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Comment by dlgeek | Hacker News Reader

I mean, I get that it's a Garmin press release, but did anyone else find the inserts about the GPS to be tacky?

Not at all. It's necessary detail for the story to make sense, and of course Garmin is quite proud that their device played a role in saving a life.

I know what they mean about ease of use, too. In the early 2000's I had a Garmin eTrex GPS receiver, the little translucent green one. Did a lot of hiking and geocaching with it, hooked it to my laptop for wardriving, etc. And everything I ever asked it to do was so easy -- there was no touchscreen and the click-stick only had five "buttons", but the UI was just profoundly intuitive.

I said at the time that if Garmin ever made a cellphone (this was pre-smartphone and every phone reinvented its own craptastic UI), I'd buy one in a heartbeat. Of course they did release some Garmin-branded phones later, well into the Android era, and the UI is generic Android. So much for that, and more's the pity.

But I believe their marine instruments retain some of that old-fashioned intuition, so anyone could just walk up and figure out the interface. And that plays a role in the story, so it's absolutely relevant to mention.

There’s UX spillover from their avionics division, which has indirect funding via NTSB recommending/mandating improvements after accidents

Man, if you can figure out a Garmin just by walking up to one and figuring out the interface, you have several more degrees than most people. If you know one, you know most of the others, but if you know none, and you don't have the manual, those things are confusing af.

The nuvifone was based on embedded Linux and the UI was implemented in a mix of Qt and possibly Tcl/Tk. I’m not sure how much Android played into things, but there was definitely inspiration from the iPhone. It was the first phone Garmin put out.

A little bit, but hey, they're not hiding anything. Everyone is allowed to toot their own horn. I'd more pissed if this was some paid PR piece hidden in a newspaper.

I usually would, but I actually didn’t find it tacky in this article up until the end where the article mentioned they were so impressed that they upgraded their own boat. That was just a little bit tacky, but not terrible given it was a press release. The rest is how I would talk about it while sailing. I often say “the Garmin” instead of “the chart plotter”.

To be fair, if the waypoints weren’t logged in the Garmin they would never have found the overboard man.

The waypoints could have been logged in anything. Any GPS, or even a Google location history on a phone they found.

The heroes of the story are the two men.

It would be like if someone were about to sucker punch a woman and you happened to be standing in the way. You're not a hero, you just happened to be present.

It's also a type of scare mongering. "You might fall overboard while peeing, and our product could save your life, just look at this phenomenally unlikely scenario!" The much smarter solution is to use a wireless lanyard or just pee inside the boat, as commented elsewhere here.

If you made a tool and you found out that someone used your tool to save someone’s life, wouldn’t you be proud of yourself for your good work? What’s the harm in sharing the good news?

If the story is true, why not use it for advertising?

Here's a link to a similar page for a completely different product: https://www.valentine1.com/v1-moments/

Nah. Good PR is where you find it.

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