Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We're bringing Pebble back

repebble.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

571–580 of 758 posts

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#571

Post by smvanbru »

tomaskafka wrote: post #194

Awesome! The first Pebble absolutely fascinated me by having a hackable, C-running watch on my wrist. I vividly remember spending days fine tuning the heuristics of a simple step detection algorithm in the first watchface where I thought “seeing your daily step count next to time sure is awesome”. And later, tens of thousands of people thought so as well - this was one of the signs what the health-tracking wrist devi…

I loved weathergraph. Was my favourite watch face on my pebble and garmin, until my eyes got too old and I couldn't read the smaller text anymore. Now I use a watch face for older guys like me, but miss the graph.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#572

Post by weberer »

amelius wrote: post #566
Vampiero wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I literally just bought a LTE watch because I hate phones, I never use mine, and I keep forgetting it anyway. I'd rather have a watch with an eSIM

I would do this too, but in some venues you have to pay by scanning QR codes, which makes it impossible without camera. And I don't want this: https://wristcam.com/blogs/learn/do-apple-watches-have-camer...

They have QR payments, but no NFT? That doesn't seem right.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#573

Post by dspillett »

coryfklein wrote: post #515
nym3r0s wrote: post #500

The primary use for a smartwatch for myself (and many of my family, friends) is fitness and health tracking. Card payments, notifications, WatchFaces etc. are all secondary. Basically what Whoop is doing with their strap - but minus the subscription model. I know a ton of people who tried the whoop but felt it was extremely pricey and didn't have the accuracy of an apple watch. I would be happy to pay ~$400-500 up fr…

Can someone explain the point of the health tracking features for watches? I have an Apple Watch and I do exercise regularly, but I found that the annoyance of starting and stopping workouts was bothersome so I turned the feature off. Is it about inducing more exercise? Or is it the timer aspect that it records how long your workout is? (in which case I don’t understand why it’s so much better than a stopwatch?) For…

I walk and run on trails a fair bit¹ so my watch is mostly a route planning/tracking/recording tool.

When training for something I will often at least consider its recommendations and those are based partly on the health readings as well as the training load it has tracked from treks/runs. Though TBH other than that the health tracking is unimportant compared to it being a GPS device that can track for a day or more constantly without needing to talk to a phone (which sits in my pack/pocket in low-power mode to conserve battery unless/until I need it for something). A don't even tend to pay attention to the heart-rate stats (though I do know people who use those features to directly guide their training).

I know a few people whose use pattern is very similar to mine, near identical in fact, so I think it is fairly common amongst people who walk and/or run more than the average person.

----

[1] Less than I'd like ATM, the rest of life like ill family and my own burn-out² are getting in the way, but I'm getting myself back into it

[2] The key reason I'm trying to get back at it: herfing myself around the green stuff³, is something I find beneficial to my mental state as well as physical.

[3] or even the “mostly brown stuff” as it can be this time of year.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#575

Post by follower »

MortyWaves wrote: post #223

I haven't used a Pebble, but I wanted to mention something I have seen praised a lot on HN and elsewhere. Apparently, the Bluetooth stack on a Pebble is absolutely legendary: reliable, dependable, robust, you name it. It still works reliably today seemingly thanks to their very diligent software design. I hope that element of it will continue to exist as-is on these new ones? I mention this because Bluetooth is still…

Unfortunately, as mentioned in another comment, the Bluetooth stack is apparently one of the items that is not included in the source release[0]:

    Some parts of the firmware have been removed for licensing reasons,
including:

    [...]

     - The Bluetooth stack, except for a stub that will function in an emulator

    [...]
Which suggests that the Bluetooth stack wasn't entirely of their own making, so perhaps any of Pebble's own additions were too intertwined (e.g. gave away too much Bluetooth stack vendor proprietary API info) to be easily separated?

[0] https://github.com/google/pebble/blob/3b927684809fba173ee540...

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#576

Post by bluGill »

parpfish wrote: post #548
bluGill wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few years ago my mom looked at her smart watch (fitbit in her case) and it said she did 4 hours of aerobic exercise that day and her heart was elevated. She worked a retail job, so while on her feet all day, it was not aerobic. She immediately went to the doctor despite no other symptoms and they found cancer (which was then treated and so she is alive today). It isn't clear how much longer it would have been befor…

Is this in the US? Because i can’t fathom just being able to casually drop in to visit a doctor like this. Any time I need to talk to a doctor, I have phone tag with their understaffed receptionist for a few days, then we set up an appointment 4-6 months in the future.

US. There are walk in clinics all over that take people first come first serve (once in a while the receptionist says no way and sends you to an ER where they take people in priority order). Generally they are open 9am-8pm 7 days a week, though it varies by location. These are called urgent care and for are things that you need urgent but non-emergency care for - you typically get an antibiotic or some such treatment (depending on what you have) and are sent home. Depending on what you have sometimes you are told to make an appointment with your regular doctor, sometimes sent to a hospital.

My regular doctor I do need to make an appointment to see. Typically I can get an appointment in about a week anytime I call, though normally I just make the next appointment as I leave the last one and so they are months out.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#578

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

Timon3 wrote: post #208
wessex wrote: post #196

I don't understand the excitement. It's just a watch. Whatever you get at the end of this is probably going to be overpriced and underwhelming.

It's a watch many people already used and very much enjoyed, so it should be understandable that people are excited about it making a return. I'm not aware of any other watch that fills the same niche (open & extendable, e-ink, long battery life, usable standalone).

You can’t go back though.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#579

Post by starkparker »

mattmaroon wrote: post #560
akho wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reader made tons of people use RSS who otherwise wouldn’t, and who now don’t. It did not live long enough to become a villain (though it certainly would have — there is no reason why G wouldn’t have added recommendations, an algo feed, and all it brings). Therefore it’s remembered well.

Reader died because people were switching to social media. Reader also had no vendor lock in at all. There’s no network effect like Facebook. There’s no massive infrastructure demands like Google. No corporate sales process like Oracle, Microsoft, etc. You could very easily create a competitor and after it died, few even tried to replace it. I miss it but not enough to find another RSS reader. You’re never really the…

> Reader died because people were switching to social media.

Which especially sucks, because its friend-of-a-friend model for making comments visible on shared items was better for discovering interesting people, constructively limiting the social impact of popular posts, reducing the dangers of unintentionally poor posts, and disincentivizing trolling than any social network has implemented since.

For the few people who even knew Reader had a social network—a group which certainly didn't include Google—it was a better social network than any of the ones credited with killing it.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#580

Post by stronglikedan »

amelius wrote: post #566
Vampiero wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I literally just bought a LTE watch because I hate phones, I never use mine, and I keep forgetting it anyway. I'd rather have a watch with an eSIM

I would do this too, but in some venues you have to pay by scanning QR codes, which makes it impossible without camera. And I don't want this: https://wristcam.com/blogs/learn/do-apple-watches-have-camer...

> you have to pay by scanning QR codes

I've never encountered that, but that sounds like a venue that doesn't want my money anyway.

Post reply on HN