I had a Pebble Steel (the original Steel) and it was great for a while. But when they introduced version 3.0 (I think?), which brought on the new interface I pretty much stopped wearing it. I'm not a heavy calendar user, except when it comes to work. The 3.0 update was based on the idea that users love using the calendar to schedule their days.
That one primary change took away from the simplistic interface that the earlier versions had and made the Pebble more of a chore to keep up with. I didn't want to be bombarded with notifications about tasks/meetings at work, and I certainly didn't want them showing up in the main day view. But then that single today view was mostly unused and empty.
It's pretty unfortunate, IMO. I enjoyed using it up till then. I guess I could give it another chance but at this point the Original Steel has likely reached its end of life, at least with respect to new updates.
It's funny -- I was the exact opposite. I got the original Pebble Kickstarter Edition, and couldn't really find much of a use for it. Having notifications on my wrist was OK, but not mindblowing.
The addition of the timeline made _so much_ sense for me. I've barely taken the watch off since (except to upgrade to a Time Steel). It's extremely handy being able to just tap a button on my wrist in order to figure out if I need to be somewhere else. In fact, the biggest frustration has been that I need to press a button; I'd love it if a watch-face permanently showed me my next appointment.
As it turns out, this new update does just that, so, awesome.
Different strokes for different folks I guess :). I'm sorry that UX change hasn't been as good for you as it has been for me.
I don't mind 3.0 (although the timeline doesn't really do anything for me), I just hate the way their "privacy" policy makes something that should be personal and trustworthy (a wrist watch) into a Trojan horse to vacuum every scrap of personal information for them to later sell on.
Basically their privacy policy has some very disingenuous wording which makes it sound like they are respecting your privacy, while retaining the right to sell it to third parties.
The information they collect is listed quite openly in the first few sections of their privacy policy (link: https://www.pebble.com/legal/privacy ). It's pretty reasonable that the app needs local access to some of this information, less defensible that it accesses other information (geolocation information, unique device ID numbers, time spent in other apps on your phone?!) and not defensible IMO that they need to hoover it up off your phone. At least they're open about it.
Note that they "maintain log files in identifiable form for a period of time for troubleshooting and other purposes" - this is stored in identifiable form indefinitely.
The kicker is under "3. Information sharing and disclosure."
> As we continue to develop our business, we may sell, buy, merge or partner with other companies or businesses, or sell some or all of our assets. In such transactions, user information may be among the transferred assets.
Emphasis mine. Note the way this starts as if it's talking about mergers or acquisitions, then sneaks in "or we might just sell your information to anyone". This bullet point completely negates any restrictions on what they do with your data.
(Throughout an 8-email exchange with one of their lawyers, they managed to completely avoid commenting on any issue I raised, despite ample opportunity to set me straight if I was simply misinterpreting the policy. I'm left with no choice but to assume my interpretation is correct and they have no respect whatsoever for their customers' privacy.)
I was pissed enough about it to write my own Android app for it (I'd been meaning to play with Android dev for a while). It covers the basics (notifications, music player control, install/uninstall apps and watchfaces) but I never got around to more advanced stuff (Phone app integration, phone-side JS, interpreting the streaming data etc.) and they stopped documenting new features sometime around the release of 3.0 so no health integration.
I've been meaning to tidy it up and post it somewhere, maybe this will give me some motivation.
Shameless plug: on android you can use gadgetbridge ( https://github.com/Freeyourgadget/Gadgetbridge ). Supports pebble (and miband) and is a complete replacement of the official app (you can setup the pebble after unboxing, upgrade firmwares, install apps and language packs).
Functionalities are only limited by the lack of the internet access permission - it was left out on purpose - so things like voice dictation and some apps/watchfaces that need network access do not work.
It is available on fdroid if you don't want to build it yourself!
<insert thoughts about the GPL being the best fit for truly free/open source projects, left out because it would have probably started an off-topic flamewar/>
Just for your information: our code implements the pebble protocol over BT classic, that is not allowed to run in background on iOS. The new devices (pebble 2 and pebble time 2) will use the same BLE/GATT protocol on android and iOS though: we will have to implement that too (uff ;-) ) but it will ease the life of a dev willing to port it to iOS.
Not sure what taneq was referring to - but I was very unpleasantly surprised the first time I got the "Pebble Health This Week" email showing me my sleep and step tracking for the last week from their cloud service.
That's 100% not something I'd ever intentionally sign up to "share" - which means they either opted me in without consent, or used a dark pattern to trick me into consenting to something I wouldn't have if it'd been clear it meant my watch/app was going to send all my activity/movement data to "someone" with no way for me to know what they were gonna use it for or who they were gonna share it with.
I didn't cancel my Kickstarter pledge (my third, I've got the original and the Time) - but I _very_ seriously considered it (and still might just flip it on eBay when it arrives)...
1) They accept your order without even a mention of the T&C, EULA or privacy policy (at least as far as the checkout, I'm not putting my card number in to check for a popup during the payment process).
2) When you receive the product and go to install the app, in tiny print below the signup form they declare that by signing up, you accept the T&C. (This text is visible here: https://youtu.be/GAYL034-j0I?t=1m19s)
3) By accepting the T&C, you agree to the privacy policy linked from within the T&C.
Pebble health data can be synced by gadgetbridge (see my other comment), but we have to adapt to every fw version that changes the message format. This has not yet happened for firmware 4 as we get it when it's publicly available like everybody else.
The data synced by gadgetbridge never leaves your device (unless you export it, that is :-) )
I don't wear my Pebble much, but your comment has reminded me that the app has read/write access to all the health data on my iPhone. It could have been secretly siphoning that data and uploading it for months without me knowing.
I'm not much of a timeline user but the old design of using the up/down buttons to switch watch faces was obviously not the best use of the primary interface. I'm surprised that is what you enjoyed best about it.
It's hard to be disappointed with Pebble on the software side -- they've continued to make smart solid improvements with each release and backport as much as possible to the older devices. There have been a few missteps but nothing too ridiculous.
Oh, I didn't enjoy using the buttons to swap watchfaces. I typically used a single one throughout the day and occasionally would switch to an app, like the MLB app/watchface, as needed (very rarely).
I enjoyed the simplistic interface where I could see current time/day/temp/weather and get notifications as they came up. It was nearly perfect for my usecase except that for iOS they never implemented app filtering (for deciding which of my phone apps' notifications would come through the watch).
I guess I don't understand. OS 3.0 didn't change that functionality of the watch in any way. You still have a watch face and notifications as they come up. That's primarily how I use it as well. What changed for you?
> I had a Pebble Steel (the original Steel) and it was great for a while. But when they introduced version 3.0 (I think?), which brought on the new interface I pretty much stopped wearing it. I'm not a heavy calendar user, except when it comes to work. The 3.0 update was based on the idea that users love using the calendar to schedule their days.
The reason I stopped using the original Pebble Steel was due to "screen tearing" issue. It happened on my watch before the warranty expired but I had no knowledge it was a hardware issue a few months after the warranty expired. Pebble refused to replace it and rather offered me a discount on their new products.
I feel it is completely disingenuous as they want to be put in more money into Pebble for something that is inherently a hardware issue. I am quite disappointed at Pebble. The worst part was that I had a sentiment value attached to the watch. It was a gift by my dissertation supervisor on my Ph.D.
I had a Pebble Steel (the original Steel) and it was great for a while. But when they introduced version 3.0 (I think?), which brought on the new interface I pretty much stopped wearing it. I'm not a heavy calendar user, except when it comes to work. The 3.0 update was based on the idea that users love using the calendar to schedule their days.
That one primary change took away from the simplistic interface that the earlier versions had and made the Pebble more of a chore to keep up with. I didn't want to be bombarded with notifications about tasks/meetings at work, and I certainly didn't want them showing up in the main day view. But then that single today view was mostly unused and empty.
It's pretty unfortunate, IMO. I enjoyed using it up till then. I guess I could give it another chance but at this point the Original Steel has likely reached its end of life, at least with respect to new updates.