<story><title>Over 16k people still use a Pebble smartwatch</title><url>https://rebble.io/2022/11/02/rebble-hackathon.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Pfhortune</author><text>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.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;s like these companies have no regard for designing the OS UX and are just trying to cram features in.&lt;p&gt;And the fact that companies want to make touchscreen watches is just with few&amp;#x2F;no buttons is baffling to me. Tapping tiny buttons on a tiny screen is a horrible experience. And there&amp;#x27;s tons of moving targets because of the tiny amount of real-estate.&lt;p&gt;Pebble _just got it_ with the 2.0 OS and beyond. They were a joy to use.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;ll probably either pull out an old Pebble that still has some battery life, or a Casio GBD200, which isn&amp;#x27;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!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>modeless</author><text>Pebble&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;I once interviewed a candidate who came from Pebble. He had the most impressive interview performance of any candidate I&amp;#x27;ve ever interviewed.</text></comment>
<story><title>Over 16k people still use a Pebble smartwatch</title><url>https://rebble.io/2022/11/02/rebble-hackathon.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Pfhortune</author><text>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.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;s like these companies have no regard for designing the OS UX and are just trying to cram features in.&lt;p&gt;And the fact that companies want to make touchscreen watches is just with few&amp;#x2F;no buttons is baffling to me. Tapping tiny buttons on a tiny screen is a horrible experience. And there&amp;#x27;s tons of moving targets because of the tiny amount of real-estate.&lt;p&gt;Pebble _just got it_ with the 2.0 OS and beyond. They were a joy to use.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;ll probably either pull out an old Pebble that still has some battery life, or a Casio GBD200, which isn&amp;#x27;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!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>etothepii</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ll buy an Apple Watch, but I&amp;#x27;d pay through the nose for an Apple Watch with four buttons.&lt;p&gt;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)&lt;p&gt;Clearly whoever makes the call about Apple Watch buttons doesn&amp;#x27;t swim, sprint or cycle.&lt;p&gt;All the marketing about &amp;quot;sports&amp;quot; is to make you feel sporty not because it&amp;#x27;s actually useful.&lt;p&gt;Of course, for the use Apple make money from (Apple pay) there is a tactile button dedicated for the purpose.</text></comment>