4 ms·

A year ago people were foaming at the mouth at the prospect of a watch that was a vibrating e-ink backlit display with buttons and customizable watch face optio

by Zikes 13y ago

A year ago people were foaming at the mouth at the prospect of a watch that was a vibrating e-ink backlit display with buttons and customizable watch face options and a battery that could go a week between charges. Now it's getting panned for being nothing but a vibrating e-ink backlit display with buttons and customizable watch face options and a battery that could go a week between charges. Go figure. I backed them on Kickstarter and got a black watch in the mail a couple months ago. I was surprised that it doesn't show me every notification by default, but somebody made a Pebble Notifier app to fill in the gaps there. Other than that, it fulfilled every expectation I had when I backed it, and I love the convenience of checking my notifications without having to pull my phone out of my pocket. The music controls are a pretty nifty feature I use often, too. It sucks that they don't have their color options available yet, I don't know what their excuse is for that, but if they've worked all the kinks out in producing the black model then why shouldn't they get that on retail shelves as soon as possible? I mean, the reason Kickstarter exists is so we regular consumers can recognize a company's potential and help them succeed, and now that this company is on the road to success we're going to get out our torches and pitchforks because they're struggling to ship certain variations of the product? I am flabbergasted at the entitlement some people feel, such that they think this company should run themselves into the ground financially just because they didn't get their special-colored watch yet.

deleted 13y ago
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DannoHung 13y ago
I didn't back it because it seemed like it was just a vibrating etc. I have not changed my opinion since that time. I think the thing is that the number of people that didn't back it far outnumber the number of people that did back it. Now the non-backers are saying, "I still don't get why I'd want this."
akandiah 13y ago
> a vibrating e-ink backlit display It's not an e-ink display!
- hypersoar 13y ago
  "E-Paper" is the term they used. Yeah, it's an LCD, but it has the features one would want from e-ink in this context; namely, good daylight visibility and low power draw.
  - sigkill 13y ago
    Hold on a minute. e-paper and LCD are two very different technologies. You could possibly charge them for misleading. Is it bistable?
    - jeroen94704 13y ago
      There's this big discussion about what constitutes "e-paper". Apparently, in some circles, e-paper is any display technology that is low-power and readable in daylight. The display in a pebble is a low-power transflective LCD display manufactured by Sharp. In Sharp's product brochure, they don't use the term e-paper though. They only say the display is "paper-like".
      - jlgreco 13y ago
        Wait, is this "low-power LCD" stuff seems an awful lot like what I had in my quartz crystal watch in the 90s. Sure that wasn't "smart" and didn't display raster graphics, but otherwise are we talking about fundamentally different technology?
        Pxtl 13y ago
        Yeah, it sounds a lot like my Zire 21. Thing had great readability at any light level, because it was just plain grey high-res LCD.
        jlgreco 13y ago
        Ah yeah. I was thinking more of the "preset image"/"seven-segment" style LCDs, but that is even closer to this it seems.
heyitsnick 13y ago
Isn't this the classic mistake of assuming "people" on the internet are a single homogeneous group? When Pebble had a kickstarter, a lot of proponents were vocal. Now its going into best-buy, those that are vocal are (a different set of) people who have the opportunity to criticize. Those who successfully funded the project and are proud users of Pebble maybe see less desire to be vocal. There's nothing really to "go figure", its just different people being selectively vocal in their support/dismissal.
- lukifer 13y ago
  This is spot-on, and an exceedingly common flaw in human cognition. It drives me crazy when I hear things like "Google wants to _____", "France believes _____", "The government is trying to _____", etc. While sometimes it's a linguistic proxy for something concrete (a specific leader, opinion polls, cultural zeitgeist), it's usually a victim of that insidious Dunbar number, and the brain's attempt to cope by treating a large, complex, heterogeneous institution or culture as though it were a single person.
  - purplelobster 13y ago
    I don't think it's quite the same phenomenon, although related. This is about the mental error that people do in assuming that a swing in vocalized opinion is due to people changing their minds, while it's actually just different people speaking up at different times (when it suits them). Example: "Apple fan-boys used to claim skeuomorphism is the best, but now they suddenly prefer flat design, such hypocrites!".

by Zikes 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

DannoHung 13y ago

I didn't back it because it seemed like it was just a vibrating etc. I have not changed my opinion since that time. I think the thing is that the number of people that didn't back it far outnumber the number of people that did back it. Now the non-backers are saying, "I still don't get why I'd want this."

akandiah 13y ago

> a vibrating e-ink backlit display It's not an e-ink display!

hypersoar 13y ago
"E-Paper" is the term they used. Yeah, it's an LCD, but it has the features one would want from e-ink in this context; namely, good daylight visibility and low power draw.
- sigkill 13y ago
  Hold on a minute. e-paper and LCD are two very different technologies. You could possibly charge them for misleading. Is it bistable?
  - jeroen94704 13y ago
    There's this big discussion about what constitutes "e-paper". Apparently, in some circles, e-paper is any display technology that is low-power and readable in daylight. The display in a pebble is a low-power transflective LCD display manufactured by Sharp. In Sharp's product brochure, they don't use the term e-paper though. They only say the display is "paper-like".
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      Wait, is this "low-power LCD" stuff seems an awful lot like what I had in my quartz crystal watch in the 90s. Sure that wasn't "smart" and didn't display raster graphics, but otherwise are we talking about fundamentally different technology?
      - Pxtl 13y ago
        Yeah, it sounds a lot like my Zire 21. Thing had great readability at any light level, because it was just plain grey high-res LCD.
        jlgreco 13y ago
        Ah yeah. I was thinking more of the "preset image"/"seven-segment" style LCDs, but that is even closer to this it seems.

heyitsnick 13y ago

Isn't this the classic mistake of assuming "people" on the internet are a single homogeneous group? When Pebble had a kickstarter, a lot of proponents were vocal. Now its going into best-buy, those that are vocal are (a different set of) people who have the opportunity to criticize. Those who successfully funded the project and are proud users of Pebble maybe see less desire to be vocal. There's nothing really to "go figure", its just different people being selectively vocal in their support/dismissal.

lukifer 13y ago
This is spot-on, and an exceedingly common flaw in human cognition. It drives me crazy when I hear things like "Google wants to _____", "France believes _____", "The government is trying to _____", etc. While sometimes it's a linguistic proxy for something concrete (a specific leader, opinion polls, cultural zeitgeist), it's usually a victim of that insidious Dunbar number, and the brain's attempt to cope by treating a large, complex, heterogeneous institution or culture as though it were a single person.
- purplelobster 13y ago
  I don't think it's quite the same phenomenon, although related. This is about the mental error that people do in assuming that a swing in vocalized opinion is due to people changing their minds, while it's actually just different people speaking up at different times (when it suits them). Example: "Apple fan-boys used to claim skeuomorphism is the best, but now they suddenly prefer flat design, such hypocrites!".