Pebble has recaptured the top spot for most-funded project on Kickstarter | Hacker News Reader

Pebble has recaptured the top spot for most-funded project on Kickstarter

cnet.com

64 pointswifera54 comments

It is ironic how Pebble looks a lot more like an Apple product than the AppleWatch itself.

Apple made a product that aligns with its long term strategies but delivers very poorly the most fundamental and essential functionality. The AppleWatch has short battery life, its screen is not always on, is not waterproof, its interface is not intuitive... And what we get in return? You can send your heartbeat through bluetooth and has lots of cool straps.

It reminds me the feature-bloated products that Microsoft used to make. They'd do everything but fail at the essential.

One thing Jobs was famous for was trimming the superfluous in order to get the essential well done. It is clear that the AppleWatch could get a lot from Jobs.

I completely agree. I'd take this new Pebble Time or the Moto 360 as an "Apple Watch" over what Apple actually produced.

To be honest the Apple Watch looks about as clunky as Samsung's attempts (Galaxy Gear) but Samsung shipped a year and a half before Apple, and Motorola about a six months.

I admire Apple's advertising machine, they can sell anything. I think the Apple Watch proves that point. A $350 ($100 more than anyone else) fugly watch that was behind its competitors even before it shipped.

Does anyone here actually own one? What do you think?

You think the Pebble Time has a better design than the Apple Watch? The Pebble looks pretty similar but with a bigger bezel. The Apple Watch doesn't go on sale until April 24.

Pish-posh. How can you complain about the screen not always being on and it not being good for swimming and then refer to Jobs trimming the superflous?

Don't you remember when the iPhone came out? No keyboard! Harumph! It only has a battery life of one day! Harumph! No flash! Harumph!

I mean, do you remember how much of the web was in flash in 2007?

Also, do you remember what was essential about a cellular phone in 2007? It was essential that you make calls and send sms.

That is not what is essential about a cellular phone today. Telling time may not be what is essential about a watch tomorrow.

Essential apparently is gold tinting to gold plating. It should have been evident from the iPhone 5 series that Apple went in full force for the pretentious crowd by issue a gold colored iPhone. The Apple Watch emphasizes style and style choices more than any other feature.

So while I will happily keep my iPhone, iMac, and my parents their iPads, I see no reason to buy a product built for style more so than functionality and engineering excellence. Anyone can make a big watch, probably only Apple can sell it at a price that should make most people flinch

Kind of like you stopped buying Apple products when the iMac came out in different colors in 1999, instead of just beige? And the iPod Mini in 2004? And the iPod Nano, iPod Shuffle, and black MacBook in 2006?

Basically one product line or another continuously for the last 16 years?

A device can be useful and come in multiple colors. The aluminum one doesn't magically stop working as well.

The outrage when they started offering a white iPhone too. Colors are bad, everyone knows that. Heck, my TV is black and white, and even that's one color too many.

One thing to realize is that Apple is gearing more of their products to the Chinese market with the golds, reds and other cosmetic choices.

The other thing to note is that Ive is a silversmith's son so he may be drawn to metallurgical interests and choices from a deep psychological place.

Did you conclude the battery life and the interface was non intuitive after trying it?

daily charging < weekly charging

"Delivers very poorly"

It doesn't even get released for another 3 weeks!

How do you know what Steve Jobs would have done? Wouldn't Cook, Ive, and others who have worked next to him for over a decade be better equipped to make product judgements than any of us?

Frankly, I think the Apple Watch (as it currently is) and the Pebble are both less useful than not needing to remember to wear or recharge a watch.

> It is ironic how Pebble looks a lot more like an Apple product than the AppleWatch itself.

Im not sure how you could look at the pictures of the Pebble and make this conclusion. The on-screen UI is hideous. It looks like a feature-phone from the early 2000s. Pebble Steel has nice industrial design, but again totally ugly screen and UI.

"It is ironic how Pebble looks a lot more like an Apple product than the AppleWatch itself."

No.

Is that really a fair comparison? The Pebble Time kickstarter campaign was just a pre-order portal in disguise --- it wasn't really a "true" crowdfunding campaign.

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

What facet of being "true" crowdfunding did they not satisfy?

It's in blatant violation of kickstarters rules, and was probably set up as the result of a partnership with kickstarter. Kickstarter knew that the return of pebble would be lucrative for them, and pebble knew that by using kickstarter they'd continue to wear the facade of a small fledgeling grassroots company (and while they're the underdog relative to their competition from LG, Samsung, Motorola and Apple, they're a lot bigger than they were for their first kickstarter campaign.

I think kickstarter modified those rules when they announced Launch Now: https://www.kickstarter.com/blog/introducing-launch-now-and-...

Now companies can just use it as an advertising platform to generate publicity, even if they have to give up a slice of revenue to kickstarter.

1) They easily could have raised all the capital they needed

2) They're already a successful company

1) Crowdfunded dollars are better than VC dollars.

2) Most large crowdfunding campaigns are from already successful companies.

Capital is not the same thing as sales. And with $20m (less fees) in the bank they can get even more VC money if that's what they want to do.

From the article you linked:

> No true Scotsman is an informal fallacy, an ad hoc attempt to retain an unreasoned assertion.

That clearly did not occur in this comment thread.

Using fallacies while not understanding them makes you look like an idiot. Just FYI.

They didn't need to release through Kickstarter, but this was a nice gesture from Pebble to offer their products to Kickstarter backers at a discount and priority (backers get their Pebble Time watches before it goes to retail).

It is also a huge marketing success in getting their brand out there. They properly framed themselves as the underdog with a superior product vs Apple.

this was a nice gesture from Pebble to offer their products to Kickstarter backers at a discount and priority

The Kickstarter page says the standard watch will cost $199 retail - yet the official website is advertising it for $99 | https://getpebble.com/shop

Am I misunderstanding something here?

That's $99 for the two-year-old first version of the watch. The Pebble Time will likely cost much more at retail.

Pebble ($99, plastic) and Pebble Steel ($199, newer and shinier but basically the same) are already available. The Kickstarter was for Pebble Time (will be $199) and Pebble Time Steel (will be $299), which have color interfaces but are compatible with all the old apps. They have also promised that the new interface will be ported back to the old Pebbles, but that hasn't shipped yet.

I honestly wonder how many of the Pebble Time backers are people who initially got hyped up over the Apple Watch, then decided they didn't want to deal with a watch with only 18 hours battery life.

I actually went the other direction. I have no problem charging my phone every night, and charging a watch at the same time would be a non-issue. Upon hearing that the apple watch will hit a battery life closer to 18 hours rather than the rumored12, I actually cancelled my backing for pebble time in favor of planning to buy the apple watch.

For me, it was because Pebble created a reputation as a hacker-friendly watch, as opposed to Apple and Google's closed gardens.

Then I looked more into the Pebble, and discovered that it's a closed garden every bit as restrictive as Apple and Google, only with more distance between the walls. So, I canceled my order.

In particular, from the Terms of Use[0]:

Section II, paragraph 2, sentence 2: Do not reverse-engineer anything in the Pebble,

Section II, paragraph 2, sentence 3: Do not learn from Pebble to create anything,

Section III, paragraph 2, point 12: Do not say bad things about Pebble,

Section III, paragraph 2, point 13: Do not overload the Pebble servers, even accidentally,

and Section XIV, sentence 8: If the terms of service are illegal, then act like they are legal anyway.

[0]https://auth.getpebble.com/terms_of_use

I had no idea that was in there. That's what I get for not reading the ToS.

How does Section XIV, sentence 8 work? Does it have any legal standing at all?

The way he mischaracterized it, no. If its illegal, it's illegal, and no contract is valid when it forces someone to do something illegal.

The way it's actually worded, yes, most contracts will specify this. The way it's actually worded really means "if a certain part of this agreement is found to be invalid, the other (still valid) parts are still enforceable. Basically, if part of the contract is void, you can't void the entire contract.

I would hope people can recognize that the way Decade portrays the contract is not the way it's actually worded.

It's very common to include the "other provisions hereof shall remain in full force" clause. I'm fine with that. But this is the first time I've seen "the court should endeavor to give effect to the parties' intentions as reflected in the provision," and I don't like the uncertainty about that, especially given my objection to Section II paragraph 2.

If you search Google for that term, you'll find out how common it actually is. The first few results I see:

Pearson

Kentucky Fried Chicken

Instagram

Western Michigan University

Florida State University

Call of Duty

NFL

MIT

City and County of San Francisco

Cloudflare

Yahoo

WoWHead

So whatever your uncertainty about it, it's not an uncommon legal concept, and you may already have agreed to it in the ToS of another service you use or company you do business with.

edit - In fact, Apple combines those two clauses together in their ToS, but most assuredly they do have that stipulation:

If any part of this Agreement is held invalid or unenforceable, that portion shall be construed in a manner consistent with applicable law to reflect, as nearly as possible, the original intentions of the parties...

http://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/us/terms...

The other companies don't claim to be hacker-friendly, except for MIT, nor do they try to forbid you from making your own thing or practicing free speech.

Pearson sucks. Why would anybody want to be compared to Pearson?

Okay, this conversation is over. You said it was an uncommon clause in a legal document, I showed that it wasn't and tried to comfort your fears, and that's as far as I'm willing to take it. You seem like you have an agenda against Pebble for something other than what is being stated, and I'm not going to get into that.

Eh, second page now, being pedantic is fine.

I didn't say it was uncommon. I said that I didn't see it before. Especially not in connection with the other clauses. I canceled my order before I even reached Section XIV.

I do have a mild case of Internet-rage at Pebble, but it's not unstated. I said it at the beginning of my first post in this thread: They cultivated an image of being hacker-friendly, but they're as restrictive as Apple and Google. It felt like a betrayal of principles.

The term you use, "illegal" is not the same as "invalid"

IMHO one of the greatest current problems in computing is how to have openness and freedom on a platform without sacrificing user experience or letting it turn into malware hell. The walled gardens are walled to keep out the riff raff -- or at least the benefit of doing this is why vendors can get away with it. If there were no benefits, the market would reject this.

Without the benefit of your rather uncharitable summarization:

Section II, paragraph 2, sentence 2:

You may not decompile, disassemble, reverse engineer or otherwise attempt to obtain or access the source code from which any component of the Services or the Service is compiled or interpreted, and nothing in this Agreement may be construed to grant any right to obtain or use such source code.

Section II, paragraph 2, sentence 3:

You agree not to copy, duplicate or imitate, in whole or in part, any concept, idea, business model, business process, product, service or other intellectual property or other ideas or content embodied in the Services or learned by you from your use of or access to the Services.

Section III, paragraph 2, point 12:

12. portray Company or its affiliates in a negative manner or otherwise portray its services in a false, misleading, derogatory or offensive manner;

Section III, paragraph 2, point 13:

13. use the Services in any manner that could damage, disable, overburden, or impair our servers or interfere with any other party's use and enjoyment of the Services;

Section XIV, sentence 8:

If any provision of this Agreement is found by a court of competent jurisdiction to be invalid, the parties nevertheless agree that the court should endeavor to give effect to the parties' intentions as reflected in the provision, and the other provisions hereof shall remain in full force and effect.

Wrong sentences.

Section II, paragraph 2, sentence 2:

Section II, paragraph 2, sentence 3:

Thanks, I'll fix that. I figured if I had miscounted any of them, it would have been the section XIV one.

I completely and obviously violated their SDK terms of service and for that they sent me a few T-shirts and other Pebble swag.

They should really change the ToS then.

And Mark Russinovich got an executive job at Microsoft. That doesn't make the Windows license(s) any more palatable.

For me, the Moto 360 was my equivalent - it's beautiful, and more closely tied in to my preferred platform, but the battery life and performance are quite bad.

And then I saw that Pebble has Android Wear integration (because Google is not-all-that-awful and made Wear an API that is easy to plug into) and I was sold.

I think you meant 8 hours of real use...

I'm one of them. Figured that Apple was the only company who could pull off a smartwatch I'd actually use, but then saw the Pebble Time and its $169 Kickstarter price-point. The battery and the waterproofing were enough to get me to preorder the Time and get a used original Pebble in the mean time to try out.

After a week with the Pebble, what's noticeably missing is the ability to reply to SMS. Because of iOS restrictions on third-party apps and SMS, the Pebble can't do it without jailbreaking.

It was pretty upsetting when I came to this realization, also realizing that the Pebble Time and it's nifty new microphone would also lack this functionality. With the Pebble lacking Siri integration, I can see myself picking up an Apple Watch once the battery can last at least two full days.

I pre-ordered a pebble time but canceled it after the Apple Watch reveal. Here are my reasons:

1. The Apple watch will integrate leaps and bound better than my Pebble (I REGULARLY have to forget each device on the other and re-pair the BT to get notifications to work again, this has gotten worse as of late)

2. Mic AND SPEAKER on the Apple Watch (I want to talk into my wrist and get response from my watch for both Siri and Calls not just a todo app)

3. More apps, let's not kid ourselves, the Apple Watch will have more and better quality apps than the Pebble (or Android wear for that matter)

4. Resale, Apple products have amazing resale value so upgrading is less expensive than with other products in my experience

5. I think the Apple Watch looks nicer than the Pebble

I bought a Pebble Steel and have had it for over a year now and I love it. It's what caused me to back the KS right away, I believe in smart watches. That said the notifications just randomly stopping working drives me insane. It's gotten worse as of late and when it causes me to miss a text or a call then it stops being a useful tool. I have worn my watch every day since I got it and can't imagine life without a smart watch but I will be getting the Apple Watch because if it only work %X of the time then it's near useless to me. The battery life doesn't matter to me, as long as I can make it through the day then I'm good. I charge my phone nightly so it's no skin off my nose to charge my watch. I don't currently but I've considered charging my Pebble nightly but I worry it will negatively affect the battery. I want to charge it nightly so that it's a habit and not a constant "Do I need to charge this tonight or should I wait a few more days" which leads to me forgetting to check from time to time and then having to sit at my desk at work with the charger cable plugged in until it's at 100%.

I like Pebble and it will always hold a special place in my heart. Hell, maybe if I used Android I wouldn't have these issues but I don't and I do so I will be getting the Apple Watch.

This is old news already. And this is the second shoddy C|NET article on the front page today (the other one being the quantum mechanics article). Seems kind of fishy to me!

There was some talk that they did this for publicity and would have no problem getting that kind of money and more from traditional sources.

Of course they did. This is a two-birds-with-one-stone situation, I imagine: "free" money (don't have to give up any equity) and free marketing at the same time. It's win-win for them.

Doesn't even come close to the largest crowd-funded project Star Citizen: http://www.wired.com/2015/03/fans-dropped-77m-guys-buggy-hal...

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