[Pfhortune]

Exactly this. Pebbles feel like they were built from the ground up to be a watch, whereas the Apple Watch and Android Wear feel like they started from a phone and stripped things away until it became a watch.

Separately, it baffles me that Garmin, despite them having also built a watch OS from the ground up, never understood watch/limited-button UX. Their Instinct and Forerunner watches have all sorts of wonky, hidden and arcane interactions with buttons (long press this to X, press this here to Y). Pebble proves that a simple, shallow, and linear menu system works great!

[sahila]

> Pebble proves that a simple, shallow, and linear menu system works great!

Hard to say this is true when Garmin watches are far more successful than Pebble. That aside, the forerunner is a sports watch first where you want lots of physical buttons that don't get bothered by sweat. The better Garmin comparison is the Venu series which only have two buttons https://www.garmin.com/en-US/c/wearables-smartwatches/?serie....

[Pfhortune]

I'm making a subjective comparison here, true. But spend fifteen minutes with each company's watches and you'll see what I mean.

> Hard to say this is true when Garmin watches are far more successful than Pebble.

A company's success != UX efficacy. That's like saying Apple's products had terrible UX in 1997 because they were flailing up against their Microsoft counterparts of the same era, despite the fact that Apple's UX guidelines of the nineties are regularly raised here as a rubric for UX evaluation, even against Apple's own modern products!

> The better Garmin comparison is the Venu series which only have two buttons

I'm not sure you've ever used a Pebble, but Pebble OS is entirely button-driven with four buttons, whereas the Forerunner and Instinct have five. I've never used a Venu, but isn't it primarily touchscreen-driven?

(yes, the upcoming pebble watches do have touchscreens, but I believe that's just for use in apps and watchfaces, not navigating the system)

[apparent]

> Hard to say this is true when Garmin watches are far more successful than Pebble

This may not be true for long, honestly. Pebble hasn't made watches in years, and I wouldn't be surprised if within 2-4 years they were selling more units than Garmin. The Pebble UI is a dream, especially compared to Garmin. I could never get my parents to get a Garmin, but a Pebble could totally work for them. Super intuitive, hardly needs charging, gives them notifications when they're in a different room than their phone, always-on/always-readable screen.

[mirsadm]

Very unlikely. The reason Garmin watches are successful is because they've carved out an audience (athletes, health and exercise focused). Pebble might have a nice UI but most people would be better off with an Apple Watch or whatever the current flavour of the week is on Android

[apparent]

I think a lot of people bought AWs because they seemed like the right thing to get, integrated easily, and were more or less easy to use.

But most people I know who have AWs don't use most of the functionalities they provide. If you went up to 20 random AW wearers and ask them if they would give up a bunch of features they don't use (like the awful Siri assistant) in exchange for 15-30x the battery life, I think a lot of them would say yes.

Add onto that the fact that Pebbles are cheaper than AWs, and I think we're going to see a non-trivial number of people "upgrading" from AWs to Pebbles when the batteries start to degrade.

[riversflow]

> like the awful Siri assistant

Ironically, I just talked to all my mates about our Apple Watches, and universally Siri on your wrist for setting timers and replying to messages with voice, completely hands free, was the killer app that everyone agreed on.

Setting a timer is as simple as bringing your wrist to your face and saying the amount of time.

[ewoodrich]

I literally only use Siri on my Apple Watch, I’ve only triggered it accidentally on my iPhone and have the hot word disabled on all my other devices. Of course, all I ever use it for is setting timers and alarms on the watch, but still…

[glitchc]

Well, Garmin is a GPS company, not a watch company. The watch is simply the most popular form factor.

[utopcell]

Pebbles were originally built to be bicyclist accessories but they pivoted to smart watches when they realized that the market opportunity was larger.

[jolmg]

You might be talking about Garmin now-smartwatch devices. The first Forerunners look like something you'd strap on a bike's handlebars. They weren't referred to as smartwatches, but as "personal trainers" and didn't seem to display the time-of-day to classify as a watch. Pebbles and the predecessor InPulse seem to always have been smartwatches, though the need seems to have started by wanting to avoid taking out one's phone while on the bike. Garmin pivoted, but I don't think Pebble did.

[utopcell]

How was the Pebble born? - Twitch https://share.google/jEulfpqJNh6S5yBuL