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Comment by SuperShibe | Hacker News Reader

Couldn't the same flow be achieved on a Pebble watch by utilizing something like the "double tap"-gesture Apple Watches Series 9 and upwards have?

This seems like a gadget just for the sake of having another gadget...

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The double-tap gesture is something I was very excited about and have completely forgotten about since getting my watch. The caveats around what it takes to activate it (screen activated and facing vertically) are just so great, you wonder if anyone at Apple actually tried this and found it to be a better alternative to interacting with the screen. Their demo video actually does a perfect job of capturing just how ridiculously theatrical you have to be to get it to work: https://support.apple.com/guide/watch/use-double-tap-for-com...

I was also excited about it, until I tried it and discovered it has pretty poor usability. It's not always clear what the double tap will do. Maybe it will scroll, maybe it will clear the item you are looking at, and maybe it won't do anything.

About the only thing I use it for is stopping a timer - it’s great for that.

Interesting idea, but those gestures only work on AW when not in low-power mode, meaning they take a non-trivial amount of battery. It would probably dampen Pebble's battery life significantly, and might not even be possible with the chip that it has.

The idea (fta) is to have activation require only the one free hand.

yup that's what the Apple Watch double tap gesture does. On the hand wearing the watch you tap your thumb and index finger together 2 times in quick succession and the watch recognizes that unique motion pattern on your arm and does [something].

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