Pebble crowdfunded as an alternative to venture capital. Their huge success on the platform was an inspiration to so many other hardware startups that it sparked an entire generation of products (in my opinion). Kudos to that.<p>I still wear my original Pebble. It's reliable with very long battery life, and is one of the very few wearables that works well while wearing gloves.
> Apple’s emphasis on fashion and Pebble’s on productivity and third-party innovation were costly detours—the smartwatch market is rooted in health and fitness.<p>that's depressing :( i was hoping that they had just misexecuted, and someone else would step in and fill the niche of "e-ink watch with long battery life that is geared towards displaying things your phone sends it"; i have no use for fitness tracking and biometrics, and pebble's featureset and reasonably open ecosystem was ideal for me.<p>the saddest thing is that even buying used pebbles on ebay won't help me much with their servers going offline :(
There's only three things I want in a smartwatch:<p>1. Resemble an actual, reasonably sized watch.<p>2. Display notifications from my phone along with their actions (such as marking an email as "Done" in Inbox, or liking a Tweet).<p>3. Allow me to respond with my voice for notifications that support quick replies.<p>The Pebble Time Round was <i>great</i> at <i>all three</i>, and (as far as I know) was the only watch to have the features that I wanted in a form factor that resembled a reasonably-sized watch. The only other alternatives currently are Android Wear watches, all of which don't look like the kinds of watches I like to wear (they're thick, with large bezels and superfluous embellishments).<p>If I knew for sure that a Pebble Time Round would continue to be useable for the next six months, I'd buy one in a heartbeat, but the uncertainty makes me hesitant to spend the $100+ on one.
> Netherlands city of Delft, known more for pottery than technology<p>Perhaps this is true, but hopefully not any longer among HN readers:<p>- Antonie van Leeuwenhoek: world first microbiologist, huge improvements in the microscope<p>- Martinus Beijerinck: discoverer of the virus<p>- Produces the Nuna, which won the world solar challenge in Australia 5 times
Am the only one around here that doesn't care one single bit about the fitness aspects?<p>My Pebble Time Steel broke (actually just the band), just before these announcements and I got a refund (spendable only at the company I bought the Pebble, but that's ok.) But I miss it! I miss the the notifications, I had gotten completely used to putting my Phone somewhere, anywhere withing BT range for the duration of the day. 99% of notifications do not require immediate attention (I also strictly filter what was allowed through to the watch) but some do and the ability to see that on your wrist is gold to me.<p>For now, sadly, there is no replacement that even comes close. I really want an always one screen and at least 5 days of battery life.
"seller of over two million smartwatches"..."Pebble was losing money, with no profit in sight"<p>I honestly don't understand this line of thinking. Why not, you know, sell something for more than it costs?
I own a Pebble Time Steel. It is wonderful. People really underestimate the impact battery life has. I get annoyed when I finally have to take it out to charge (about once a week). Heck, right now it's at 10% and I don't really care. It didn't even tell me yet when it's expected to run out.<p>The screen may not be as gorgeous as a phone screen, but it is on all the time.<p>It's also very developer friendly. Heck, you can even create watchfaces in Javascript.<p>Before the acquisition, I would not trade it for the first generation Apple Watch. Maybe the second one, just maybe, if the community does not find a way to keep the current Pebble devices running.
> [He considered] bringing the company down to 10 people and just seeing what would be next.<p>Other than the fact that he would need to fire everybody, what is wrong with reducing costs to make it profitable like this? The problem seems like there wasn't enough profit to support a staff of 120 people. I can't imagine the VCs would object. They already lost their money.
>... was the company’s willingness to keep Pebble’s developers and users in the game.<p>You mean like dropping warranty support and a vague statement about cloud based features degrading over an undisclosed amount of time?
But Citizen had offered them a better deal, didn't they? $740m rather than $40m. [1]<p>[1] <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/30/fitbit-pebble/" rel="nofollow">https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/30/fitbit-pebble/</a>
The Smartwatch as a concept is a good one, however the current offerings have one of two problems:<p>Pebble's problem is the lack of features, and specific to users of iOS like myself, relative instability and weirdness when it comes to important things like notifications. The monochrome screen is also less attractive though IMO bearable.<p>Apple Watch's problem is battery life. It's absolutely unattractive to me to have yet another thing I need to charge once a day. It wins on pretty much everything else but such a low battery life is crippling to this sort of device.<p>I feel like between the two you have a rough approximation of the laptop offerings of the early 80's. Yes, they did exist and some people used them, but by and large they were terrible for the functions they were built for. I have a feeling in not even that much time, we'll have proper smart watches with good integration across platforms that will have a screen like Apple's and the life of a Pebble, but for now, laying out $250 for what's basically a bleeding edge prototype is unattractive to the mainstream consumer.<p>Edit: Question for HN: Would you all consider a Fitbit to be a smartwatch? I mean it's a watch-esque device that does more intelligent things than just a regular watch but I feel like that's more of a wearable monitoring device.
Hey word on the street is Fitbit didn't take many of the hardware people from Pebble. (Not sure why?) But if you're a hardware person from pebble reading this then reach out to me, I'd love to take you out for coffee and have a chat! :)
I have to ask: were 160, then 120 people really necessary?<p>Judging by their Kickstarters' successes, Pebble had made "something people want", and they had made it repeatedly. Couldn't they have waited out the bad times with a lighter team, while tweaking the products and remaining profitable or at least just above zero?<p>120 people sounds enormous to me -- esp. given that all manufacturing was outsourced...?
I've never owned or used a Pebble, but for me it's poignant that this coincides with my decision to stop wearing a Withings Activite and dusted off my trusty old Seiko 5.<p>This shift was primarily motivated by two factors:<p><pre><code> 1. I lost interest in the activity tracking features.
2. Even worrying about the battery once every 6 months was too much.
</code></pre>
And supplemented by a third, which is that the fancy watch wasn't very readable and lacked a second hand. That made it less capable at the main thing I use it for: keeping track of the time.<p>I looked hard at a Pebble at one point before deciding that, since my phone is almost always in my pocket or on the table in front of me, getting it into position for viewing information would take only nominally more effort and probably gets me to a place where I can act on whatever information the device is telling me much more efficiently. Also, having a non-user-replaceable battery means that the device will only live for so long, and I'm really trying to limit my consumption of disposable technology.<p>I think that, for now, my most optimistic case for smartwatches is that they're at about the same phase as handheld computing was 15 or so years ago. The technology is really interesting, but there needs to be more technology development and ironing out of subtle details before the idea is quite ready to take over the consumer market.
> Apple’s emphasis on fashion and Pebble’s on productivity and third-party innovation were costly detours—the smartwatch market is rooted in health and fitness.<p>I'm not sure this is accurate. Pebble sold relatively well. They just couldn't get more customers beyond a certain point. It's a niche market.<p>Fitness trackers become obsolete quickly. They tend to be relatively cheap and there are a lot of sensors and software that can be iterated on to justify selling newer versions of the same product every year to the same people.<p>When the Pebble Steel came out, I gave my original Pebble away. The only reason I switched was that I liked the design of the new one better, the original still worked just as well as the new one.<p>When the Pebble Time Steel came out, I switched again and again the one I had at the time worked fine. The Pebble Time Steel had some new features but mostly it did much of the same.<p>I passed when the Pebble 2 came out because I couldn't justify paying again for a replacement to something that still worked as good as on the first day. The Pebble 2 brought some fitness features but was otherwise no different from what I already had.<p>Fitness trackers have planned obsolescence. The tech becomes outdated very quickly and the conditions in which they are used lend themselves to natural wear and tear. Utilitarian smartwatches on the other hand are expected to last.<p>Pebble sold me three smartwatches in almost as many years. They actually marketed four[0] more in that time. They oversaturated the market and grossly overestimated the demand.<p>Their first Kickstarter generated $10MM, their second in early 2015 generated $20MM, their third generated $12MM. Considering they were falling in the red in 2015 and their 2016 campaign was doubling down on the fitness aspect and bombed in comparison to 2015, I don't buy the narrative that fitness tracking would have been a better focus.<p>[0]: To recap: Pebble, Pebble Steel, Pebble Time, Pebble Time Steel, Pebble Time Round, Pebble 2, Time 2 and Pebble Core (which is not a smartwatch). The 2016 Kickstarter also saw the edition of silver/gold editions of the Pebble Round but those seem otherwise identical to the original.
ISTM the many screen-on-wrist testimonials on this page confirm a longstanding prediction of mine: the "smartphone" is not the ultimate device form that our children will be using as adults. Instead, every personal item will become part of a personal constellation of devices. Phones will gradually disappear as better (i.e. ubiquitous, low-power, and basically free) wireless networks emerge, and our eyeglasses will talk to our hats which will talk to our shoes which will talk to our wrist devices...
> <i>Apple’s emphasis on fashion and Pebble’s on productivity and third-party innovation were costly detours—the smartwatch market is rooted in health and fitness.</i><p>Over the last few years, I noticed store catalogs giving much space to fitbit, and little to pebble (or apple watch).<p>Perhaps this is a crude exoscope, for viewing outside the bubble/RDF? Like Buffett observing people still actually using American Express, outside Wall Street's gloom.<p>Those catalogs now include iPhone 5s and Samsung Galaxy S5 alongside the flagships, suggesting "good enough" and flagships have overshot...<p>Where will the tech, talent and investment go, if smart phones and watches are good enough, and VR/AR is a wash?
TLDR: Because it was either that or shutting down (either completely, or with such a massive downsize that it would have been effectively the same thing).<p>I'd be interested to know what he <i>did</i> get out of the deal. Sold for "south of $40M" and with the statement, "He’s not leaving Pebble as a wealthy man."
can someone summarize this for me? (I imagine the obvious actual answer to the headline is, "I'm passionate about having a place to live, eating, travelling and otherwise enjoying the results of 300 years of capitalism and industrialization.")<p>---<p>EDIT: Thanks for the downvote. Can I have the summary, please?