Smartwatch firm Pebble lays off 25% of its staff
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
It's slightly terrifying how much better the PTS is that the G, in every possible aspect, despite technically being worse. It's got less RAM, it's got a slower processor, it's got a smaller screen, it doesn't have a touchscreen... but somehow it ends up being a vastly nicer and more useful thing than the G.
I think that partly it's to do with different expectations. The PTS feels like a watch with lots of cool features. The Wear feels like a lobotomised smartphone which would frustrate me every time I use it.
But there's a lot of really careful design in the Pebble which is missing from the G. The UI is amazingly fast --- you never have to wait for it, ever (unlike the G). It's well designed and I can find things, unlike the G with it's weird U-shaped settings menu. I control it by pressing buttons, which is fast and reliable and, critically, means that the screen's not covered by my fingers; the G was controlled by sloppy touchscreen swipes that it wasn't very good at recognising.
Also, the PTS has a 10-day battery life and a screen that I can see in direct sunlight.
(The PTS screen is a thing of beauty. It's a reflective Sharp Memory LCD, and you can see it in direct sunlight. Like, it looks really good in direct sunlight. The colours have this metallic tint to them which the UI design shows off nicely. It's small, but so, so much nicer than the G's screen.)
I use my phone in a very different way now, I hardly turn on the screen anymore. I see if something is important right away (usually it is not) and I can leave it until I'm on the train for example.
Can some smart watch owner please explain what they like about having the watch?
I ended up abandoning the platform for various reasons, but
1. It stopped my phantom leg tingle, where I'd feel like my phone was vibrating. This was a huge psychological plus for me.
2. It's a lot less intrusive to check my watch socially than it is to pull out my phone, unlock it, drag down the blind, check the notification, etc.
3. Being able to change the watch face on a whim was really appealing. I loved having a quick way to check the time/date/next train.
4. The voice reply was useful when I had my hands full, but I only really used it a dozen or so times.
* In the kitchen to time cooking, to save getting half cooked food on my phone.
* To have a quick glance at incoming notifications while walking.
* To send quick replies to some of those notifications. * To check the time (its not only a smart watch, but also just a watch).
* To track how much sleep I'm getting, and the quality of that sleep.
* To track my exercise, both while running with real time information from my phone, and passively tracking how much walking I do.
* To control music I'm listening to in the shower.
* To give me at a glance directions when Google Maps is navigating for me, rather than walking around staring at my phone.
what
No offence, I'm sure you love this device, but to me this sounds like a wafer-thin marginal improvement that does not seem worth the effort required to keep yet ANOTHER device charged. Seriously, we're talking 2 seconds saved per look? If the argument is "it adds up", you're looking at you smart device (phone or watch) too much! With the watch you then you have to decide whether or not to take your phone and fiddle with it. IMHO everything on this list works as I want with a phone, except checking the time, so I have a Swatch from 2004 for that (which has a replaceable batteries that lasts years each).
Smart watches as they currently exist fulfill a manufactured desire (again, IMHO!)
Of course, the ideal would be turn off the phone entirely, but I thought the Pebble was an elegant & respectful way to remain on-call with work, but also remain present with others. I can see how it would be useful to some people.
As for battery life, my pebble time steel lasts about a week between complaining about needing charging, which is at about the 35% range, where it could survive probably several days of use if you forgot to charge it. And if you have a smartphone it's probably not a significant inconvenience to add another cable to your charger one day a week overnight.
This one is actually the killer app for me. I use it while on my bicycle where pulling out my phone and unlocking it to monitor my progress is quite unwieldy. I used to use a bluetooth headset for this, but not having anything covering my ears is both safer and more convenient.
* When a call comes in, I can see at a glance who's calling and dismiss the call without taking my phone out of my pocket and carefully do the right swipe gesture to dismiss the call without accidentally picking it up.
It also has basic notification support but that is the least useful part. Getting notifications on a watch saves me about 2 seconds and is not worth wearing a watch and charging it every night.
* my phone is permanently on silent. Only my watch vibrates. I've found this to be much more professional.
* good step tracker
* I have an app that wakes me up between REM cycles. It's glorious!
* I always know the time, you know, like watch people do
* battery life and water proof -- I never take it off... One reason I am not interested in Apple Watch
* inability to interact/reply from watch is a PLUS. Watches make terrible input devices and there's less of a distraction
* I don't get distracted by my phone. If I have to grab my phone to check a notification I'm going to start opening apps out of habit and get lost in my phone.
I could see it being incredibly useful given a third "done with letter" button.
didahdah is the letter W and didah dah are the letters AT. Having the wrong timing or no pauses between dits and dahs totally changes the code.
And, it's never been very efficient for sending large messages. 40 WPM is the fastest humans can copy. Most normal people top out at about 20 WPM. To put that in perspective, we speak at about 300 WPM. Basically, that's why Morse Code has so many abbreviations called Q codes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_code
http://www.itu.int/rec/R-REC-M.1677-1-200910-I/
It is extremely efficient and effective when you only have a few watts, a switch and would like to communicate around the world. Nothing really compares.
Edit: Morpheuz is an alternative
For me, I started using a smart watch exclusively while working events where me and my team would coordinate using group chat. It wouldn't be uncommon to receive hundreds of messages per day, and sometimes dozens over a few minutes. The vast majority of which wouldn't require a response, but being caught up on what was going on would be critical. And often everyone would have their hands busy doing something else, so being able to just look at your watch to read a message is an amazing improvement.
I started wearing my pebble every day maybe two months ago just as an experiment (after spending something like 2 decades not wearing a watch). So far it's been a success. Being able to stay caught up on my messages with little friction is helpful, and surprisingly having a watch is actually useful fairly often as well.
- Tell the time [often]
- Quickly browse mail and instant messages to see if it's worth getting the smartphone from the pocket. Side benefit: I use my cell in public a lot less and communicate more like a human being. Mostly just quick glance at the watch instead of being distracted into doing a bunch of stuff with the cell while sitting at a table with other peopel [often]
- Navigate via Google Maps while on foot in a city I'm not familiar with [occasionally]
- Maybe strange: Call notification via watch vibration = no missed calls (I missed some on standard cell vibration which is bad since I have my phone on vibrate 100% of the time)
It's only very simple stuff really but well worth it for me. Battery time is bad compared to Pebbles but I don't care because I take off the watch when I sleep and put it on the charger and it gets roughly two days without charging.
1. While driving. You can easily take a quick glance at your wrist while your hands are on the wheel and your eyes are on the road. Rummaging around for a smartphone in your pocket is significantly more unsafe. I've saved myself 20 minutes on a couple occasions because my wife IMed me to tell me the place we were meeting up has changed, or that she'd already gone to the grocery store and I didn't need to stop there.
2. While exercising. A lot of people don't like to wear things with pockets while out for a run or cycle.
3. In a meeting. It's less rude and less obvious to glance at your watch than to pull your phone out and start fiddling with it.
4. While cooking. This is a pretty big one: oftentimes your hands are very messy and a call comes in, and you'd miss it if you washed your hands. This is also why half of Apple Watch owners have used their nose as an input device.
5. While carrying things. This is great at the grocery store; I always found having to juggle my bags to grab my phone out of my pocket to be a huge hassle. I can flick through my shopping list without dropping what I'm doing now.
6. When your phone is charging. I'm much more inclined to leave my phone in the charger when I'm home now, because I'll get notifications on my wrist if an important call or message comes in. This in turn frees me up to wear pants that don't have pockets at home, which are often more comfortable.
It's also great in general for screening your notifications so you don't have to take your phone out of your pocket.
I think that the best uses for it will actually come about later, when devs realize they aren't like tiny screens for the phone in your pocket. Rather, they're tiny computers that can deliver information to you in bursts of 1-5 seconds (and from you continuously). How many moments are there where the right information could've led you to make a very different decision? I've encountered several - knowing not to go to the grocery store because your wife has already been, or that the person you're meeting will be 15 minutes late, or that your meetup has changed locations, or that it's about to rain in 10 minutes and so it's time to cut my walk short. I can brainstorm several others: remembering that it's your client's daughter's birthday just as you're about to sell to them, or that the item you're looking at at the store is on sale on Amazon right now, or that your employees think that this presentation you're giving is full of bullshit. What else can devs think of? There are a lot of 1-5 second moments in the day, and historically, whenever computation has reached new situations new $100B businesses get founded.
$60 when I bought it, now $30. Charge lasts a week. Customizable vibration patterns and text for different kinds of notifications from my phone. It works fine as a watch even when the rechargeable battery is dead. It has a normal clock face so it's always on and visible from all angles. It doesn't look weird or bulky on my small wrist. I'm less likely to miss or ignore calls/texts/email etc when the phone is in my pocket.
I don't know why this watch is not more popular or why there aren't more manufacturers making similar devices.
Edit: you happen to know if it has GPS or a step counter?
>letting 40 of Pebble’s 120 employees go.
What the math?
except misreporting, another possibility is that there was a previous layoff. Like 120 to 107 (~11%) and then from 107 to 80 which is ~25%.
It's also puzzling me a bit because the appeal of watches among people where e.g Apple is aiming their watches for given the price range, tend not to be about supporting the latest WiFi standards or whatnot, but the value of classic, mechanical, precise, designs.
Maybe it's the fact the hardware and software experience just isn't up to scratch, or in my personal case, maybe people just don't want that experience. It's not the awkward stigma of talking to or interacting with your watch in public, but it's the unnerving feeling of connectedness and intrusion.
In fact, I wrote an article about just this last year: http://jh47.com/2015/04/09/Freedom-for-wrists/
Also the number one complaint about the Pebble that constantly comes up with every single release is the huge bezel and then their latest watch, the round, almost appears as if it has more bezel. Sorry but I just don't think it looks attractive that way and I honestly really want one.
Honestly, there's a lot of talented people at Pebble, but their vision IMHO has just been the wrong one. I still think they should partner with someone like Timex, Casio or Garmin and ship something like an F-91W or a G-Shock with PebbleOS. That would be really interesting. Hell, if they partnered with Garmin they could probably build an awesome developer community around solid HW.
All this said, I really admire Eric and the rest of the staff at Pebble. They've put in a lot of hard work to ship something functional, BUT they really need to rethink how they're marketing themselves, who they're marketing to and what the vision of the company/product should be if they intend to survive.
As for the bezel... it's not actually a big deal in real life. It looks way worse in photos. I was concerned until I had a chance to hold one in my hands. I think it's because that watch interactions tend to involve very focused attention for very close up. If you get a chance to try one in real life, I'd recommend it (actually put it on).
I imagine the reason for it is simply that Sharp Memory LCDs don't come in very many sizes and they need somewhere to put the works; i.e., a technical compromise.
(I would much rather have the small Sharp screen that a bigger OLED. You have no idea how much nicer the Sharp screen is.)
You're comparing it to the wrong product. I think their vision is spot on compared to other manufactures, I can't understand why Apple/Google don't pursue a watch with this type of screen and battery life.
As for the form follows function: The bezel/screen ratio enables longer battery times (smaller bezel in the same casing means a more power consuming screen and less space for the battery) so that applies to Pebble as well.
I truly can't understand what they're thinking. By this point there should be minimal bezel.
It is literally the only thing that turned me off buying one.
How deeply integrated is the product into the company - will the product still be useful in case Pebble goes bust?
Can one side load apps?
I dunno. I think Apple Watch is overkill. But Pebble is just right. I hope they don't go out of business.
I have the feeling that there's a breakthrough "why didn't I think of that?" moment not too far in the distant future from now.
Until then.
Funny you should say that. I find a large part of the problem is that companies seem to be focusing more on the smart-wrist-mounted-device aspect and less on the watch aspect. I want a device that is a beautiful, high quality watch first and some smart-wrist-mounted-device aspects tastefully added to that.
Until then.
Plus, I'm a sucker for a traditionally crafted, Swiss-made watches!