
The Pebble Steel review: Wearables 2.0 arrive - avsaro
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/01/the-pebble-steel-review-wearables-2-0-arrive/
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mikestew
I find it interesting that the Android app update is being delayed, given that
Android has thus far been the platform of choice if you own a Pebble. For the
longest time you couldn't do that much with unjailbroken iOS due to
limitations. SMS, phone calls, and music control, that was it. Email was
unreliable at best (iOS-using Pebble owners know the notification settings
"finger dance" all too well).

No worries now that an Android phone is my daily driver. The watch does what I
expected it to do when I bought it, and I can wait. Because, frankly, Yelp and
FourSquare on a watch display aren't going to have me swapping the SIM card
back to an iPhone.

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wvenable
Because of iOS and App Store restrictions, the new Pebble Store is _necessary_
for getting 2.0 applications to work on the iPhone. The iOS Pebble app
actually bundles the JavaScript-side of every Pebble store application to get
around the platform restrictions.

On Android, this hack isn't necessary and users aren't missing out on much
because they can use the store on the web and install whatever they want. So
there is much less reason to work on the Android app right now.

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pkteison
I know 3 people with pebbles. All 3 have had the screens stop updating
properly after several months. Plenty of other folks on the forums also have
display problems. I feel like it was an ok level of satisfaction for a
kickstarter and proof-of-concept, but nowhere near good enough for me to stick
with the platform. I'm just hoping it inspires another company to do a great
job of making an awesome e-ink watch now that the market has been
demonstrated.

~~~
DouweM
Interesting. I know 3 people with Pebbles and have one myself, and none of us
have had any problems of the sort. At one point my charging cable broke,
probably due to my transporting it rolled up, but that's it.

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njharman
2.0? That falls fare short of what wearables were doing decades ago.

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aaronem
Really? Which wearable, decades ago, had the ability to pair with a smartphone
and access the Internet to retrieve information for display?

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lnanek2
Wearables decades ago were generally big computer bricks on your waist or
otherwise strapped to your body, then a separate display up at your head, and
often a separate input in your hand like a Twiddler chorded keyboard. They did
tend to range in power and capabilities up to matching laptops of the day,
though.

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Thiz
Apple is missing big time in the smart watch camp.

Imagine all the NFC possibilities, like the article about hotel check in and
stuff like that. PC activation. Car activation. Passcode integration. Lights
on/off on enter/leave, etc.

People may react with disdain about the idea, but once smart people start
building cool apps, they undoubtedly will follow.

Just do it Apple, damnit, we will build the apps, they will surely come.

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MartinCron
As someone who buys pretty much every (non-mac-pro) thing that Apple sells,
I'm perfectly happy with Apple waiting and letting other people experiment
with the first few generations of crappy wearable tech before making something
that I'm de-facto obligated to buy.

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startuup
Seeing if anyone in HN community has been playing around with wearables by
developing apps for them and whats your experience been like so far?

~~~
milesokeefe
I'm a web developer so diving into pebble dev was my first time writing C.

That said, I've really enjoyed it. The SDK is excellent and hacking apps on a
watch is terribly fun.

Here are some of the apps I've made so far:

[https://github.com/MilesOkeefe/freedom-
clock](https://github.com/MilesOkeefe/freedom-clock)

[https://github.com/MilesOkeefe/magic8](https://github.com/MilesOkeefe/magic8)

