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Awesome! The first Pebble absolutely fascinated me by having a hackable, C-running watch on my wrist. I vividly remember spending days fine tuning the heuristi
by tomaskafka 2y ago
Awesome! The first Pebble absolutely fascinated me by having a hackable, C-running watch on my wrist.
I vividly remember spending days fine tuning the heuristics of a simple step detection algorithm in the first watchface where I thought “seeing your daily step count next to time sure is awesome”. And later, tens of thousands of people thought so as well - this was one of the signs what the health-tracking wrist device is about to become.
It was incredible that even the first model allowed you to run a 30 samples per second accelerometer sampling and classifying the movement, 24/7, and still lasted days. No other watch offers a similar level of hackability.
And as the time progressed, Pebble became the first platform to get Weathergraph - my graphical weather watchface.
Weathergraph was then ported to Garmin (as Pebble shut down), and then to Apple Watch widget (as it became a capable platform with the introduction of standalone watch-apps in watchOS 6), and then to iOS app & widget, where it now lets me live a life of indie developer, after a serie of corporate design/PM/dev jobs.
Thank you for that, Eric & Pebble team.
I still keep the developer edition Pebble with my name printed on the back (great touch!) in my shelf and heart, and will always remember Jon Barlow, one of the best and most helpful developer advocates I ever encountered.
And kudos to the whole dev team. The watch and companion app was rock stable, always staying connected, the calendar always being in sync, watch apps installed quickly and reliably - the things that 10x larger companies struggled with for years were nailed here almost from day one.
Godspeed!
PS: What a mishap to shut the company down shortly after a release of Pebble 2. It nailed the experience of a lightweight watch, with the most contrasty BW reflective screen I have seen, and buttery smooth animations (while Garmin still renders menus in like 8-10 fps on their MIP screens 10 years later). So small and lightweight, I’d love everyone to try it on, and compare with 2024 smartwatches.
- jakecopp 2y ago> Weathergraph was then ported to Garmin (as Pebble shut down), and then to Apple Watch widget I don't think I was a particularly early user of Weathergraph - but when I finally had to retire my Pebble Time I only considered platforms that had your watchface. Thanks very much for the attention to detail!
- tomaskafka 2y agoThank you!
- ilrwbwrkhv 2y agoIndeed, I forgive Google about 40 of their killed projects for giving us pebble in return.
- akho 2y agonot the reader though
- chr15m 2y agoNever forget.
- szundi 2y agonot the reader indeed
- dingaling 2y agoIt's strange to see the naivety around Reader. If Facebook had created it, people would recognise the initiative to gate-keep, regulate and curate the Wild West of RSS. "They're trying to keep you inside their walled garden!"
- mattmanser 2y agoIt was from a time where Google's ethos was still "Don't be evil" and generally speaking the naked greed triggered by AdSense hadn't infected the rest of the company yet. So I think a lot of nostalgia is not just for the reader but also for the company Google used to be. I wonder if in 20 years time there will be the next generation of programmers sneering over vapour-ware Google products while middle managers still buy them products because "no-one ever got fired for buying Google".
- akho 2y agoReader made tons of people use RSS who otherwise wouldn’t, and who now don’t. It did not live long enough to become a villain (though it certainly would have — there is no reason why G wouldn’t have added recommendations, an algo feed, and all it brings). Therefore it’s remembered well.
- angristan 2y agoWeathergraph is the best weather app I've ever used, thank you so much for it!
- tomaskafka 2y agoThank you! I hope to keep it that way :).
- brokenengineer 2y ago> And as the time progressed, Pebble became the first platform to get Weathergraph - my graphical weather watchface. > Weathergraph was then ported to Garmin (as Pebble shut down), and then to Apple Watch widget Thanks for bringing Weathergraph to life. I found it on the Pebble and used it religiously until I experienced enough challenges with Rebble to switch to a Garmin watch. I was thoroughly chuffed when I saw that you had brought Weathergraph along with you. Are you saying I'd have to get an Apple Watch to get the third-generation Weathergraph? ;-)
- hinkley 2y agoThere was a post here a couple weeks ago about smart phones with a very fancy reflective display and I immediately thought how good that would be on something like a pebble.
- smvanbru 2y agoI loved weathergraph. Was my favourite watch face on my pebble and garmin, until my eyes got too old and I couldn't read the smaller text anymore. Now I use a watch face for older guys like me, but miss the graph.
- tomaskafka 2y agoThank you! I'm sorry - it's tricky to put in all the data, plus the Garmin app is now hard to maintain as it ran into a memory limit on older watches (they are very tight + a need to cache a large chart), and much of code simplicity has been sacrificed to make it run. I should probably try a re-do as newer watches and language features remove a lot of constraints.
- iglio 2y agoHi Tom, I just tried to donate on https://weathergraph.app/garmin https://weathergraph.app/garmin, but was met with an error in your paypal integration. I've sent you a support email.
- tomaskafka 2y agoThank you, replying!