Slashdot Mirror
Fitbit Will End Support For Pebble Smartwatches In June (arstechnica.com)
Today, Fitbit announced that it will extend its support of the Pebble smartwatch ecosystem, including devices, software, and forums, until June 30, 2018. "During this time, we invite the Pebble community to explore how familiar highlights from the Pebble ecosystem are evolving on the Fitbit platform, from apps and clock faces to features and experiences," the company's blog post states. Ars Technica reports: Fitbit's invitation is a hopeful one for the company itself. After the buyout, members of the Pebble team helped Fitbit develop its own smartwatch OS that debuted on the $300 Fitbit Ionic last year. Fitbit is likely hoping that diehard members of the Pebble community, many of which developed apps and programs for the smartwatch platform, will try making similar programs for Fitbit's new wearable operating system. The Fitbit SDK is already quite accessible, allowing developers to sign up and start building programs using all-online tools. But in addition to the accessibility of the SDK, Fitbit wants to entice Pebble users with a discount: users with a valid Pebble device serial number can get $50 off a Fitbit Ionic smartwatch. It's currently the only device that runs Fitbit OS, and it's useful to have if you want to test out any apps made with the SDK. But for those who want nothing to do with Fitbit OS development and only care about how long their Pebbles will last, this news is bittersweet. According to Fitbit's announcement, Pebble devices will continue to work after June 30, but these features will stop working: the Pebble app store, the Pebble forum, voice recognition features, SMS and email replies, timeline pins from third-party apps (although calendar pins will still function), and the CloudPebble development tool.
Wish him luck with that. They don't let people "this, that" in prison.
Just wanted to point out SMS and Email will still work on android, only IOS will stop working. Voice recognition will die for all platforms.
Kinda stupid in that fitbit could have made a simple subscription model and generate a steady revenue without much effort , instead they are killing pebble.
I had the original Pebble watch from Kickstarter, and Pebble Time Steel from Kickstarter. My favorite watches. I had the Pebble Time Steel 2 on Pre-order on Kickstarter when it was canceled. I will absolutely NEVER buy a Fitbit product again due to the way they ripped apart Pebble.
Understandably, Pebble was in trouble and was going bankrupt. Legally Fitbit had every right to do what they did, and maximize profits. However the way they bought only Pebble's IP, and hired on it's Developers, not taking on the company itself, was just a dick move. People who bought a BRAND NEW Pebble 2, Pebble Round, or any other pebble the DAY before the announcement LOST their warranty and ALL SUPPORT, despite Fitbit making it seem like they took over the company. I for one had my vibration motor for notifications die just a few days after the announcement, despite being under 1 year old, I was stuck. Likewise Pebble had all the leg work done for the Pebble Time Steel 2 watch, that IS the Fitbit Ionic in 95% of the features, including Tooling, design, software.. they could have just released it. Pebble was also HUGE and had inlays into retail and big online stores. Fitbit could have EASILY utilized the branding and name.. but chose the cheap way out. I feel like another company could have easily come in and actually done right and kept the brand going. Instead they let themselves be cannibalized by Fitbit.
why can these devices not operate like any other Android Product and allow the install of F-Droid like Apps that allow for support for CarDav/CardDav/etc. Or whatever resource they connect to with some other privately owned device/server not controlled by FitBit?
They're cancelling the Pebble to try and get people to buy the Ionic. The Pebble cost $150, the Ionic costs $300. The Pebble had a 7-day battery life, the Ionic has a 4-day battery... So what does the Ionic actually do better? Well, it looks like it has a color screen. Also, it has a pedometer and it's spying on you.
I can see how it's worth the extra money.
Now why the hell should I buy anything from you if it's just going to be discontinued?
Ah, Fitbit. The company that couldn't even get face rotation for the appropriate wrist done correctly.
No thank you. I'd rather not deal with outright incompetents.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
As far as I can tell the Pebble remains the only smart watch with an ePaper display and therefore is always on. The Ionic appears to have a not always on LCD, a fact they don't mention on the product page, so could not match the operation of a Pebble. Ironic might be a better name for it? Smartwatches are not very smart in my option if you have to interact with them to tell the time! A $5 dumb watch is more use for telling the time than any smartwatch if you have to touch the screen, shake your wrist or push a button.
Until someone can make a slim smartwatch that is on all the time and runs several days on a charge I'm sticking with my Pebble regardless of the software support.
HAHAAAH, Clinton and Obama are going to be golfing every day while Trump rots in Leavenworth! Oh the revenge is so perfect. "I'm best at going to Prison, if there's 2 things I'm known for it's going to prison and being a TRAITOR"
Those sonofabitches. Now what the fuck am I going to do? I never bought a Pebble and now they're discontinuing support for it! That reminds me: I'd better change the dead battery in my watch before it leaks.
Why would any Pebble fan want anything to do with the company that bought and killed Pebble just because they didn't want the competition?
Any Pebble fan who ever spends one cent on a fitbit product is a complete idiot.
...but my Pebble will continue to do what I need. Showing golf yardages, showing speed and distance while I'm biking, showing caller ID and MP3 names. Basically it is just a remote display for my phone. It does not need any online services to do this.
I'm sad to see Fitbit kill Pebble, but the simplicity of the original is what made it what it was. Trying to make it "smarter" did not necessarily make it better. Just another in a huge field.
Love my Pebble Time Steel. Who else offers a week of realistic battery life and all the features you'd expect in a smartwatch? Yeah. Go fuck yourself Fitbit.
Casio and Timex will be ending support for timekeeping for all watches made before 2016. Currently owners will get a discount on the new 2018 models with subscription-based timekeeping.
Actually, older models will continue to work, in a dilated time setting where everything runs slower and slower and slower and....
It's sad, the lack of sleep can't help him, 12 diet cokes a day? Absolutely batshit.
That's Fitbit rendering your $150-300 smart watch a useless piece of electronic junk.
Shoulda bought a Timex mechanical. Woulda lasted longer.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Some previous discussion: Without their needed displays Pebble was doomed — December 2016
The thesis in this thread was that Pebble fell victim to a single-sourced display technology, which was contested a few posts later. But supply issues can be complex, and available replacements unsuited in form factor, process, or price.
If it really was death by supply chain, that explains a lot about Fitbit consuming the carcass rather than resuming the company.
Pebble Teardown — March 2013
At this point, the display is a Sharp Microelectronics memory LCD.
Did some critical vendor actually go tits up?
In any case, my old Pebble is still on my wrist, functioning as a vibrating pill timer and I'm not presently in the market for something less open, but with more bling.
My pebble time steel is probably my favorite smart watch. I've had Android wear devices, but touch screens and gestures on a watch and just fidley and just don't work. The battery life on an android wear just isn't there.
The mistake that android wear has made is that is fails to work as a watch first.
Pebble time steel works as a watch, I can look at it at a glance and see the time. Android wear devices I've used need a press of the button or a flick to operate. I get a good 7 day battery life, sometimes more.
I can control my music, I can view messages I get at work without looking at my phone. Even reply to them. The application ecosystem and customizable watchfaces was just brilliance.
Its a sad move the way fitbit has killed the brand. There isn't really anything in the smartwatch space to compete with what pebble created.
Why hasn't someone come up with an e-paper watch to pick up where they left off?
I have a bunch of mechanical watches. They last and last and last. I just finished servicing a '70s vintage Slava 2427. Two mainsprings, built coarsely and roughly and like a tank. Keeps on ticking, and keeps reasonably good time.
Good, high-quality mechanicals from the likes of Seiko and Orient are readily available on Amazon, eBay, or a bunch of other places for $100-$150. They don't need a battery, will run for 20 years without any attention, and when they do need attention, oils and parts to service them are out there by the millions. You can leave them to your kids.
And for the hacking crowd, you can also build your own—cases, dials, hands, and movements are plentiful. If you want to go the new, Japanese route, Miyota (citizen) automatic mechanical movements are running about $35 right now from Hong Kong. Cases with sapphire crystals something like $40-60. A hefty solid stainless steel bracelet will only set you back $10 or so these days, and the same with a set of hands. You build your own gaming PC to look just the way you want it? Why not build your own mechanical watch.
Selecting your own dial, hands, case, bracelet, and movement and assembling them yourself is a hell of a lot more personal than choosing a face from a watch app store... that goes dark every day without an overnight charge.
Just IMO.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Fitbit didn't buy Pebble, they only bought the IP. Your Pebble products were discontinued because Pebble went bankrupt. Nothing to do with Fitbit.
Fitbit is keeping Pebble's ecosystem going until mid-2018 despite having no obligation to do so. If Fitbit (or anyone else) hadn't bought Pebble's IP, you would've lost support and the ecosystem when Pebble shut down in Dec 2016. If people persist in blaming Fitbit for "killing" Pebble, next time a popular company goes bankrupt the buyer will probably just buy the IP and let the old product lines die then and there just to avoid the negative stigma from misinformed customers.
If you want to blame someone for the fiasco, blame Pebble's management who let the situation become so bad before seeking buyers, that the company had accrued so much debt that nobody wanted to buy the company outright (debt > assets) and keep the product lines going..
the Pebble app store, the Pebble forum...and the CloudPebble development tool.
I can understand why those would stop working.
voice recognition features, SMS and email replies, timeline pins from third-party apps (although calendar pins will still function)
I have no idea why these need to stop working though. They should all be solely reliant upon the watch and your paired phone.
I think the voice recognition they used connected to a Pebble hosted server to do the grunt work rather than doing it on device.
Copy Microsoft's best known business practice to maximize profits!
I treat my 2 pebble watches like old friends (Classic & Classic2 w/heartmonitor) , and have long abandoned the hokey Pebble Timeline and fitnes features. It is what it is..I.e. a programmable timepiece and wrist notification platform. I have both of mine programmed as marine navitimers, and use them as shipboard timepieces. Robust enough for marine use. My only complaint really, other than the sealed back of the Clasic2, is the swapping of the compass for the heart monitor. Which while it seems to work,drains the fuck out of the battery. Nevermind the whole navitimer without a compass thingy lol.
Anyways, with both of the pebble clasic units, on airplane mode and with a conservative watchface, the battery lasts 15-20 days. That's right...always on watchface and smartwatch apps with 20 day battery time lol. Toggle notifications on when needed.
The question remains; will anyone step up and mirror the Pebble App Store or force fitbit to open source it? Speaking as a pebble developer, even though I put my watchfaces on github, a lot will be lost when that shuts down' seemngly.
Smartphones have a shelf life of about 3 years before performance, battery life or lack of updates render them kind of obsolete. At this point in their history, smart watches seem even more obsolescence prone.
Until either environmental regulations or advanced state of development render electronics a useful lifespan more in line with their physical wear and tear lfiespan, buyer beware and just assume it will be obsolete and unusable in 3 years or much less.
I avoid anything that relies on with "control with your phone" because I know it will end up abandoned by its maker.
It has a fully autonomous assistant that adjusts it twice a year for daylight savings.
It has a GMT hand that can be set to alternate time zones.
It has a little window that shows the current date.
When it is rainy, it shows droplets of water on the crystal. When it is snowy, it shows snow on the crystal. When it's cold outside, it gets cold on your wrist.
Thankfully, it never lets me know when I "get a message" and refuses to help other people interrupt my life.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
...they should give up on their own products and start producing and selling Pebbles again.
They own the technology for the best smartwatch yet produced, and still they push their own inferior products. I just don't get it.
is that servicing them isn't nearly as hard as I'd always assumed. I've just picked it up in the last year. Anyone who builds their own PCs or can code should have no trouble, they're actually not all that complicated—just *small*.
As it turns out, the key is the right tools. And these days, they're easy to get your hands on thanks to e-commerce. The guts of mechanical watches had always seemed intractable to me, but then I went out on a limb and bought an illuminated set of head-worn magnifying lenses. It only cost about $20. Suddenly, everything became clear and easy!
A good set of brass tweezers (another $10, don't buy the junk for doing eyebrows at the drugstore), a good set of jeweler's screwdrivers (real ones, which go down to 0.2mm width flat blades) for another $20, a case-back tool for $3-4 to get them open... The most expensive things are the lubricating oils, but even then you're buying in small quantities (because you're literally using pinhead dabs) so again less than a $50 investment.
It turns out parts are the easiest things to come by, there are sellers by the bucket on Etsy selling mechanical movements in untested condition, like 20 complete movements for $5-10 of for some common consumer models. They market them as "steampunk" decor for art projects, but they're just piles and piles of complete watch movements. You buy a bucket of 'em and you have parts coming out your ears.
Then, you just follow your nose. And if you get stuck, there are YouTube teardown videos for just about every common movement. And there are dozens of timegrapher apps for smartphones now to help you to regulate them—start the app, put the mic by the open-back watch, and it will tell you how close you are to perfect time as you adjust the level. It's all actually shockingly easy, I think anyone with tech skills can pick it up in just a few months of practice.
It's a lot like computers used to be in the '80s. A list of standard parts that are pretty recognizable (every moment has one of these, one of these, one of these, one of these...), specs that are easy to find for mix/match, and a basic set of not-all-that-special-or-expensive tools.
In a world of more and more devices that are trying to be your "everything" device, and that are more and more locked down, unserviceable, and undocumented, with shorter and shorter times between charges, it's really refreshing to own and work on devices that are simple, straightforward, perform one job and perform it well, run on their own for decades, can be understood and maintained indefinitely, and that are amenable to at-home customizing, hacking, and optimization (regulating, cleaning, polishing, servicing, etc.)
I've found in mechanical wristwatches the same fun that we used to be able to have with 8-bit computers in the '80s. Only better, because these don't need wall power, make great gifts, and can be left to future generations while still retaining much of their original functionality without any learning curve for the user.
Plus, they look great. I still can't get over all these people walking around with little blank screens on their wrists. Better to have steel and chrome and paint and colors.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
If anything, we should be in a scenario where the inferior Fitbit products were dumped in favor of Pebble's.
I want the equivalent of a Mac Plus on my wrist. It's enough.
There are no less than 3 fully-capable compute devices at arm's length at all times. I need a timepiece and simple means to interact with those devices. That is all.