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

701–710 of 758 posts

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#701

Post by Neikius »

hugs wrote: post #649
bdavbdav wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely a Garmin is what you want? No subscription, 7 day+ battery life, smart watch features are there but largely secondary.

I wear a Garmin watch every day. It's great. But... I don't love the high price and the fact that the battery isn't easily replaceable. (Feels like Garmin would rather you buy a new watch instead.) There's a huge lane for Pebble to be the torch bearer for the Right-to-Repair movement (especially given it's whole story arc so far.)

Can you use Garmin without their proprietary app? And if not, is it at least working without some sort of cloud services?

Too many products nowadays are bound to some sort of online checks and that is even worse than "battery not replaceable". The second is much easier to circumvent than the first (dependence on cloud infra). And ofc the data security. I will never be comfortable with giving corpos my medical data.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#702

Post by Neikius »

rzazueta wrote: post #341

I LOVE My Pebble and even got Rebble working on it not long ago to revive it. However... If you want to make it TRULY HACKABLE as you claim, you will not encumber it with cloud dependencies like you did last time. Let ME self host my own Pebble server if I choose. Go ahead and default to your servers and sell services and whatever, but let me host my own and switch the base URL to my own domain, preferably with open…

I keep looking for a decent watch. And phone. And there is just nothing available. Everything gets encumbered with this and that cloud. This and that app. Mandatory policies, apps, surveillance and eventually subscriptions or selling of your personal data.

I don't think we will be getting this in our "free market". It would need to be mandated by state for manufacturers to use open APIs. There is just no incentive for them to offer those otherwise.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#703

Post by Neikius »

saidinesh5 wrote: post #427
erohead wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 100% with you! No VCs this time...no mandatory cloud subscription. But I'm not really sure that this fear is grounded - before we sold to Fitbit we 'unlocked' the Pebble mobile app so you could use it with any cloud you wanted, including self hosted. So...it already meets your definition

This is really good news! Wishlist for the next device: More sensors: heart rate, spo2 and ecg...

Well I for one agree here. Some good sensors would be nice. Otherwise why even have a smart watch? Just get a regular. But there will be a tradeoff, there always is and we cannot have everything. At this point in time I will settle with something that is open and builds a healthy ecosystem.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#705

Post by mattogodoy »

rzazueta wrote: post #341

I LOVE My Pebble and even got Rebble working on it not long ago to revive it. However... If you want to make it TRULY HACKABLE as you claim, you will not encumber it with cloud dependencies like you did last time. Let ME self host my own Pebble server if I choose. Go ahead and default to your servers and sell services and whatever, but let me host my own and switch the base URL to my own domain, preferably with open…

I came to say exactly this. I could not have stated it better. As a Pebble power user back in the day, who owns 3 watches and pledged in the Kickstarter to get the new Pebble that sadly never saw the light of day, the only way I'm coming back is if every piece of this puzzle is open source. And by this I mean:

- Servers: I agree with you. Make a default "cloud" owned by Pebble, but give us the ability to self-host it. NO SUBSCRIPTIONS, NO ADS, NO PRIVACY INVASION, PLEASE.

- PebbleOS: This is already a reality, and I'm very happy that it's happening.

- Mobile apps: Make them open-source! Let us play with them and you'll benefit of the fixes, improvements and innovation of the community.

- Hardware: It would be fine for me if the hardware was not open. As long as I can install my own firmware on it and have full control of it, I'm happy.

I think I speak for most of us when I say that I'm sick and tired of not owning my stuff. In the dystopic world we're living in, with enshittification at it's peak, an open, hackable, and truly owned device would feel like a breath of fresh air.

You have a real opportunity here, Eric. Please use it :) Best of luck!

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#706

Post by stephen_g »

immibis wrote: post #621
starkparker wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The Fediverse is a bit like that. Anyone can post replies on things, but they don't spread through the whole network, only to people who are following the replier, and people on the replier's server, and the person who posted the thing being replied to.

It doesn’t seem to work quite like that. I don’t know the technical details, but I definitely see replies from people I don’t follow, from other instances, on posts of people I don’t follow on different (again) instances from mine and the replies.

Perhaps it could be that I’m seeing replies from people that others on my instance follow? Or perhaps there’s some other mechanism to fetch replies.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#707

Post by Piskvorrr »

Neikius wrote: post #701
hugs wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wear a Garmin watch every day. It's great. But... I don't love the high price and the fact that the battery isn't easily replaceable. (Feels like Garmin would rather you buy a new watch instead.) There's a huge lane for Pebble to be the torch bearer for the Right-to-Repair movement (especially given it's whole story arc so far.)

Can you use Garmin without their proprietary app? And if not, is it at least working without some sort of cloud services? Too many products nowadays are bound to some sort of online checks and that is even worse than "battery not replaceable". The second is much easier to circumvent than the first (dependence on cloud infra). And ofc the data security. I will never be comfortable with giving corpos my medical data.

Yesterday's "oops we bricked it remotely, no user interaction required" definitely doesn't inspire confidence - even though it was not intentional and was since fixed.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#708

Post by Gasp0de »

My Garmin Forerunner has everything the author claims doesn't exist except the hackability: Long (10 day) battery life, reflective screen (plus background light), physical buttons, all the features (step count, notifications, music control, weather, etc. plus lots of additional sport functions and even a pulse and oxygen sensor.

However, I still get the point of having a hackable device.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#710

Post by tshanmu »

Gasp0de wrote: post #708

My Garmin Forerunner has everything the author claims doesn't exist except the hackability: Long (10 day) battery life, reflective screen (plus background light), physical buttons, all the features (step count, notifications, music control, weather, etc. plus lots of additional sport functions and even a pulse and oxygen sensor. However, I still get the point of having a hackable device.

+1 pleasantly surprised by my garmin forerunner for exactly the same with hrv stats as well
Post reply on HN