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The PalmOS powered wristwatch from Fossil

lunduke.substack.com

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Re: The PalmOS powered wristwatch from Fossil

#71

Post by jollybean »

CharlesW wrote: post #68
jollybean wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they didn't start anything, rather, they jumped in to create a tipping point.

> I think they didn't start anything, rather, they jumped in to create a tipping point. To me this trivializes what Apple did, as if companies could just "create a tipping point" if only they liked money. I understand that from today's vantage point, what Apple did seems inevitable. At the time, it was a "bet the farm" move by a company which had never made a smartphone before. > Apple didn't invent smartphones… This…

You're making my case for me.

Other auto companies have been steadily innovating on electrics cars for a very long time and have consistently outsold Tesla until recently. It's unlikely that Tesla did much other than accelerate the process by a tiny bit by bring more public validation to the market. Tesla is not an outright innovator so much as created more public excitement.

The iPhone as 'world changing' is a bit of propaganda. Other platforms were moving forward, Nokia had some very cool and popular stuff. The iPhone was effectively 'a generation ahead' - as if a 'gaming console' magically came out one generation ahead of the others - but otherwise, it was all an 'inevitability'. All those things were coming in one way or another. GPS, full screen, apps, contactless payments etc. it was all well on it's way.

Re: The PalmOS powered wristwatch from Fossil

#72

Post by pessimizer »

Deganta wrote: post #43
Saint_Genet wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's largely about timing. the iPhone didn't come out until wifi and cellular data had become widely available. Even today, a modern smartphone is a pretty boring device if you put it in airplane mode.

Also capacitive touchscreens. The resitive ones of older Smartphones wouldn't have worked for the revolutinary UI

Bad resistive screens are bad, but good ones are better than capacitive because they work with styluses or when you're wearing gloves. The Nokia N900 had an absurdly good one.

Apple heavily marketed capacitive screens as an asset, so people who haven't every used a quality resistive screen still carry that around internally.

Re: The PalmOS powered wristwatch from Fossil

#73

Post by technofiend »

blenderdt wrote: post #14

When I read articles like this one I always have to think about companies like Apple and Tesla. Apple didn't invent smartphones or touchscreens but they started the revolution. Tesla didn't invent EVs but started the revolution. What they have in common is that they pick the best of existing technologies and combine that into a product that is ahead of the competition. They don't invent new things but invent better t…

What Apple did well was marry the full screen of the Palm with the connectivity of the blackberry. The Palm V with a cradle cell modem and battery was a niche attempt, but the OS didn't really natively support always-on internet and the apps didn't integrate it. Android and IOS both did and that was the difference, although Google had to play catch up because their first phone the HTC Dream had a slide out keyboard.

Re: The PalmOS powered wristwatch from Fossil

#74

Post by spiffytech »

zwog wrote: post #13

I was still in school in the first half of the 2000s and spent a lot of my hard earned money on more or less useful and smart hardware, especially smartphones (mostly called PDA-phones in the pre-iPhone era) and with hardware keyboard. I think my first device was the HTC Blue Angel. I also had a Treo 600 and the Palm Abacus. Those were really nice devices, PalmOS was way better than Windows Mobile and worlds better t…

Through middle school and high school I lived on my Palm devices. I carried them to class, broke out the portable keyboard, and did all my notes and assignments on them, then spent the breaks between classes beaming Strategic Commander game turns between my friends.

My teachers loved that I did this, because when you printed out notes from the Memos app it put a big white-on-black header at the top of the page. So teachers put my assignments front-of-line in their paper stacks and treated them as dividers between assignments.

Working this way was great for my ADHD brain. My elementary school gave me an AlphaSmart, speculating that I performed poorly or acted out in class because I got bored in the time it took to handwrite a sentence. Using Palm devices worked great because I could capture more of what was in my brain, and could edit and reorder my scattered, disorganized thoughts.

Those devices were excellent for what they were. I like what modern devices can do, but Palm devices felt like an extension of myself in a way modern smartphones don't.

Re: The PalmOS powered wristwatch from Fossil

#75

Post by skinnymuch »

ghaff wrote: post #55
skinnymuch wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s just what a default is. I think it was Fitbit? Fitbit got lame for me after. Every one’s feed was private even for basic info. It was unnecessary to make everything private by default for the average person except to combat all the blow back from the PR of that story and vocal people like many on here. It’s not disssimilar to how Cambridge Analytica gave FB an excuse to clamp down on their API and put much mor…

While I'm by no means an absolutist about not sharing personal information, I disagree in this case. Location data can be pretty sensitive and defaults are powerful. I don't want my location being shared by some device or website unless I've explicitly given it permission to do so. It can be a tricky tradeoff. For example, I think the blowback around Apple AirTags and Find My Network is way overblown. But I do draw t…

The response wasn’t to not share location or specific detailed info. It was to set everything to private by default. The actual issue was not the only thing fixed with the response. Everything was taken away. That’s why I said baby with the bath water. Facebook did a similar thing when they reduced what their APIs could do and what any normal user could do using FB themselves. In both cases, the actual issue could have been solved without the amt of stuff they did.

Once Fitbit hid basically everything by default and almost no one changes defaults, it was hard to know if a user was even using Fitbit or not without already being friends with them.

Edit: I agree whole heartedly. Whatever specifics were done with location sharing is not good and shouldn’t be done by default. I am pretty open with my location, but it’s under my control and I’m usually actively opening up my privacy and location. 100% agree there and also agree over the excessive reactions to AirTags

Re: The PalmOS powered wristwatch from Fossil

#76

Post by mateuszf »

masklinn wrote: post #49
mateuszf wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> last up to a week of battery life, do basic things like allow you to get and read notifications, and be a watch. Actually there is something that does that, my favorite watch: https://www.withings.com/us/en/steel-hr The battery lasts a month. The only thing which would improve it would be NFC payments, but one can't have it all. Also looks good IMO.

Dang that is an attractive watch, how open is the communication protocol and how much does it report to home? I'm not a watch-wearer but it could make for a nice gift, especially with such a reasonable price.

I don't think it's open. Looking on the web page it reports all fitness data, but not notifications, but one can't be sure without checking the actual communication.

Re: The PalmOS powered wristwatch from Fossil

#77

Post by pqs »

opencl wrote: post #42
pqs wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you trust Amazfit with your data? I can't trust such a Chinese entity with so much personal data.

I have a Bip and absolutely do not trust Amazfit with my data, which is fine because I don't use their app. I use the open source Gadgetbridge app instead and it works well: https://gadgetbridge.org/

This is great! Finally I will be able to use a Xiaomi Fit band I have.
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