[thirdsight]

I still can't justify anything better than my $10 Casio Bin Laden watch.

There is literally nothing that has an advantage over it for me. Status and cost mean nothing.

I think the smart watch is purely an example of conspicuous consumption, nothing more.

[ben1040]

>Casio Bin Laden watch

In case you are like me and didn't immediately get the reference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casio_F-91W#Claimed_use_in_terr...

[mikestew]

Whoa there, Mr. Ranty Pants. I was with you up until you decided to paint every Pebble owner with the conspicuous consumption brush. Given the cheap, utilitarian look of the Pebble, I have a hard time believing that more than a smattering of owners have one to go "look at me! I have a Pebble!"

Folks find utility in owning a Pebble, and as an extension, in how they choose to integrate tech into their lives. Do you want to be the guy in the recent xkcd cartoon[0]?

[0] http://xkcd.com/1314/

[haswell]

I personally find value in using my Pebble. Having the ability to glance down at my wrist without needing to pull my phone out of my pocket (or computer bag) is great. Having the ability to trigger URLS through a companion app is pretty cool. Glancing at my watch while walking through the airport to see I have a gate change notification is great. In the near future, there will be many other potential integration points and companion apps as the next major version of the SDK is released.

Are these features for everyone? Probably not. But it seems closed minded to reduce the purchase of what is in actuality a pretty cool device to "purely conspicuous consumption".

[thirdsight]

Is having to pull your phone out of your pocket that bad? Do you even need to look at it unless it makes a loud noise at which point you can close to defer until later? Constant distraction is poisonous. On your arm, it's going to be worse.

[bryanlarsen]

On your arm, it's much less distracting. If my phone vibrates and not my arm, I know I can ignore it. If they both vibrate, it takes half a second to glance down and decide whether it's important or not. And if it's one of those many "medium priority" type notifications that seem to form the bulk of your notifications, you're much more inclined to just ignore it rather than just answer because you've got your phone in your hand anyways...

[haswell]

It really depends on the situation. Generally, if my phone is in my pocket it means I'm on the go or performing some activity where pulling it out would be less convenient (or very challenging).

Going back to my airport example, I generally put my phone in my computer bag when traveling to avoid accidentally losing it. This is a case where not having to pull out the phone right away is extremely useful.

Other activities that benefit from not taking out the phone: grocery shopping, shoveling snow, working out, cycling, riding public transportation, cooking, and I could keep going.

Constant distraction is another conversation altogether, but I generally don't find this to be an issue by configuring my notifications to only show things I probably need to know about right away.

[adricnet]

You seem very down on smart watches and don't appear to value the opinions of those of use who are enjoying ours.

Why are you commenting on this thread beyond sharing your initial negative opinion here?

To put in Monty Python terms, "Are you here for an argument?".

[jorts]

I have one and find it extremely convenient to read texts from it while my phone is in my pocket or in some place inconvenient. The bluetooth range on it is awesome so if my phone is charging downstairs I can still get texts on my watch.

[thirdsight]

Is that more a problem that your phone has crappy battery life? Mine charges whilst I'm asleep and lasts fine for the rest of the time. Also it fits in my pocket fine and is never inconvenient unless I want it to be (i.e. Turned off). You now have two things demanding your attention.

Also, what if you get a phone call when your phone is downstairs and you are upstairs?

Limited utility.

[mangoman]

The first thing I do when I get home is remove everything from my pockets and put them on my counter. I usually forget that my phone is down there, so getting phone calls/texts on my wrist is better than missing them all together. Even if I get a call I at least know someone called and can call them back immediately if it's required, as opposed to not realizing that they called at all.

[splendidfailure]

Most of my pants would fit little more than a few bills or a single credit card, so my phone often lives in my purse. My watch, however, is something that's always on me, and now that it's a Pebble, I get the added benefit of having the important messages from my phone alert me as well.

[adricnet]

I can read and respond to texts without finding or touching my phone. This is tremendously useful in the house or while bustling through a train station in a heavy coat and gloves. And if I have my bluetooth earpiece on I can take calls the same way.

[chm]

Well, everything was at one point.

You would once have been called a materialist for owning your own set of cookingware, I think, but you'd hardly want to live without one now, would you? And you wouldn't call someone who buys a brand new set of kitchen knives "conspicuous".

I don't find much value in the Pebble so I don't buy it, but I definitely see a time when I'll want one of its kin. I'd pay to have data on my glucose level, heart rate, blood pressure etc available to me and me only, i.e. not sent to a central server.

But anyway, time will tell.

[thirdsight]

Cookware has an established practical and has been with us in various forms for thousands of years so I think that's a poor analogy.

The pebble demands your attention. That is all. It does nothing that something else doesn't do already, costs a chunk of money, needs constant feeding and attention. At least a smartphone was a consolidation of communication and entertainment devices. This is a portable distraction. A poor one at that.

Do you think it's healthy to constantly stare at your heat rate, glucose level and blood pressure and micromanage every parameter of your life?

Also in a decade, you will pay a subscription fee for that data from the central provider that your watch talks to. That model is established already plus it will probably be linked to your health insurance profile as well by then. You'll wear one to keep your premium down...

[dragonwriter]

> The pebble demands your attention. That is all.

Almost everyone I've heard from -- in person and online -- that has had a Pebble or similar smartwatch has said that getting notifications on it reduced their gadget-focussed attention compared to having only a smartphone, and cited that as the primary benefit.

So, while I think it could be, for some people, a new distraction, I don't think that's generally the case, and is, in fact, the opposite of what it normally is and what is motivating people to buy it.

[schrodinger]

Cookware has an established practical use now, but not when it first emerged. I don't think that smartwatches have been around long enough to establish themselves yet. It's too soon to say they're impractical.

[chm]

Well, the analogy was good enough that you got the point.

I don't see how wearing a watch that gathers biometrics would be unhealthy. A small bracelet without any display would be fine with me. At the moment, I don't need this - I'm in my prime. But once I get older, I might benefit from having a small buzz on my wrist alerting me that I'm working too hard mowing the lawn, or whatever.

I'm also against a model such as the one you describe, like I have made clear in my post.

[modeless]

The Pebble isn't that conspicuous. I don't wear it because people notice it (they rarely do). I wear it because it lets me turn off all sound and vibration on my phone without missing any important calls or messages, and it allows me to filter urgent calls/texts from non-urgent ones without taking my phone out (even in places that don't allow phone use, like movie theaters). These are useful features for anyone with a phone, and more than justify the Pebble's existence by themselves.

[Freaky]

All I want is a digital watch that doesn't look like ass and isn't the size of a small car :/

I've literally flicked through thousands of them and found maybe 2 or 3 that didn't look completely awful. Do people seriously like watches where the manufacturer's name and various bits of other assorted useless text take up half the face?

[wyager]

I still can't justify anything better than my $20 Nokia burner phone.

There is literally nothing that has an advantage over it for me. Status and cost mean nothing.

I think the smart phone is purely an example of conspicuous consumption, nothing more.

[thirdsight]

See my other post: At least a smartphone was a consolidation of communication and entertainment devices. The pebble is none of that.

[noblethrasher]

I would like to see the relationship between "wearables" and smartphones reversed.

Ideally, most of the functionality of a smartphone will be realized in a watch/bracelet. Then, you could just access your data using various cheap dumb-terminals (e.g. tablets and phones). And, by "cheap", I mostly mean something that you could afford to lose since it wouldn't need to have a large cache of your data to be useful.

In other words, we're still keeping the consolidation, just moving it to a different place.

[Anderkent]

> Status and cost mean nothing.

Saying status does not matter is of course an attempt to signal high status. No one's out of the status game.