Hacker News Reader

Comment by rtpg | Hacker News Reader

I am so sad about this. I had told myself that at least I'd get a Time 2 and a Core, and stave myself off before the sadness hits again that Pebble is gone.

Pebble's products were an excellent example of lateral technology. No need for high DPI on your watch, because they made something that looks good with few pixels. Making battery life a priority in a world of WiFi-enabled pressure cookers.

Even when the battery ran out you still got 24 hours of a watch that would at least tell the time!

I have no idea if it is possible to produce something like Pebbles at low quantities, but I would love to see an open design with similar specs. I think these watches are better than anything else out there, and it's sad the design is going to disappear.

View on HN

>Making battery life a priority in a world of WiFi-enabled pressure cookers.

I literally wear my Time Steel for 23 hours and 45 minutes per day. The only time it's charging and not on my wrist is when I'm in the shower, and over the course of a regular day it never drops below 80%. If I'm going away for a weekend I don't even have to bother with the charger.

I charge my first gen Pebble literally once a week. Monday morning, I get to work, and put my pebble on charge. By the time stand-up happens a couple of hours later (my first meeting of the day) it's back on my wrist and good to go for the next week.

I was aiming to get a new Pebble after Christmas, as mine suffers from that screen corruption glitch that plagued the first gens.

I expect this is actually part of the problem, and likely affects many smartwatch producing companies: If it wasn't for the screen glitch, I wouldn't be replacing my watch. It works, does everything I need, and speed isn't an issue. A colour display would be nice, but it's far from important to me. I'm sure the same is true for many Joe Average consumers. There isn't the same impetus to frequently upgrade a watch.

I had the same screen glitch with my Kickstarter edition OG Pebble, then bounced around to other smart watches until I landed again on the Time Steel which has been nothing but perfect.

But you're right. Much like the cell phone market which appears to be slowing down, the minor improvements made in the tech for smart watches don't appear to actually be worth buying if you already have the current version that isn't broken. Unfortunately, the software Pebbles run is so straightforward that even planned obsolescence through required updates wouldn't have been a viable option like it is for cell phones. Y'know, the updates that correct dangerous security vulnerabilities while at the same time crippling old hardware by introducing new, unnecessary features in the software? No Pebble owner would've bought (for lack of a better word) that justification and upgraded.

Do you really sleep comfortable with it on? I can't imagine wearing my (analog) watch to sleep.

Took a little while to get used to but yeah, I don't even notice it now. I have a third party silicone strap on it, which may help.

I can't help but think that maybe this is the manufacturing niche the US could fill... High quality, low run manufacturing that people are willing to pay a premium for.

Sorry you did not get your Time 2. I got my Pebble 2 and I really like it. I am sad the core I ordered will not ship as my pebble is not connected to my Windows Phone and GPS would be nice when I run.

The pebble 2 does compete with the fit-bit. This story reminds me of a time when I worked at a small semiconductor equipment manufacture. We were a scrappy team and build a great small footprint tool. We won an order from a larger customer. Everyone was celebrating until our competitor quickly bought us out for cheap and shut us down. A few engineer went over to the new company but not enough to keep the product going.

> I think these watches are better than anything else out there

I'm not sure about that. I read some comments on a few other articles about the Pebble shutdown, and people are recommending the Vector Watch [1]. It's a smart watch with a monochromatic e-ink display, and it has a 30 day battery life.

[1] http://vectorwatch.com/

I agree entirely. It's very rare that something fits a niche so nicely, while the competition misses it by miles. I have the same feeling about my simple sigma bike computer (though at least there's more options in that niche).

I will use my pebble as long as it continues to work, then it'll get retired to my shelf of tech fails. Most of which failed FAR more spectacularly.

What else is on your tech fail shelf? I'm curious...

I have an Ouya, an OnLive, a cuecat, a SuperDisk LS-120, Commodore Plus 4, PS Vita (maybe a little early to call, but...), a DivX, a DreamCast, a Jornada, a Palm Tungsten, a GameBoy Advance e-card reader, probably some other stuff in there too.

Shelf is a euphemism, it's actually a small pile of boxes that I keep just to remind myself that even great ideas will die with poor implementation, planning, DRM, or bad support.

Want a crunchpad? Or whatever they renamed it to. I have no use for the thing.

Wow, I didn't know they ever shipped those things.

No thanks, my stack is big enough, but I betcha someone collects those!

They didn't, as it isn't a "Crunchpad" _per se_. But Fusion Garage, the team actually developing the tablet in a branding deal had a falling out with Michael Arrington at the last minute and released the product under the rebrand of "JooJoo" :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JooJoo

They actually delivered on orders, although I don't know how many. I got an early review model for free. I've kept on to it because it is x86 with an NVIDIA ION board. I thought it'd be fun to put XBMC / Kodi on it, and maybe some retro game emulators. Never got around to it though and it's still running stock firmware and sitting in its original box.

A piece of history to be sure, although I doubt anyone who wasn't there at the time would remember it. The highly anticipated device that invented the tablet market was not the iPad...

> but I would love to see an open design...

Well - there's always this:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-your-own-smart-watch/

> ...with similar specs

Hmm - I doubt they compare, but then again, one is open-source and nearly infinitely customizable (depending on your budget, skills, and needs) - and one, well - doesn't exist any longer.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com