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Comment by potatolicious | Hacker News Reader

I'm a bit lost here, and to be fair my memory from that long ago is a bit hazy... but I was a initial Pebble kickstarter and also got whatever the metal one was called.

They were totally fine products, I enjoyed using them. I am no longer using them, but such is the nature of consumer gadgetry.

I don't recall getting rogered at any point in that process?

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I too was part of the initial Kickstarter and I had both the first and the second version.

When FitBit bought Pebble in 2016, some may argue that this was a good thing, the development of the watch and the OS just stopped - it was dead. FitBit had no intention of keeping the Pebble and just wanted to implement the software into it's own ecosystem.

Google bought FitBit in 2019 and released the source code for PebbleOS this year - but that is kind of late now, isn't it?

> some may argue that this was a good thing

I don't think anyone was arguing this - Pebble simply went bankrupt. FitBit just bought some of their IP/assets I think. There was no expectation of them buying it and continuing support or development.

Some say that if FitBit hadn't bought them, the Kickstarter supporters that still hadn't received their devices, wouldn't gotten their money refunded from Pebble.

If this is true or not, I have no idea.

that's basically the norm for kickstarter yea. if a company doesn't succeed, there's no money to return...

I remember that part too, I just don't feel like any of it was particularly egregious. Disappointing sure, but I suppose I disagree that anything about it was untoward.

I'm generally pretty hostile to companies being acquired and breaking their past customers' products. Shutting down various required cloud services, making software undownloadable, etc.

But I don't think that happened? The roadmap simply ended, but every watch that was out there kept working as-advertised for a good long while?

Same attitude here (personal animosity against companies who fuck you over and do malicious sellouts but no such memories of the process Pebble went through in their last company iteration).

In fact, I still wear a Pebble daily. Both my Time and Time Steel still work great and I still strongly prefer the whole concept and the UI/UX to any other watch. As soon as they release the iOS app, my Pebble Time will become my "work watch", paired to my job-issued iPhone.

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