personally I was completely nonplussed by the various delays because of how transparent they were.
Then the black watches shipped out and the color backers were forgotten. There was a vague "after the black watches", and a lot of silence. There was more silence until the color backers suddenly found out that color Pebbles were in trouble and there was an option to switch.
A lot of color backers - and from this thread I'm obviously not the only one - were left in the lurch. There was no timeline for anything except "late" - and in the mean time there were big announcements about the SDK, RunKeeper, and other software stack progress, with nothing for other backers.
I have zero doubt that Pebble is working as hard as they can to fulfill the rest of their orders, but looking in from the outside, it's hard for color backers to feel anything but forgotten. The frustration at the Best Buy news I don't think comes from some entitled "I should get it before everyone else" mentality, but rather annoyance at every piece of news from the company, for months on end, not address their chief concern ("where is my watch").
If the updates on color manufacturing was even half as frequent and detailed as the pre-launch updates, this whole thing would be a non-issue, even if color backers still don't have their watches.
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…
> a vibrating e-ink backlit display It's not an e-ink display!
Pebble sounds like a polite, social alternative to google glass, no?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not the stamp, it's the way they've dealt with it.
To me the stamp would be an acknowledgement of my support and a thank you for it. So to me, it would be about the stamp. Other wise, why not wait and just buy the thing? Not to ignore your other legitimate issues, I think the lack of a stamp is important.
I'm extremely disappointed by how Pebble have handled their entire operation. I originally backed an Artic White Pebble on Kickstarter, they had issues, I switched to Black. And they sent me a watch without a Kickstarter stamp. As an apology I'm supposedly getting a sweat band - what? Their entire operation has been mistake after mistake. And to be honest, that's no excuse for a company who has prior experience.
The leaders of the project lack the most prosaic communication skills. Hopefully their recent investor infusion will get them to hire someone who does.
Honest question: Has anyone actually found a good use for their Pebble? I wore mine once the day after it arrived, felt totally ridiculous, and it hasn't left the drawer since.
- I have a pomodoro app to keep track of time I spend on tasks - I have a stopwatch/lap counter app for keeping track of my lap swimming - I use the runkeeper app which displays my pace/time/distance on my Pebble while I run. - quick calculator for the times I don't want to whip my phone out.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not the stamp, it's the way they've dealt with it.
To me the stamp would be an acknowledgement of my support and a thank you for it. So to me, it would be about the stamp. Other wise, why not wait and just buy the thing? Not to ignore your other legitimate issues, I think the lack of a stamp is important.
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…
You aren't missing anything. I got mine months ago. It is the most disappointing thing I have supported on kickstarter. I would literally send you mine but one of the buttons fell off the first (and only) day I wore it.
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…
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. =)