Five days with Pebble | Hacker News Reader

Five days with Pebble

danilocampos.com

129 pointsdanilocampos61 comments

WHERE IS THE SDK? Why will nobody answer this question?

I received my Pebble 10 days ago. I was an early back of a black Pebble. So far I have really loved my Pebble, but it is begging for apps. The Pebble team said during the Kickstarter for their 2m stretch goal that they would release the SDK before the watch. Still no SDK, and not even so much as a mention since they started shipping. Obviously, as with almost all Kickstarter projects (including Pebble), there are delays. That is fine.

But why will nobody from the Pebble team comment on the release or what is going on? I have sent emails, posted on the forums, signed up for mailing lists, posted kickstarter comments, and lurked in IRC (and now commented on HN) to try to figure out what the deal with the SDK is. NOBODY KNOWS or nobody will talk about it.

There are rumblings that some people, possibly "hacker special" backers, have already been given access to an SDK. I'm not sure if this is true, but it shouldn't prevent the Pebble team from making an announcement about what is going on with the SDK.

I'm not trying to put Pebble down or trying to degrade what Pebble is in any way. I own an inPulse and I backed Pebble the second I found out about it. I hope for nothing but success for Pebble and think they could do amazing things. I think they could do even more amazing things if they let developers start making Pebble even better.

PEBBLE TEAM, if you are reading this...PLEASSSEEEE just tell us what/when to expect!

Maybe I'm biased given my background as an iOS guy, but...

I'm just happy they got the hardware out and it's working pretty damn well. I want to write code for this new platform more than anyone.

But they're a hardware startup! And they're shipping their hardware! That shit is impossible, and frankly, worth prioritizing over any other goal. Getting an SDK right takes time. It took Apple a year for the iPhone, and they had enormous resources and a comparatively luxuriously-appointed platform.

How much RAM do you think a little guy like the Pebble is working with?

So I can imagine there be dragons in Pebble SDK town. They're going to get there. But be realistic and cut some slack here. As a fellow backer, I'm looking at all of this as having gone infinitely better than expected. Maybe you want a bit more communication on this subject, and that's fair, but keep some perspective.

Creating the future takes time.

All their incentives are aligned with yours. The better the dev ecosystem for this platform, the more money they get to make over time. It's gonna be fine.

Good communication 101 in my books says they should write a statement about it, especially since they've indicated that it should be out before the watch. Or atleast comment on the questions.

I think people want pebble to succeed and there is lot of love for the product. And telling about the dragons and delays creating the SDK would just improve the image of fair and open culture they have.

I can imagine they've had a crazy year but an hour spent on commenting this would be time well spent in my oppinion.

danilocampos, I'm usually inclined to give Kickstarter projects the benefit of the doubt. I have backed so many projects that I have come to expect delays as part of the normal course of action. Keep in mind even the Pebble hardware was supposed to ship in September. But the team knew they would miss that date and communicated that to their backers. This is what a good Kickstarter project is all about.

However, not only their lack of communication but REFUSAL to answer questions about it (as evidenced by this post) is an unacceptable way to treat your backers and supporters. It would take Eric no more than 5 minutes to respond on the forums or do a Kickstarter update.

Still waiting...not so patiently.

A very early version of the SDK is available to the 200 Hacker Special backers, who had to sign an NDA.

All well and good, but what about when you say you'll ship the SDK? When you tell Wired and other interviews publicly that you'll have it out, and then you never say a thing. I even emailed and got a response from Eric himself saying "working on it."

The cost of clarity in communication with your user base is $0. Really. All they seem to care about it KickStarter and the whole episode reeks of amateurism which is not what you're supposed to be $10M later. Put up a post. Say what you're doing. Don't let it fester.

This supports some of the rumors I have heard but raises more questions about why the silence on it to all other backers.

Well if you want to start with the previous product, the inPulse, they have an SDK here: http://getinpulse.com/pulsesdk/

They have a simulator and some nice code samples. It is a fun C api and simulator. I am not sure when they will release the SDK for the Pebble.

No kidding! I'm dying to make a pomodoro timer for mine.

I'm at 4 days with my Pebble.

It's great. It's subtle, it looks nice and I like having a watch.

My only two caveats, I had to give a presentation the other day and it went off during my presentation. Sure, I was the only one who noticed, but it threw me through a loop for a second. A "Watch mode only" switch would be nice.

The other is the watch strap. I ordered a leather strap which I think will make the watch look an order of magnitude better.

edit:

oh. I would also like notifications I clear on the watch to clear on my smartphone.

Could you not just disable Bluetooth on your phone for situations like that? Just curious if there's a downside.

Would love a Pebble but haven't ordered yet so I'm going to wait until they catch up on the backlog.

yea, I had another presentation today and that's what I did. Nowhere near as convenient though.

I'd like a software switch in the menus for the current version and the next version to have a physical switch.

There's a software switch in Pebble to disable notifications. Settings -> Display -> Notifications On/Off

Looks at profile... must know what he is talking about.

That's fantastic. In the future though, a physical switch seems like a good idea.

Makes sense!

I, too, love my Pebble, if only for the convenience of getting text and call notifications on my wrist.

I'm surprised at how poorly thought-out the UI is, and particularly surprised at how little control I have over it, at least out of the box.

For the moment, there's no way to invert the screen color, no way to view text or call history (even to the point of seeing a notification if you accidentally press the wrong button and dismiss it), not even a battery life indicator that I've been able to find.

Eventually, as developers start getting apps on the Pebble, and as Pebble themselves work on the UI, I have faith it will improve. As the author says, this is what it's like in early adopter land.

One thing the Pebble has convinced me of is that smart watches will be a popular product category in the near future. There's just too much potential, and even my very basic, very early-stage Pebble has already become one of my favorite gadgets.

If smart watches take off, it will be when Apple releases theirs.

Technology has taken off in the past without Apples influences (netbooks, IPTV, I'd even argue that smartphones and MP3 players too - though Apple did lead the charge in their re-invention which further popularised them).

Plus it seems a little presumptuous to make such a definitive statement when given Apple's watch is only a rumour and how unreliable Apple rumours are at the best of times.

Netbooks? How'd that work out for the industry?

Rather well actually. It's funny how short some peoples memories are, but netbooks were very well received.

Popular enough that Intel rushed through some low powered x86 designs for fear of ARM taking off.

Popular enough that Microsoft rushed through changes to Windows XP (both in terms of software code and licensing) for fear of Linux taking off.

In fact they were so successful that complaints were often made against Apple for having no such device (this of course was before the MacBook Air and iPad. Neither of which are netbooks -obviously- but between the two they covered enough of the form factor to keep most of the complainer quiet).

Granted the demand for netbooks have since fizzled out, but they were hugely successful at the time and did the start of the popularisation of users switching away from heavy "powerhouse" hardware to more portable devices for lighter work loads. Credit for which belongs largely to ASUS and the EeePC, which was basically the first consumer netbook - though similar hardware was being built by the One Laptop Per Child scheme - amongst others.

It's also worth noting that ASUS never sued Acer and other OEMs over pathetic design patents over netbooks. And how Diamond Multimedia never sued Apple over portable music players (one could argue the original iPod shared a lot of similarities with the Rio PMP00[1]).

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_PMP300

It's not short memory, Apple blogs have been waging a campaign against netbooks since their heyday, just like they wage campaigns against phones bigger than 4 inches and tablets smaller than 10", TV boxes with support for keyboards, styluses, royalty-free video codecs etc. etc. Basically if Apple isn't in the market (yet) then it needs to be torn down, otherwise Apple looks bad.

Pretty good - people got to realise that they didn't need 3.8 GHz machines to browse the web and read email. Something much smaller would do. You don't need cd / dvd rom. You don't need 8 GB of ram. You don't need huge screens.

The form factor was lousy, but by the time they realised that they had cranked up smart phones. A big smart phone is really just a smaller netbook.

I've got an inPulse watch^h^h^h^h^hpaperweight. If you want to see the effect of the Langolier spammers go over and look at inPulse's website http://www.getinpulse.com/hack/forum/ (not recommended). You can also see folks crying in the corner for any information at all. They never followed through and made it work with 64bit versions of Windows, the Linux support was sub par at best, mostly unusable. Just checking they at least have finally turned off the page where they would let you order one.

To say this left a 'bad taste' would be an understatement.

"Langolier spammers"? Never heard that term.

Stephen King novel "The Langoliers" (made into a bad TV movie) see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Langoliers

They are creatures that come and eat up the world after time has moved past, dead web sites (and dead forum sites in particular) get 'eaten' by spammers in much the same way.

I have one, and this is accurate. The only benefit is being able to see notifications on the wrist without having to take the phone out of my pocket. That being said, it is a huge and amazing benefit. I hate watches, and feel they have no purpose, but now it does.

The thing is I think this article understated the horribleness of the notification bug that is supposedly Apple's fault. It's a huge pain in the ass. The only feature that matters on the Pebble is seeing notifications on the watch. Sometimes my phone buzzes and the Pebble does not. Unless the Pebble gets 100% of the notifications reliably, it becomes a frustration instead of a boon.

If that is fixed, then oh yes. If it's not fixed soon, I'll be trading pebble for the rumored Apple watch. Heck, I might do that anyway. But still.

As the guys from The Bugle (a satirical podcast) said while describing this product: "we've definitely come a long way when there's a need to develop a complete new piece of expensive hardware just to avoid having to take your phone from your pocket. Meanwhile, no solution to the global hunger problem."

As much as I nerdgasm at how cool this device is, I have to wonder if, as a species, we haven't 'jumped the shark'.

Where do you draw the line between necessity and greed?

Do I need a 40" TV? Not really, 14" is big enough to watch, it's just less enjoyable. But then TV is purely there for enjoyment anyway, so perhaps just owning one is jumping the shark when one could equally read the news online.

This watch might be excessive, but then so are the phones that this connects to (how many people actually need a smart phone? Even for corporate use, 'dumb' feature phones can send and receive e-mails). And it's greatest use is to check notifications when driving (I don't need to drive, I could get the train) or chatting to friends down the pub (I don't need to drink).

Plus lets not forget that progress and technology is generally invented for 1 of 3 reasons:

1) to kill each other

2) to cut costs in companies (usually resulting in job losses as technology replaces human beings)

3) to make our lives more luxurious.

Personally I'd rather see more 'pointless' smart watches than job losses and smart bombs.

Wristwatches were adopted by the military to avoid having to take out a pocketwatch which was clumsy and time-consuming. The military decided that being able to tell the time quickly was important enough to develop a new piece of expensive hardware. And that's just a single piece of information. Why is having knowing how many emails you have at a glance any less valid than having to know the time at a glance?

It's true that creating a watch that means you don't have to take your phone out of your pocket isn't as "worthy" as solving world hunger.

But that's true of the vast majority of modern human activity. If we only ever spent our time on creating/doing things that are at least as worthy as solving world hunger, we wouldn't be making pretty much any form of consumer electronics, any clothing beyond the most basic required to survive, playing any sports/games, or creating any art/films/music/books, or satirical podcasts.

If we've jumped the shark by focusing on our personal non-essentials before worrying about the basic needs of the rest of humanity, then we did it a long, long time before this watch came along.

Some problems are easier to solve than others. Why needlessly halt progress in smaller areas just because the big problems are yet to be solved?

This is Pebble v1. Technologies like this act as a bridge to something grander. Because OP and others forked out for that little convenience, Pebble the company can continue to innovate and continue to do more groundbreaking work.

I'm constantly missing calls/texts when I'm on the move/walking about with my phone in my pant pockets - can't feel the buzz, especially during winter season. Having a buzz on my wrist seems like a neat solution and w/o having to fish for my phone constantly.

It's definitely going to require some practice to fight the urge to simply glance at my watch (than fishing out the phone) when engaged with something/someone else.

Enjoyed the read, thanks for sharing. The 'decorum' bit made me chuckle, though - checking your watch while someone's talking is hardly the height of etiquette!

I'm not too familiar with Pebble's interactions and content display - can you really just glance at it after your pocket buzzes, or is there any cycling through display modes to see notifications? If notifications take over display, how long do they persist? What default content gets hidden to show the notification? Or does it work a completely different way?

I'm looking forward to playing with one myself but for now am reduced to eager fanboi questions...

So, when a notification hits your phone, the Pebble immediately buzzes and lights its screen, displaying the content of that notification. It'll sit there for three minutes, then go back to whatever you were doing.

So if you were in the Music controller, you would hit the Pebble's back button to dismiss the notification and you'd see your current track again. If you were on a watch app, you'll see the watch.

Fair point about manners! The fact that the device rather noticeably lights up gives you a bit of cover though.

As someone who already dreads smartphones coming out at lunch or dinner outings with friends, I already hate the idea of people's wrists lighting up and distracting from conversation. :)

Believe me, this is better. The curiosity urge is what gets the phone pulled out of the pocket. From there, it's very low friction to decide to open it up and start screwing around. Separating the two acts has, for me, been an improvement.

...or you could just set custom notification tones and vibrate patterns/intensity levels for specific apps/contacts/labels/anything (on android)

It's not the same as reading, though. I've done that in the past and it worked out like this:

"Oh, I know exactly who is texting me. They are a high priority person in my life. Let's make sure they're okay...

Aaand it's a cat gif."

The text display is the game-changer here.

"Sometimes I want to give the people I’m with my undivided attention. That means the phone stays firmly in my pocket. And as long as no calls or notifications come in, that’s fine. But once my pocket starts buzzing, my mind can start to run wild with curiosity. Is someone in trouble, or did a dumb tweet get faved by someone? That game can erode attention after awhile. With the Pebble, I can discreetly glance at my wrist without breaking the flow of conversation."

In what way is this giving someone your undivided attention? You're just slightly modifying the division of your attention and making it easier to hide that you're thinking about something else.

Personally I find a better solution is to either be honest and put your phone on the desk and explain to people that you might be getting a call you need to take, or put it somewhere you can't see, hear or feel it and genuinely disengage.

Not saying I don't like the Pebble, I do, just that I don't think this is a great use case for it.

It gets your mind off of the thing without getting your phone out of your pocket ... one glare at your watch and you know if it's worth interrupting your conversation or not. If not, it's just a 2 second interruption at max which should not interfere with your "undivided attention" to the person you are speaking with.

This is at least how my "attention" works :)

It should probably be read as "sometimes I want to give the impression I'm giving someone my undivided attention".

Or something like that.

I don't particularly want to sound like I'm bashing the original poster, although I did find the argument of his "mind running wild" slighltly worrying; turn off the phone entierly then, or at least the vibrations.

This is also where the argument for different notification tones comes into its own.

I'm really enjoying my Pebble as well. Screening text/calls on my wrist is a lot nicer than I thought it with be. I'm excited to see what kind of apps the developer community is going to come up with now that they have Pebble's in hand.

I'm not as happy with mine feature-wise but glad I participated. Build quality-wise it is pretty bad. I've already lost a button and reported it to them. I think of it as taking a cold shower before jumping in the iWatch hot tub.

Should sell yours to this guy: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5216938

Loving my Pebble, especially with Light Flow Plus and Pebble Notifier however, I am really hoping for the IFTTT channel to come out soon, although I heard from rumor that IFTTT isn't playing ball, but I don't know for sure.

Right now you can get ifttt alerts sent to pebble via SMS (iOS) or email/SMS (Android). It's 100% in our court to get the final part hooked up, absolutely nothing to do with ifttt!

I'm loving notifications on my wrist, but there are a few rough edges. The worst is that dismissing a notification on your phone does not dismiss it on the watch and vice versa. Messages you received and already read on your phone/computer will remain on the watch face, obscuring the time. This forces you to constantly interact with the watch in addition to your phone/computer.

Other problems: There's no generic support for Android notifications, so only a few apps work, not including Google Now or G+. Google Talk notifications are nice but vibrate the watch too often.

Thanks for the overview of your experience. I'm eagerly waiting for mine to ship. How did the shipping process work? I.e. did it just show up on your doorstep one day or did the Pebble account site tell you when it shipped? I keep checking my account every few days but there's no sign other than I've done all I can do for now. Trying to figure out what the rest of my wait will be like. :-)

I checked my mailbox and BOOM, there it was. I got a shipping notification the next day, which was cute. But in SF, I'm less than an hour's drive from their fulfillment center, so others will probably be better prepared.

I had the same experience in central Missouri, so… probably not. I'm totally okay with them being able to ship faster than sending e-mails, though.

Sounds like this would be a great match with my LTE iPad mini (I keep it in my pocket). But I'll probably still wait until Apple releases their version. Even then, not sure if I'll get it because I prefer to have one device... at least until they start to sync Notification (Interruption?) Center.

I think I'll pass--I instinctively check my phone too much as it is, I really don't need another device to feed my dopamine addiction. Reminds me of an old Calvin and Hobbes strip--if we wanted technology to make our lives more convenient, we'd make computers slower, not faster.

Ugh, I should have ordered during the Kickstarter. I was literally at the billing info page when I decided to wait until some reviews came out.

I was bought one as a gift, and still haven't received a billing notification yet. :(

For those with Pebbles, does it have any impact on the battery life of the phone? How's the battery life of Pebble itself?

I've had my Pebble for 10 days. I charged it once when I got it and once since then, it died on me for the first time while I was wearing it today. I would say the battery life on is great especially compared to the inPulse and definitely usable.

I've noticed the battery usage varies a lot. depending on watchfaces, how your notifications are set / how many notifications you get on a daily basis. But my sparse charging since I got it has proven that the battery should easily stand up to 3 or 4 days of use between charges. This was more than enough to satisfy me after the crummy battery life I experience with inPulse.

This looks incredibly, incredibly useful. These guys are going to go FAR with this. I just pre-ordered one. Can't wait!

Although things are subjective, it looks pretty ugly and flimsy. I'll sit this out until they can be as durable as a simple Casio watch or G-shock.

"Sometimes I want to give the people I’m with my undivided attention."

and now I can pretend I am.

Apple is about to eat their lunch.

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