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Pebble goes off wrist with Core, dedicated running gadget

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Re: Pebble goes off wrist with Core, dedicated running gadget

#51

Seems Pebble has lost their direction. Their original product was excellent. A information UI on your wrist. But then came their update, and it was all about "timelines" (thanks but no thanks, i know where this is going having dealt with Facebook and Twitter "timelines"). And now this, whiskey tango foxtrot...

> Seems Pebble has lost their direction. Their original product was excellent. A information UI on your wrist. Yeah, I agree. Mind you - I still love Pebbles; I'm a happy owner of Time, upgrading from the Classic. But I liked them much better when they were about "information UI on your wrist" - i.e. a tool. Now it seems to be marketed as a toy for people obsessed with sports. I don't like that direction personally (…

Health/fitness/notifications is the large market that buys a lot of our products. But we're hackers at heart, that's why we made Pebble Core as open and hackable as possible. The first 'app' for it is Spotify/gps for runners, but at its core it's simply an unlocked Android 5.0 device. We're very excited about the platform.

Re: Pebble goes off wrist with Core, dedicated running gadget

#52

I posted this on Twitter, but re-posting on HN for further discussion... A lot of people are going to be talking about how Core is a wearable for runners, but if that's all, we (and _especially_ we at HN) are missing the bigger point. The Pebble Core is what the Raspberry Pi should be - a fully functional computer so small it fits on a keychain. One way of thinking about the Pebble Core is as the new CPU at the heart…

I read your post on twitter and absolutely loved it. But Pebble needs to make it accessible. Maybe a special dev version (not everybody will need/want to hack their Core).

I love it when a product gets a new use through mostly a marketing change rather than anything technical.

Re: Pebble goes off wrist with Core, dedicated running gadget

#53
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean I run with my garmin 735, which cost $450.. not that much cheaper than my smartphone.

But really, who is going to run a triathlon with a pebble. I doubt it's battery could even last an entire race if it was playing music and using GPS. Also, I imagine you can do HRM with the core but it didn't mention it.

According to the page they're aiming for 9 hours battery life with location tracking and offline music. Although it doesn't seem waterproof so a triathlon might be out of the question.

Re: Pebble goes off wrist with Core, dedicated running gadget

#54
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seems Pebble has lost their direction. Their original product was excellent. A information UI on your wrist. Yeah, I agree. Mind you - I still love Pebbles; I'm a happy owner of Time, upgrading from the Classic. But I liked them much better when they were about "information UI on your wrist" - i.e. a tool. Now it seems to be marketed as a toy for people obsessed with sports. I don't like that direction personally (…

Health/fitness/notifications is the large market that buys a lot of our products. But we're hackers at heart, that's why we made Pebble Core as open and hackable as possible. The first 'app' for it is Spotify/gps for runners, but at its core it's simply an unlocked Android 5.0 device. We're very excited about the platform.

Thanks for the reply!

Yeah, I understand the market reasons. You are still the best in terms of hackability, and I appreciate this very much. I already backed, can't wait for Time 2 and Core!

Re: Pebble goes off wrist with Core, dedicated running gadget

#55

As a runner, I really don't see the point. I have a gps watch (Garmin) that records distance, time, pace, cadence, etc etc and shows it all to me on my wrist. Sure, there are people out there who just want to track a run but the use case for this - particularly with no display - seems very very limited.

As a fellow runner as well, I keep searching for that "perfect" device to replace my phone for my runs. For races I just have a basic Garmin, but for training runs I love having my phone on me for music, podcasts, emergencies, and endomondo (training app). I think the Core is a step in the right direction, depending on how extendible it is with 3rd party apps. I love that the GPS is in such a small device and that it…

You listen to 4GB of media on a single run?

Re: Pebble goes off wrist with Core, dedicated running gadget

#56

As a runner, I really don't see the point. I have a gps watch (Garmin) that records distance, time, pace, cadence, etc etc and shows it all to me on my wrist. Sure, there are people out there who just want to track a run but the use case for this - particularly with no display - seems very very limited.

I have a Garmin watch (forerunner 220) and it is a bit frustrating how limited it is for the price and how Garmin segments their watches. Example: there is no bike mode so if I ride my bike it messes up my records, etc. instead of changing one bit in the data and the model that does this is hundreds more (at the time). There were also lots of issues with auto pause, pace smoothing and the like. Finally it only has 2 custom screens, another arbitrary product segmentation limitation.

I love Garmin hardware as it is super reliable. Software is more meh.

Also with this we get a music player which obviously would be suboptimal to have a cable hanging off my wrist (though Bluetooth could be cool but a bigger battery hog). This could also be interesting to monitor running form at some point too.

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