6 ms·

I'm sold enough on this form factor to take a flyer on a pre-order. I've been hunting for ways to minimize friction when quickly capturing random thoughts and t

by h14h 10mo ago

I'm sold enough on this form factor to take a flyer on a pre-order. I've been hunting for ways to minimize friction when quickly capturing random thoughts and this is a novel idea that seems to go further than anything else I've tried. The lack of battery charging/replacement is a bummer, but slimness is far more critical for a ring than just about any other device so I understand the tradeoff. I've also seen stories of injuries from battery expansion in fitness rings, so if the risk of this is significantly reduced by eliminating charge cycles, I personally consider that a notable benefit. Even though, IMO, there are enough legitimate benefits to warrant this product's trade-offs, I imagine its disposable nature will ultimately make it unsuccessful. Off the cuff, it's easy to look at this as "saying the quiet part out loud" vis-a-vis planned obsolescence, and I understand why many would find that extremely off-putting.

modeless 10mo ago
I don't understand why people who are probably OK with ordering Doordash once in a while are up in arms about a disposable device that weighs a couple of grams, lasts for years, and is recycled. You can easily spend more on a single Doordash meal for two people and I guarantee a few Doordash meals have more impact on the environment than this minuscule device ever could.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- rbits 10mo ago
  I doubt it's about the environmental impact. I agree that the environmental impact probably isn't that bad. My biggest concern is that it's $75 USD (plus shipping, presumably), and if the company ever goes under it's now worthless because I can't get a new one. That said, if I assume that the company will last long enough, I think $75 USD is worth it even if I only get to use it for 4 years. Although if I end up building workflows around the ring, and then I have to get rid of it, that would be very annoying.
  - modeless 10mo ago
    On a monthly basis the cost is quite reasonable IMO. It will continue to work if the company goes out of business. Their software is open source. So you can count on using it as long as the battery lasts.
  - gffrd 10mo ago
    > if the company ever goes under it's now worthless because I can't get a new one. I don't understand this logic. Do you not go to a restaurant because there's a chance they won't be around in 4 years when you might want to dine there again?
- scratchyone 10mo ago
  personally, i worry about what happens when it doesn't last for years. a software bug causes high power draw, or you set your ring down and something gets pushed against the recording button for a few hours, or you fall asleep laying on it. given it only has a 15-hour recording life, this happening just once could be the end of your $75 device
  - erohead 10mo ago
    We thought about this of course: the ring is limited to 2-minute recordings, then button presses are ignored until the next button press
    - scratchyone 10mo ago
      amazing! does it provide any other protections against other battery drain risks? glad you guys though of that haha, definitely will be ordering one :)
  - gffrd 10mo ago
    My guess: they send you a new one.
- Fnoord 10mo ago
  Doordash? What does that have to do with this discussion? It is a completely different market. You use the food right away (food is perishable), and you probably could've cooked yourself a healthy meal with much less money. If you live with multiple people, it is even easier to do so due to scaling and sharing what you like. I am very much not OK with spending 50 USD per person on takeaway food (getting it here costs just 3 EUR or so). It is the amount of money I spend at a (for me) fancy restaurant. I'll give you another example. A smart TV. A smart TV is more expensive than this ring, but yeah. So a cheap smart TV needs a soundbar for decent audio, and it needs a STB for the OS (streaming) in order to make it a dumb TV. It comes with a computer in it. A computer which you cannot upgrade. They decide to quit support whenever they want to (after 2 years you're generally hosed in EU). Planned obsolescence. We don't like that in Europe. I know, in the USA the current leadership denies climate change even exists. But here in Europe, we follow the scientific method, not BS.
- gffrd 10mo ago
  I'm with you. This thing costs $75. Over 4 years, that's $0.05 a day. Let's say you're 40 and plan to buy these until you die at 80. We'll pretend inflation doesn't exist: $750 for 40 years of use. It feels like backward objection handling where people can't find a use case for something, but feel like they should, so invent a totally irrational objection to it.
Aurornis 10mo ago
> I've been hunting for ways to minimize friction when quickly capturing random thoughts and this is a novel idea that seems to go further than anything else I've tried. Since you’re the target audience, I’ll ask you: How do you envision you’ll work through all of the captured notes? Do it all at the end of the day? Go back and look for something after you remember making the note? I’m wondering if this product will have the same problem that many discover after they buy a Moleskin journal and think it will solve specific problems in their life: Recording the thought or idea is the easy part, but it only defers the action. Additional diligence is required to review the notes and act on them. For a very specific type of person who is both forgetful but also diligent enough to process the notes thoroughly and in a timely manner I could see this being helpful. For the people saying this will help with easily distracted people I’m not so sure. It could easily become a tool which gives a false sense of handling a task when really it just blackholes the thought into an ever growing collection of 3-second notes that are never revisited. Like the person who clicks the “mark as unread” button on every email with the intention of responding later, but then has 100 messages in their inbox by the end of the week. The advertised use case of recording 20 short thoughts per day means over 100 notes to process every week. For a highly diligent person who clears their inbox (and now audio notes) every day that’s nothing. For all of the commenters thinking this is going to solve their distractability problems, I have my doubts.
- modeless 10mo ago
  This is the perfect device for me. What I do now is I have an Android quick settings button that opens an email to myself. I jot down a few notes per day and they end up in my inbox. I triage them later whenever I process my inbox. My ideal way for this ring to work is that it would do exactly the same, but without typing. I agree that if the notes are siloed in a separate app then I might ignore them, so I hope that I can get them as emails in my inbox by default. I also want it to have the additional capability of setting time-based or geofence reminders, timers, alarms, and calendar events. It will be incredibly useful for me to be able to, while I'm driving to work, say "remind me to take out the garbage when I get home" or whatever. You'd expect Siri or Google Assistant to be able to do this and in theory they can but in practice they suck for this use case.
- 10mo ago
ajolly 10mo ago
Yeah I pre-ordered but for what it's worth I've already been doing this with my pebble for close to a decade but the ring lets me trigger it via a single hand

by h14h 10mo ago

modeless 10mo ago

I don't understand why people who are probably OK with ordering Doordash once in a while are up in arms about a disposable device that weighs a couple of grams, lasts for years, and is recycled. You can easily spend more on a single Doordash meal for two people and I guarantee a few Doordash meals have more impact on the environment than this minuscule device ever could.

deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
rbits 10mo ago
I doubt it's about the environmental impact. I agree that the environmental impact probably isn't that bad. My biggest concern is that it's $75 USD (plus shipping, presumably), and if the company ever goes under it's now worthless because I can't get a new one. That said, if I assume that the company will last long enough, I think $75 USD is worth it even if I only get to use it for 4 years. Although if I end up building workflows around the ring, and then I have to get rid of it, that would be very annoying.
- modeless 10mo ago
  On a monthly basis the cost is quite reasonable IMO. It will continue to work if the company goes out of business. Their software is open source. So you can count on using it as long as the battery lasts.
- gffrd 10mo ago
  > if the company ever goes under it's now worthless because I can't get a new one. I don't understand this logic. Do you not go to a restaurant because there's a chance they won't be around in 4 years when you might want to dine there again?
scratchyone 10mo ago
personally, i worry about what happens when it doesn't last for years. a software bug causes high power draw, or you set your ring down and something gets pushed against the recording button for a few hours, or you fall asleep laying on it. given it only has a 15-hour recording life, this happening just once could be the end of your $75 device
- erohead 10mo ago
  We thought about this of course: the ring is limited to 2-minute recordings, then button presses are ignored until the next button press
  - scratchyone 10mo ago
    amazing! does it provide any other protections against other battery drain risks? glad you guys though of that haha, definitely will be ordering one :)
- gffrd 10mo ago
  My guess: they send you a new one.
Fnoord 10mo ago
Doordash? What does that have to do with this discussion? It is a completely different market. You use the food right away (food is perishable), and you probably could've cooked yourself a healthy meal with much less money. If you live with multiple people, it is even easier to do so due to scaling and sharing what you like. I am very much not OK with spending 50 USD per person on takeaway food (getting it here costs just 3 EUR or so). It is the amount of money I spend at a (for me) fancy restaurant. I'll give you another example. A smart TV. A smart TV is more expensive than this ring, but yeah. So a cheap smart TV needs a soundbar for decent audio, and it needs a STB for the OS (streaming) in order to make it a dumb TV. It comes with a computer in it. A computer which you cannot upgrade. They decide to quit support whenever they want to (after 2 years you're generally hosed in EU). Planned obsolescence. We don't like that in Europe. I know, in the USA the current leadership denies climate change even exists. But here in Europe, we follow the scientific method, not BS.
gffrd 10mo ago
I'm with you. This thing costs $75. Over 4 years, that's $0.05 a day. Let's say you're 40 and plan to buy these until you die at 80. We'll pretend inflation doesn't exist: $750 for 40 years of use. It feels like backward objection handling where people can't find a use case for something, but feel like they should, so invent a totally irrational objection to it.

Aurornis 10mo ago

> I've been hunting for ways to minimize friction when quickly capturing random thoughts and this is a novel idea that seems to go further than anything else I've tried. Since you’re the target audience, I’ll ask you: How do you envision you’ll work through all of the captured notes? Do it all at the end of the day? Go back and look for something after you remember making the note? I’m wondering if this product will have the same problem that many discover after they buy a Moleskin journal and think it will solve specific problems in their life: Recording the thought or idea is the easy part, but it only defers the action. Additional diligence is required to review the notes and act on them. For a very specific type of person who is both forgetful but also diligent enough to process the notes thoroughly and in a timely manner I could see this being helpful. For the people saying this will help with easily distracted people I’m not so sure. It could easily become a tool which gives a false sense of handling a task when really it just blackholes the thought into an ever growing collection of 3-second notes that are never revisited. Like the person who clicks the “mark as unread” button on every email with the intention of responding later, but then has 100 messages in their inbox by the end of the week. The advertised use case of recording 20 short thoughts per day means over 100 notes to process every week. For a highly diligent person who clears their inbox (and now audio notes) every day that’s nothing. For all of the commenters thinking this is going to solve their distractability problems, I have my doubts.

modeless 10mo ago
This is the perfect device for me. What I do now is I have an Android quick settings button that opens an email to myself. I jot down a few notes per day and they end up in my inbox. I triage them later whenever I process my inbox. My ideal way for this ring to work is that it would do exactly the same, but without typing. I agree that if the notes are siloed in a separate app then I might ignore them, so I hope that I can get them as emails in my inbox by default. I also want it to have the additional capability of setting time-based or geofence reminders, timers, alarms, and calendar events. It will be incredibly useful for me to be able to, while I'm driving to work, say "remind me to take out the garbage when I get home" or whatever. You'd expect Siri or Google Assistant to be able to do this and in theory they can but in practice they suck for this use case.
10mo ago

ajolly 10mo ago

Yeah I pre-ordered but for what it's worth I've already been doing this with my pebble for close to a decade but the ring lets me trigger it via a single hand