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I’ve been watching the launch process of Panic and it has been textbook awesome. If you’re planning a HW launch, you should go back through their EDM and Socia

I’ve been watching the launch process of Panic and it has been textbook awesome. If you’re planning a HW launch, you should go back through their EDM and Social media accounts and take note of how they communicated. A word of warning, don’t rely on an Apple Watch for important alarms: Set Alarm on Apple Watch 2.57am Sydney time (3min before launch). Kept watch on silent mode as to not wake wife with other notifications. Alarm didn’t go off. :-(

ramses0 5y ago
The Apple Watch is such a terrible product. If it's "connected" to your phone, then any alerts that come through buzz your wrist (but don't turn on the watch screen), and also suppress the phone screen from turning on. Use case of: "VPN authentication notification" coming through that I want to approve, and when I have the Apple Watch on my wrist, it's actively _harder_ to use both the phone and the wrist version of it. Don't get me started on the screen and use of detailed touch in an area that it quite literally the size of two thumbs. Pebble: "Back" => "Up, Select, Down" ... glorious utility! Nobody wants to make e-paper (ahem: transflective) watches, and they all want to make touch screens the mechanism for interaction. Ugh!
- Jtsummers 5y ago
  That's not true, at least not always. I have an Apple Watch and have to do the VPN authentication thing for work via a phone app. Both the phone and the watch display the notification (because I haven't turned that notification off on my watch). It doesn't hide it just because it shows up on one or the other. The only notifications, other than that, that I receive on either my phone or watch are messages (SMS/MMS, iMessage, WhatsApp, Signal, because we can't have enough messaging apps) and phone calls. They display on both devices. And I mean display, my phone display turns on and shows me the message, and my watch buzzes and shows it as well. I'm wondering if there's a setting that would cause this.
  - mbiondi 5y ago
    I find the Apple watch to be super annoying. Out of the box it reminds you to breath, stand up, go to sleep, etc. Like I was never able to do these things before by myself. Once I turned everything off it's a bit more reasonable doing the only things I really needed, which was to tell time and maybe let me know my pace when running. IMO, getting any notifications (VPN included) on a tiny 1 inch screen are stupid and that's what I have a phone for.
    - Jtsummers 5y ago
      It really sounds like you bought the wrong device. Even Garmin's less expensive GPS watches would give you exactly what you wanted for half the price (maybe even less) of the Apple Watch and without the notifications.
    - JKCalhoun 5y ago
      I got the watch because I don't want to use my phone.
sp332 5y ago
How would you handle the issue of the third-party international shipping plugin falling over during the first pre-order phase? Just curious.
- filmgirlcw 5y ago
  I don’t know if there is a good way to mitigate that more than Panic tried. They said they warned the provider in advance, the provider wasn’t ready. That’s a complication on the part of the Shopify platform and moving to a self-hosted/managed platform (like WooCommerce) might have solved the third-party shipping thing but would have then put the broader load balancing stuff at much higher risk. The only way I think you could address it in retrospect would be to have separate launches for US and international — or at least separate allocations (using registration data from interested users and traffic before lead up to help make estimates on demand) of units, say 15,000 US units and 5,000 international or whatever, depending on how you want to mix it. That isn’t a perfect solution either and you can either over or under allocate, but it would probably appear to be more “fair” to international buyers. But lbr, anyone buying stuff like this internationally is unfortunately always on the losing end. The same is true for US buyers who are after stuff primarily shipped in Europe or Asia or Oceania. It is unfortunate, but until you have the scale to truly have separate international storefronts and sales teams, people outside of the main market are always going to be lower on the list.
  - creinhardt 5y ago
    Setting aside today's issues with the Playdate launch, the fact that Shopify's plug-ins are setup this way has always seemed like a missed opportunity on Shopify's part. I used some plugins that were unreliable with only ONE user, nevermind thousands. Shopify should either provide standard infrastructure, or vet more legit plugin providers setups to handle X amount of concurrents.
    - filmgirlcw 5y ago
      Agreed 100%.
  - deleted 5y ago

ramses0 5y ago

The Apple Watch is such a terrible product. If it's "connected" to your phone, then any alerts that come through buzz your wrist (but don't turn on the watch screen), and also suppress the phone screen from turning on. Use case of: "VPN authentication notification" coming through that I want to approve, and when I have the Apple Watch on my wrist, it's actively _harder_ to use both the phone and the wrist version of it. Don't get me started on the screen and use of detailed touch in an area that it quite literally the size of two thumbs. Pebble: "Back" => "Up, Select, Down" ... glorious utility! Nobody wants to make e-paper (ahem: transflective) watches, and they all want to make touch screens the mechanism for interaction. Ugh!

Jtsummers 5y ago
That's not true, at least not always. I have an Apple Watch and have to do the VPN authentication thing for work via a phone app. Both the phone and the watch display the notification (because I haven't turned that notification off on my watch). It doesn't hide it just because it shows up on one or the other. The only notifications, other than that, that I receive on either my phone or watch are messages (SMS/MMS, iMessage, WhatsApp, Signal, because we can't have enough messaging apps) and phone calls. They display on both devices. And I mean display, my phone display turns on and shows me the message, and my watch buzzes and shows it as well. I'm wondering if there's a setting that would cause this.
- mbiondi 5y ago
  I find the Apple watch to be super annoying. Out of the box it reminds you to breath, stand up, go to sleep, etc. Like I was never able to do these things before by myself. Once I turned everything off it's a bit more reasonable doing the only things I really needed, which was to tell time and maybe let me know my pace when running. IMO, getting any notifications (VPN included) on a tiny 1 inch screen are stupid and that's what I have a phone for.
  - Jtsummers 5y ago
    It really sounds like you bought the wrong device. Even Garmin's less expensive GPS watches would give you exactly what you wanted for half the price (maybe even less) of the Apple Watch and without the notifications.
  - JKCalhoun 5y ago
    I got the watch because I don't want to use my phone.

sp332 5y ago

How would you handle the issue of the third-party international shipping plugin falling over during the first pre-order phase? Just curious.

filmgirlcw 5y ago
I don’t know if there is a good way to mitigate that more than Panic tried. They said they warned the provider in advance, the provider wasn’t ready. That’s a complication on the part of the Shopify platform and moving to a self-hosted/managed platform (like WooCommerce) might have solved the third-party shipping thing but would have then put the broader load balancing stuff at much higher risk. The only way I think you could address it in retrospect would be to have separate launches for US and international — or at least separate allocations (using registration data from interested users and traffic before lead up to help make estimates on demand) of units, say 15,000 US units and 5,000 international or whatever, depending on how you want to mix it. That isn’t a perfect solution either and you can either over or under allocate, but it would probably appear to be more “fair” to international buyers. But lbr, anyone buying stuff like this internationally is unfortunately always on the losing end. The same is true for US buyers who are after stuff primarily shipped in Europe or Asia or Oceania. It is unfortunate, but until you have the scale to truly have separate international storefronts and sales teams, people outside of the main market are always going to be lower on the list.
- creinhardt 5y ago
  Setting aside today's issues with the Playdate launch, the fact that Shopify's plug-ins are setup this way has always seemed like a missed opportunity on Shopify's part. I used some plugins that were unreliable with only ONE user, nevermind thousands. Shopify should either provide standard infrastructure, or vet more legit plugin providers setups to handle X amount of concurrents.
  - filmgirlcw 5y ago
    Agreed 100%.
- deleted 5y ago