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Fitbit Won't Kill Off Pebble Services At Least Until 2018 (thenextweb.com) 33

Posted by msmash from the buying-more-time dept.
Earlier this week, Fitbit announced that it was buying up the assets of smartwatch maker Pebble, and a lot of questions still exist around exactly how Pebble's existing products will work. Today a member of Pebble's developer team attempted to address some of those questions. From a report on The Next Web: In a blog post, it noted that it will keep Pebble software and services running through 2017. Jon Barlow, who was previously on Pebble's Developer Evangelist team and is now part of Fitbit's transition effort, wrote: "To be clear, no one on this freshly-formed team seeks to brick Pebble watches in active service. The Pebble SDK, CloudPebble, Timeline APIs, firmware availability, mobile apps, developer portal, and Pebble appstore are all elements of the Pebble ecosystem that will remain in service at this time. Pebble developers are welcome to keep creating and updating apps. Pebble users are free to keep enjoying their watches."
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Fitbit Won't Kill Off Pebble Services At Least Until 2018 More

Fitbit Won't Kill Off Pebble Services At Least Until 2018

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  • Internet of Disappearing Things (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Yet another company whose products that people paid good money for will just stop working. Sure, they have a year's reprieve, assuming that promise isn't reneged upon at some point. This is why I don't buy anything that's "cloud enabled," I don't even mess with games anymore because they all require some online DRM component. I've been burned too many times when the stuff I bought stopped working.

    • I've been burned too many times when the stuff I bought stopped working.

      I bought a basis watch several years ago. Intel bought them out and their latest watch had a major recall so intel decided to shut it down. Intel gave me a check for $234 for my watch even though it wasn't even part of the recall and I had already used it for over 2 years. I found this kindof amazing but it still would have been better if they open sourced their app so that people could continue to use their watches. Ideally, devices would be created on open standards with simple apis and without vendor

    • I don't think your watch would just stop working or quit receiving notification from your phone.

      You might not be able to get new faces or functionality out of it, but that is pretty normal with non-cloud stuff too.

    • They have said that they will update the software so that the pebbles will continue working with most features intact. Please be aware that the developers in the pebble community are working on open source fixes. There is already a replacement for the Android Pebble App that is fully functional.

      Pebbles should continue to live on in the wild for some time... the only real question is whether advanced features like voice dictation will still be working.

  • Keep an eye on Gadgetbridge (Score:5, Informative)

    by itsownreward ( 688406 ) on Thursday December 15, 2016 @03:20PM (#53492427)
    Keep an eye on Gadgetbridge if you use Android. [github.com] They have already replicated a lot of what keeps your Pebble working, and if we're lucky they'll tie into using Google's voice recognition or a service of your choice. If their app would download METAR reports to give you the weather for wherever you are that would pretty much give you everything you need (that I use, anyway) that is cloud-connected.

  • I'm just curious, much like my Cyanogened Android Phones that are disconnected from Google, use F-Droid, talk to OwnCloud, eGroupware, are there watches and other devices which can send information to internally controlled network systems, distinct from any sort of service provider.

  • Fitbit signed the death warrant when the news went out that they bought some of Pebble's IP and nothing else. Who in their right mind would buy a Pebble now, knowing that it's working from borrowed time?

    If the device didn't rely on external servers to function, that's one thing. But the news reports said that it did, and those things will be around for maybe a year at best.

    I had been planning on buying a couple, but there's no way I will now. I'm not going to drop hundreds of dollars on a device when I k

    • You can't buy one now anyway, unless it is used. They are not selling them anymore.

      I have a couple (a 1st gen model and a Steel) and I expect them both to work exactly like they do today until the batteries lose their charging capacity.

      No, I don't expect new apps. I don't expect hardware support. And if you are using functionality that requires cloud servers I would not expect that to work for long either, but that is far from a requirement. I full expect to be able to keep using them for what I current

      • Actually, the other day I got a Best Buy flyer advertising them. So I'm guessing retailers are going into liquidation mode.

  • "Your watch will stop working soon, better buy a FitBit!"

  • Buying Cloud Services (Score:3)

    by Macdude ( 23507 ) on Thursday December 15, 2016 @04:50PM (#53493177)

    This is what you should expect when you buy something reliant upon cloud services. At some point those cloud services will go away.

    It would be nice if a law could be created that forced anyone offering cloud services to escrow full documentation / source code (including any keys required) to replicate the cloud services to be released into the public domain should the cloud services be stopped.

  • This was an awesome idea -- terrible execution. I was one of the original Kickstarter backers. It took YEARS for them to, in a slightly more than half-assed way, support iOS. They claimed support from day 1, but blamed Apple for it not working (although it wasn't Apple that claimed it was working in the first place). The hardware it self was even worse. I've gotten two replacements -- after a while the "ePaper" display just stops working. The case itself disintegrated after a couple of years, apparently not

  • I've seen a number of comments elsewhere complaining about the Kickstarter campaign, and how people are getting screwed. The problem is that blame is made on the wrong place. Kickstarter is NOT a store! It is a platform for people to invest in projects, and with investment can come risk--even risk of losing your money and not receiving the product you backed. Kickstarter has an amazing reputation for some amazing projects, but not all have succeeded.

    So next time you back a Kickstarter project, do so happily

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