5 ms·

Folks ITT will talk about watches that are similar in hardware, but what was magic about Pebble was the software and ecosystem. The OS was just a delight to use

Folks ITT will talk about watches that are similar in hardware, but what was magic about Pebble was the software and ecosystem. The OS was just a delight to use, fast, wonderfully animated, and let you sideload whatever you want. I've tried a couple of Garmin watches (Vivoactive 3 and Forerunner 55) and the Amazfit Bip, and this is where they all fall completely flat. The UX is just horrible by comparison. It's like these companies have no regard for designing the OS UX and are just trying to cram features in. And the fact that companies want to make touchscreen watches is just with few/no buttons is baffling to me. Tapping tiny buttons on a tiny screen is a horrible experience. And there's tons of moving targets because of the tiny amount of real-estate. Pebble _just got it_ with the 2.0 OS and beyond. They were a joy to use. I begrudgingly have gone back to using an Apple Watch, because despite being subpar, the UX is somewhat together these days, just enough to be tolerable. When I move away from iOS again, I'll probably either pull out an old Pebble that still has some battery life, or a Casio GBD200, which isn't really a smartwatch but ticks some major boxes for me (always-on-display, silent vibration alarm, and timers, chief among them). The GBD200 runs on a coin cell too, so I never have to worry about charging or a replacement being difficult to find!

etothepii 4y ago
I'll buy an Apple Watch, but I'd pay through the nose for an Apple Watch with four buttons. Steve Jobs obsession that the mouse should have only one button was probably right for the computer, but the input device had over 80 buttons minimum. (Keyboard) Clearly whoever makes the call about Apple Watch buttons doesn't swim, sprint or cycle. All the marketing about "sports" is to make you feel sporty not because it's actually useful. Of course, for the use Apple make money from (Apple pay) there is a tactile button dedicated for the purpose.
- balfirevic 4y ago
  > Steve Jobs obsession that the mouse should have only one button was probably right for the computer LOL. Mine has 12, of which I regularly use 10.
  - c0wb0yc0d3r 4y ago
    What do you have? (Crossing my fingers you don't say Razor)
    - morjom 4y ago
      Not the person you asked from but I have the SteelSeries Aerox 9 (wireless). I play MMOs on the regular and dabble in power-user land and 3D-modeling w shortcuts.
    - ciceryadam 4y ago
      I'm using a Logitech G604 at work, I have 15 buttons of keyboard shortcuts on it.
      - gkhartman 4y ago
        I love this mouse. Logitech software could be better, but it's much better than Razer's. Synapse seems to ruin what would otherwise be great hardware for the money.
    - balfirevic 4y ago
      I use Logitech G502 Lightspeed.
- wlesieutre 4y ago
  You'll be excited to hear that for $800 you can now get an Apple watch with one more button to assign to a sports thing!
  - gnicholas 4y ago
    It can also be mapped to a "shortcut" script, though I don't know what all can be shortcutted on the watch: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213335 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213335
- bryceacc 4y ago
  what would you map those buttons to?
  - jonny_eh 4y ago
    Lap? Reset? The buttons on there only talk to the OS, apps don't have their own buttons to use.
  - amatecha 4y ago
    play/pause, skip forward, skip back :) This is what they did for me on the Pebble, anyway! Or outside of music-playback, they were enter/select, up, down, respectively.
- igorsantos07 4y ago
  I had a really, really hard time finding a decent smart watch when my Pebble drowned. Two years and five(!!!) Ticwatches later (first was too slow, the other 4 were drowning in different ways when I was swimming)... I felt in love with the Samsung Watch 4 classic. Not that expensive, slick UI, full of features, great Android integration and a wonderful dial/crown which is well used in a couple of apps to make it all easier - you can use it to answer/cancel calls or finish/repeat alarms/timers. AND THEN Samsung launches Watch 5 and DROPS THE FREAKING CROWN! Back to 1.5 buttons - because the second one, as the Apple Watch, is stuck to Samsung Pay (can't even set it to Google Pay) and recent apps, no app uses. WHY? WHYYYY? The crown is amazing for scrolling through screens when I'm biking (shaky) or swimming (touch disabled). It's WAY better for scrolling in that tiny screen. It's awesome as interaction aid. WHY REMOVE IT?? I do miss the long battery and buttons, but I must mention that a touch screen gives you many more UI possibilities.
  - mod 4y ago
    I have the original galaxy watch still. I use it almost without ever touching the screen. Two buttons and a crown/dial pretty much make it four buttons, and yeah, I don't have to touch the screen really. I'm also not a very hardcore watch user, though. I was sold on the GW because the OS (Tizen) was supposed to be the best one. Everyone hated the google OS, which then in GW4 I think they switched to.
    - igorsantos07 4y ago
      The OS on GW4 is really amazing, at least comparing with previous versions of WearOS and even to my previous Pebble experience. However, they ditched the crown at the GW5
davidbanham 4y ago
I loved my pebbles and was very sad when my Time Steel finally died. I now wear a Garmin Instinct. The UI isn’t as joyful and it’s not quite as pretty. It’s every bit as practical as the pebble and then some. Also you couldn’t kill it with a stick.
- amatecha 4y ago
  In what way did it die? it may be easily repairable. e.g. the common display issue on the old Pebble models was resolvable by just placing a shim behind the display so the data connection stayed solid.
  - davidbanham 4y ago
    It copped a few too many splashes at the beach and never came back to life. A key criteria for the replacement was "I never want to have to think about whether something will break it" and the Instinct has lived up to that. Have spent the last few years wearing it surfing, snowboarding, through many bush fires and one structure fire where I forgot to take it off before donning. Hasn't skipped a beat.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  The Instinct is what I replaced my Pebble with, too. I agree that it's a good stand-in for the Pebble (especially with the battery life) and I also use it to do things the Pebble could never have done (it is my bike computer, and I use it for navigation when out in the middle of the wilderness). I still miss the Pebble, though. I particularly miss being able to write custom apps.
monsieurgaufre 4y ago
I've never had a Pebble and mostly wanted to comment on the Garmin/smartwatches part of your comment. I was gifted a Garmin Vivoactive 3 a few years ago. Like you, I've come to the exact same conclusion regarding the Garmin watches. It is slow and annoyingly needs to connect to their servers to do anything (couldn't even access my own data when they were hacked). I still use it mostly when i run/cycle but battery life is slowly going away. Also, i want to stress the point that while smartwatches are nice for certain applications, they mostly are toys. Yes, the data is interesting, but how many of us really do something from that data? I know I don't. And if you really need this data (professional athlete or whatever), most of the time, someone will pay the gadget for you. For a lot of reasons (price, planned obsolescence, privacy), i'll probably get a g-shock that'll last years on a coin cell that's easily replaceable everywhere.
- TeMPOraL 4y ago
  > Yes, the data is interesting, but how many of us really do something from that data? I know I don't. And if you really need this data (professional athlete or whatever), most of the time, someone will pay the gadget for you. Which is why I was sad when Pebble doubled down on the fitness/sports marketing in the months before they shut down. I don't care about fitness tracking and sportsball data. What I do care about is an e-paper-like screen (not just the "always on display" phone screen tech, but a proper "looks the same whether I look at it or not" always-on screen), hackability, predictable UI and buttons. The ability to operate the watch (and remotely control the phone, via Pebble/Tasker integration) without looking at it is supremely useful to me. That, and no fucking cloud. Ever. Hardware tied to SaaS is the enemy of all that's holy.
- Pfhortune 4y ago
  > For a lot of reasons (price, planned obsolescence, privacy), i'll probably get a g-shock that'll last years on a coin cell that's easily replaceable everywhere. Definitely take a look at the Casio G-Shock GBD100/200 watches. They're for sure bulky and sporty, though the 200 a bit less so. I'm impressed in what they can do on a coin cell! I haven't tried the BT connection yet, but they seem to do step tracking, timers, and silent alarms quite well! The UI/UX definitely isn't Pebble-esque and is very utilitarian, but seems solid.
modeless 4y ago
Pebble's software was second to none. They built an entire operating system and app store, to run on microcontrollers! Multiple orders of magnitude less RAM and power consumption than Android or Apple watches, but the user experience was excellent and the app store had tons of stuff in it. I once interviewed a candidate who came from Pebble. He had the most impressive interview performance of any candidate I've ever interviewed.
- MonaroVXR 4y ago
  > I once interviewed a candidate who came from Pebble. He had the most impressive interview performance of any candidate I've ever interviewed. Can you tell more about this?
  - modeless 4y ago
    Not much to tell. He solved my interview problems super quickly and then we had a chat about his experience which impressed me a lot. This was many years ago (as Pebble was dying) so I don't remember the details of the conversation. He didn't accept our offer, for visa related reasons if I recall correctly, so unfortunately I didn't get to work with him. Obviously the variance on interview performance is high, and my typical interview questions are not super hard or anything, so it doesn't necessarily mean that much. But I'm confident that he was a very good engineer that I would have liked to work with.
TheKnack 4y ago
I agree that Garmin watches are not good general purpose smart watches for most people, but their UX is actually perfect for their intended users. Once you develop the muscle memory, it's possible to perform many functions without being able to see the screen. This is necessary when it's cold and layers are covering the screen. I have cold weather running shirts which have sleeves that mostly cover your hands, and can press the buttons on my Fenix 6 easily through the fabric and do whatever I need to do without stopping to pull my sleeve up (which is awkward since those shirts have thumb holes).
- Pfhortune 4y ago
  That's fair. I'm definitely not super interested in a fitness oriented device, so I'm probably chafing against a UI that wasn't built for me. To me, I hated that everything was so huge on the display, leading to very low information density. I always enjoyed how the pebble could show a decently long text message on the display at once, when the font was set to small. I also feel like, outside of the fitness functions, the menus are too deep/branching. Pebble got it right, in that the menus tended to be shallow, if a little long at times.

etothepii 4y ago

I'll buy an Apple Watch, but I'd pay through the nose for an Apple Watch with four buttons. Steve Jobs obsession that the mouse should have only one button was probably right for the computer, but the input device had over 80 buttons minimum. (Keyboard) Clearly whoever makes the call about Apple Watch buttons doesn't swim, sprint or cycle. All the marketing about "sports" is to make you feel sporty not because it's actually useful. Of course, for the use Apple make money from (Apple pay) there is a tactile button dedicated for the purpose.

balfirevic 4y ago
> Steve Jobs obsession that the mouse should have only one button was probably right for the computer LOL. Mine has 12, of which I regularly use 10.
- c0wb0yc0d3r 4y ago
  What do you have? (Crossing my fingers you don't say Razor)
  - morjom 4y ago
    Not the person you asked from but I have the SteelSeries Aerox 9 (wireless). I play MMOs on the regular and dabble in power-user land and 3D-modeling w shortcuts.
  - ciceryadam 4y ago
    I'm using a Logitech G604 at work, I have 15 buttons of keyboard shortcuts on it.
    - gkhartman 4y ago
      I love this mouse. Logitech software could be better, but it's much better than Razer's. Synapse seems to ruin what would otherwise be great hardware for the money.
  - balfirevic 4y ago
    I use Logitech G502 Lightspeed.
wlesieutre 4y ago
You'll be excited to hear that for $800 you can now get an Apple watch with one more button to assign to a sports thing!
- gnicholas 4y ago
  It can also be mapped to a "shortcut" script, though I don't know what all can be shortcutted on the watch: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213335 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213335
bryceacc 4y ago
what would you map those buttons to?
- jonny_eh 4y ago
  Lap? Reset? The buttons on there only talk to the OS, apps don't have their own buttons to use.
- amatecha 4y ago
  play/pause, skip forward, skip back :) This is what they did for me on the Pebble, anyway! Or outside of music-playback, they were enter/select, up, down, respectively.
igorsantos07 4y ago
I had a really, really hard time finding a decent smart watch when my Pebble drowned. Two years and five(!!!) Ticwatches later (first was too slow, the other 4 were drowning in different ways when I was swimming)... I felt in love with the Samsung Watch 4 classic. Not that expensive, slick UI, full of features, great Android integration and a wonderful dial/crown which is well used in a couple of apps to make it all easier - you can use it to answer/cancel calls or finish/repeat alarms/timers. AND THEN Samsung launches Watch 5 and DROPS THE FREAKING CROWN! Back to 1.5 buttons - because the second one, as the Apple Watch, is stuck to Samsung Pay (can't even set it to Google Pay) and recent apps, no app uses. WHY? WHYYYY? The crown is amazing for scrolling through screens when I'm biking (shaky) or swimming (touch disabled). It's WAY better for scrolling in that tiny screen. It's awesome as interaction aid. WHY REMOVE IT?? I do miss the long battery and buttons, but I must mention that a touch screen gives you many more UI possibilities.
- mod 4y ago
  I have the original galaxy watch still. I use it almost without ever touching the screen. Two buttons and a crown/dial pretty much make it four buttons, and yeah, I don't have to touch the screen really. I'm also not a very hardcore watch user, though. I was sold on the GW because the OS (Tizen) was supposed to be the best one. Everyone hated the google OS, which then in GW4 I think they switched to.
  - igorsantos07 4y ago
    The OS on GW4 is really amazing, at least comparing with previous versions of WearOS and even to my previous Pebble experience. However, they ditched the crown at the GW5

davidbanham 4y ago

I loved my pebbles and was very sad when my Time Steel finally died. I now wear a Garmin Instinct. The UI isn’t as joyful and it’s not quite as pretty. It’s every bit as practical as the pebble and then some. Also you couldn’t kill it with a stick.

amatecha 4y ago
In what way did it die? it may be easily repairable. e.g. the common display issue on the old Pebble models was resolvable by just placing a shim behind the display so the data connection stayed solid.
- davidbanham 4y ago
  It copped a few too many splashes at the beach and never came back to life. A key criteria for the replacement was "I never want to have to think about whether something will break it" and the Instinct has lived up to that. Have spent the last few years wearing it surfing, snowboarding, through many bush fires and one structure fire where I forgot to take it off before donning. Hasn't skipped a beat.
JohnFen 4y ago
The Instinct is what I replaced my Pebble with, too. I agree that it's a good stand-in for the Pebble (especially with the battery life) and I also use it to do things the Pebble could never have done (it is my bike computer, and I use it for navigation when out in the middle of the wilderness). I still miss the Pebble, though. I particularly miss being able to write custom apps.

monsieurgaufre 4y ago

I've never had a Pebble and mostly wanted to comment on the Garmin/smartwatches part of your comment. I was gifted a Garmin Vivoactive 3 a few years ago. Like you, I've come to the exact same conclusion regarding the Garmin watches. It is slow and annoyingly needs to connect to their servers to do anything (couldn't even access my own data when they were hacked). I still use it mostly when i run/cycle but battery life is slowly going away. Also, i want to stress the point that while smartwatches are nice for certain applications, they mostly are toys. Yes, the data is interesting, but how many of us really do something from that data? I know I don't. And if you really need this data (professional athlete or whatever), most of the time, someone will pay the gadget for you. For a lot of reasons (price, planned obsolescence, privacy), i'll probably get a g-shock that'll last years on a coin cell that's easily replaceable everywhere.

TeMPOraL 4y ago
> Yes, the data is interesting, but how many of us really do something from that data? I know I don't. And if you really need this data (professional athlete or whatever), most of the time, someone will pay the gadget for you. Which is why I was sad when Pebble doubled down on the fitness/sports marketing in the months before they shut down. I don't care about fitness tracking and sportsball data. What I do care about is an e-paper-like screen (not just the "always on display" phone screen tech, but a proper "looks the same whether I look at it or not" always-on screen), hackability, predictable UI and buttons. The ability to operate the watch (and remotely control the phone, via Pebble/Tasker integration) without looking at it is supremely useful to me. That, and no fucking cloud. Ever. Hardware tied to SaaS is the enemy of all that's holy.
Pfhortune 4y ago
> For a lot of reasons (price, planned obsolescence, privacy), i'll probably get a g-shock that'll last years on a coin cell that's easily replaceable everywhere. Definitely take a look at the Casio G-Shock GBD100/200 watches. They're for sure bulky and sporty, though the 200 a bit less so. I'm impressed in what they can do on a coin cell! I haven't tried the BT connection yet, but they seem to do step tracking, timers, and silent alarms quite well! The UI/UX definitely isn't Pebble-esque and is very utilitarian, but seems solid.

modeless 4y ago

Pebble's software was second to none. They built an entire operating system and app store, to run on microcontrollers! Multiple orders of magnitude less RAM and power consumption than Android or Apple watches, but the user experience was excellent and the app store had tons of stuff in it. I once interviewed a candidate who came from Pebble. He had the most impressive interview performance of any candidate I've ever interviewed.

MonaroVXR 4y ago
> I once interviewed a candidate who came from Pebble. He had the most impressive interview performance of any candidate I've ever interviewed. Can you tell more about this?
- modeless 4y ago
  Not much to tell. He solved my interview problems super quickly and then we had a chat about his experience which impressed me a lot. This was many years ago (as Pebble was dying) so I don't remember the details of the conversation. He didn't accept our offer, for visa related reasons if I recall correctly, so unfortunately I didn't get to work with him. Obviously the variance on interview performance is high, and my typical interview questions are not super hard or anything, so it doesn't necessarily mean that much. But I'm confident that he was a very good engineer that I would have liked to work with.

TheKnack 4y ago

I agree that Garmin watches are not good general purpose smart watches for most people, but their UX is actually perfect for their intended users. Once you develop the muscle memory, it's possible to perform many functions without being able to see the screen. This is necessary when it's cold and layers are covering the screen. I have cold weather running shirts which have sleeves that mostly cover your hands, and can press the buttons on my Fenix 6 easily through the fabric and do whatever I need to do without stopping to pull my sleeve up (which is awkward since those shirts have thumb holes).

Pfhortune 4y ago
That's fair. I'm definitely not super interested in a fitness oriented device, so I'm probably chafing against a UI that wasn't built for me. To me, I hated that everything was so huge on the display, leading to very low information density. I always enjoyed how the pebble could show a decently long text message on the display at once, when the font was set to small. I also feel like, outside of the fitness functions, the menus are too deep/branching. Pebble got it right, in that the menus tended to be shallow, if a little long at times.