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> Apple’s emphasis on fashion and Pebble’s on productivity and third-party innovation were costly detours—the smartwatch market is rooted in health and fitness.

by zem 10y ago

> Apple’s emphasis on fashion and Pebble’s on productivity and third-party innovation were costly detours—the smartwatch market is rooted in health and fitness. that's depressing :( i was hoping that they had just misexecuted, and someone else would step in and fill the niche of "e-ink watch with long battery life that is geared towards displaying things your phone sends it"; i have no use for fitness tracking and biometrics, and pebble's featureset and reasonably open ecosystem was ideal for me. the saddest thing is that even buying used pebbles on ebay won't help me much with their servers going offline :(

mafuyu 10y ago
Yeah, it's been a bit vague on whether Fitbit is going to keep the servers alive, although the article hints towards it. People on /r/Pebble have been working on an open source community store to keep the ecosystem alive. I thought Pebble really nailed balancing the engineering tradeoffs that go into a smartwatch, but I guess it didn't translate into mass market appeal. It's surprising how quickly things turned after the modest success of the Pebble Time.
marssaxman 10y ago
"even buying used pebbles on ebay won't help me much with their servers going offline" ...and this is the failure of the IoT in a nutshell.
- edejong 10y ago
  So true. When I first read about IoT, about a decade ago, I thought of it as a miniaturized and decentralized, semi-autonomous client and server systems design. The fundamental problem of the current take on IoT is a misunderstanding of the internet part. Our systems should be decentralized and find routes to nearby systems that are available. So, to be an active actor within the arena of pico-net, local net, internet. Currently, most IoT systems mostly connect to some central, unprotected server hosted in <insert-cheap-labor-country-youve-never-heard-of>.
  - RyJones 10y ago
    May I introduce you to AllJoyn [0]? Proximal (broadcast domain) IoT. It's baked in to Windows 10, LiFX bulbs, a bunch of TVs... [1] It's being folded into OCF now, but the open source will live on. Don't need a gateway, don't need a server. [0] https://alljoyn.org https://alljoyn.org [1] https://allseenalliance.org/certification/certified-products-directory https://allseenalliance.org/certification/certified-products... ETA: Disclosure: worked for Qualcomm/AllSeen Alliance for years on AllJoyn
    - edejong 10y ago
      Interesting. I noticed the LiFX bulbs before via OpenHAB. Seems to tick a lot of good checkboxes and I will certainly look into it more. My rant about IoT was obviously pointed at the useless IoT toys currently flooding the market.
    - IshKebab 10y ago
      I've looked into AllJoyn, but honestly it has a very outdated and over-complicated design. It's also not really suited to running in low-power devices due to its roots in DBus. IoTivity might be better but I doubt it will get much support even when they do finish it - Apple and Google have such a huge advantage in this space from owning mobile OSes (and Google Home) that I can't see anyone else gaining much traction. I think Weave will probably win this battle. It is tied to Google, but less so than Homekit is to Apple and it doesn't have the insane MFi requirements. Also the (draft) design seems quite nice. They just need to hurry up and finish it.
    - boondaburrah 10y ago
      I'm hoping someone will make the AllJoyn protocol accessible for a weekend project. As it is right now I can't make heads or tails of what I need to onboard a simple LIFX bulb. It seems like I have to spin up a whole Java enterprise-ish project when all I want to do is send some packets to it's virtual access point with my wifi creds in them. Do you know if there's any documentation on the low-level protocol that doesn't involve using the big SDK? I'd love to just write a python (or similar) script to do this grunt work.
- JustSomeNobody 10y ago
  Cannot agree more.
jacobsenscott 10y ago
The pre-installed apps are pretty good. They only third party pebble apps I've installed are watch faces. The built in faces are good enough. I anticipate being able to use my pebble for as long as I can keep the android pebble app running.
pkulak 10y ago
I'm hoping to eventually transition to a "hybrid" watch. I just want something that looks good and tells me when there's something to look at on my phone. Currently, though, it looks like those watches are kinda crappy. Plus, they are going all-in on fitness as well. :(
timdorr 10y ago
> the saddest thing is that even buying used pebbles on ebay won't help me much with their servers going offline :( Thankfully, the community is stepping up to fill that gap: http://rebble.io/ http://rebble.io/
- zem 10y ago
  wonderful, hope it gives the used pebble ecosystem a new lease of life!
rjblackman 10y ago
there is already a project for replacing the pebble store

by zem 10y ago

mafuyu 10y ago

Yeah, it's been a bit vague on whether Fitbit is going to keep the servers alive, although the article hints towards it. People on /r/Pebble have been working on an open source community store to keep the ecosystem alive. I thought Pebble really nailed balancing the engineering tradeoffs that go into a smartwatch, but I guess it didn't translate into mass market appeal. It's surprising how quickly things turned after the modest success of the Pebble Time.

marssaxman 10y ago

"even buying used pebbles on ebay won't help me much with their servers going offline" ...and this is the failure of the IoT in a nutshell.

edejong 10y ago
So true. When I first read about IoT, about a decade ago, I thought of it as a miniaturized and decentralized, semi-autonomous client and server systems design. The fundamental problem of the current take on IoT is a misunderstanding of the internet part. Our systems should be decentralized and find routes to nearby systems that are available. So, to be an active actor within the arena of pico-net, local net, internet. Currently, most IoT systems mostly connect to some central, unprotected server hosted in <insert-cheap-labor-country-youve-never-heard-of>.
- RyJones 10y ago
  May I introduce you to AllJoyn [0]? Proximal (broadcast domain) IoT. It's baked in to Windows 10, LiFX bulbs, a bunch of TVs... [1] It's being folded into OCF now, but the open source will live on. Don't need a gateway, don't need a server. [0] https://alljoyn.org https://alljoyn.org [1] https://allseenalliance.org/certification/certified-products-directory https://allseenalliance.org/certification/certified-products... ETA: Disclosure: worked for Qualcomm/AllSeen Alliance for years on AllJoyn
  - edejong 10y ago
    Interesting. I noticed the LiFX bulbs before via OpenHAB. Seems to tick a lot of good checkboxes and I will certainly look into it more. My rant about IoT was obviously pointed at the useless IoT toys currently flooding the market.
  - IshKebab 10y ago
    I've looked into AllJoyn, but honestly it has a very outdated and over-complicated design. It's also not really suited to running in low-power devices due to its roots in DBus. IoTivity might be better but I doubt it will get much support even when they do finish it - Apple and Google have such a huge advantage in this space from owning mobile OSes (and Google Home) that I can't see anyone else gaining much traction. I think Weave will probably win this battle. It is tied to Google, but less so than Homekit is to Apple and it doesn't have the insane MFi requirements. Also the (draft) design seems quite nice. They just need to hurry up and finish it.
  - boondaburrah 10y ago
    I'm hoping someone will make the AllJoyn protocol accessible for a weekend project. As it is right now I can't make heads or tails of what I need to onboard a simple LIFX bulb. It seems like I have to spin up a whole Java enterprise-ish project when all I want to do is send some packets to it's virtual access point with my wifi creds in them. Do you know if there's any documentation on the low-level protocol that doesn't involve using the big SDK? I'd love to just write a python (or similar) script to do this grunt work.
JustSomeNobody 10y ago
Cannot agree more.

jacobsenscott 10y ago

The pre-installed apps are pretty good. They only third party pebble apps I've installed are watch faces. The built in faces are good enough. I anticipate being able to use my pebble for as long as I can keep the android pebble app running.

pkulak 10y ago

I'm hoping to eventually transition to a "hybrid" watch. I just want something that looks good and tells me when there's something to look at on my phone. Currently, though, it looks like those watches are kinda crappy. Plus, they are going all-in on fitness as well. :(

timdorr 10y ago

> the saddest thing is that even buying used pebbles on ebay won't help me much with their servers going offline :( Thankfully, the community is stepping up to fill that gap: http://rebble.io/ http://rebble.io/

zem 10y ago
wonderful, hope it gives the used pebble ecosystem a new lease of life!

rjblackman 10y ago

there is already a project for replacing the pebble store