Pixel watch is an order of magnitude more powerful and expensive than a Pebble though. Raise to wake is not as simple as it may seem considering most big brand smart watches didn't have a decently working implementation of it until only recently. It seems like the author wanted to keep it within the Pebble realm.
The pixel watch can be a nightmare. I've had the version 1 and the version 2 for years and I gave up because of the bugs. Random crashing, randomly dialing 911, just weird stuff that should not happen.
And then there's the support which is zero support. Completely frustrating to post a message and then get some volunteer support Tech, hahaha, saying expect improvements! And it's a volunteer saying that. And they have no authority. And There is no support, it all falls through. Random crashing on both versions of the watch. The first version screen was flickering like an old school television trying to tune in a distant UHF broadcast. Display drivers anyone?
So, pixel watches are in the drawer and I've got a Garmin watch on right now. Garmin is clunky but at least it's reliably clunky.
So it feels like a mis comparison, to me who's had the pixel watches.
I used to own the pebble, a couple versions of it, when they were first announced for several years again. And I found them to be very reliable and lightweight and usable.
I wanted a smartwatch that could talk to Google's home ecosystem and so I traded out of Pebble. And it's just been kind of mediocre misery.
Plus I don't know what Google is doing but recharging the pixel watch every 18 hours, or 36 if you're super lucky and your apps on the pixel watch behave themselves correctly, makes me feel like a slave to Google's naive product manager aspirations.
Like, "it can do everything, and we make money off of you because you are the product!" While at the same time making me miserable.
Economics don't work like that though. Google has the benefits of economies of scale and stable manufacturing partnerships, not to mention probably a lot more of the watch parts are designed in-house. I'd be surprised if Pebble could achieve anything close to the Pixel hardware for even twice the price.
It seems like Pebble is focusing on a niche market and this new product seems completely in line with that. There are plenty of other companies targeting the common folk who have no desire to optimize their life like this.
Niche market seems like an exaggeration, because they're competing against literal monopolies.
Pebble serves those people who want to watch or a ring that doesn't require being a slave to a wall wart, who want the watch to last for a long time. Take a look at Garmin, they do that too and they are a successful company. They are much older than Google and they still have a hard time keeping up with Google and it's billions of dollars of of mystery money advertising revenue.
The pixel hardware is a battery draining nightmare, in my personal experience having pixel watches for years and being a long-term pixel phone user. Even today the pixel phone that I have, after having I think five of these things, drains battery probably 20 to 40% faster than .. the competitor that I would next buy if I weren't feeling like I wanted some of the features that Google has bundled in with their phone and home and other like mnvo and messaging products. So, it seems like a mis comparison there, in my opinion. I don't want a smartwatch that lasts 25 hours and then has to be recharged. Or a smartwatch where the screen turns into a UHF channel just going out of tune and there's no tech support on Earth literally that is willing to help me. Volunteers on Google's support forums are lying to themselves that they have any power or sway with Google. It's a waste of time in my experience.
I don't mind the size, but lack of colors is annoying. If common icons where color-coded, like green to save, blue to download/print/export, red to delete, UI would be friendlier to use.
I think it is important to stress that both, color _and_ shape should be visible distinctive, and as you say it is important that the color palette is chosen in a way that even if the color does not stand out for a the color-blind person, the contrast stays visible.
Making everything monochrome is surly not more accessible, because there sure are people who find it easier to distinguish by color than shape.
Why in the world would colors discomfort you if you can't discern between them? Icons have until recently always been color coded. That doesn't make them a problem for the color-blind. You can look at the shape of the icons and read the text next to them. Would a pedestrian traffic light be better if it wasn't color coded? Would a white car be preferable to a red car?
> Why in the world would colors discomfort you if you can't discern between them?
Because pretty much as soon as one starts colour coding items in the UI, people start using the specific colours to encode meaning. If your UI requires someone to discern between the red and green versions of the same icon in your UI twice, congrats, you just lost 8% of male users!
> Would a pedestrian traffic light be better if it wasn't color coded?
If they weren't colour-coded, they would have to be differentiated by shape, and then when I traveled to Canada, I wouldn't have to guess whether the fancy horizontal traffic lights are ordered left-to-right or right-to-left
> Would a white car be preferable to a red car?
Even fully colour-sighted folks can't see red very well at night, so yes, white car > red car
Personal anecdote re the traffic lights: I thought "green light" was a metaphor until sometime my twenties, when a friend explained that the 3rd light actually is green to other people. It's always been a white light to me
With that line of reasoning we arrive at the conclusion that all graphical elements of an interface should be removed, as the blind cannot see icons.
> If your UI requires someone to discern between the red and green versions of the same icon
Color coding has never been about this, only when implemented wrongly. It is just an extra differentiator for GUI elements which are already differentiated by icon shape and text labels.
> Color coding... is just an extra differentiator for GUI elements which are already differentiated by icon shape and text labels.
In principle, I agree, but I do not believe I have ever used a software package that follows this philosophy. In practice, once you give people a tool, they are inclined to use it, and most projects only try and address accessibility concerns post-ship
Monochrome is a strange complaint, the text is also monochrome. Regarding what most people think I don't know, I'm definitely faster at spotting a specific pictogram in the start of a line than having to read multiple lower information-density pictograms (alphabet characters) in order (reading a full word or sentence). This seems obvious to me, 1 thing is faster to parse than multiple things.
How is it opposite. In my mind they all fall under the same libertarian fantasy umbrella.
The post mentioned the idea of casually sending a billion dollars. Was that ever possible with Bitcoin? AFAIK it's less ergonomic to send money using Bitcoin than it is using traditional banking.
Microsoft isn't going to abandon C#, it's just using the right tool for the right job. While there are certainly cases where it is justified to go lower level and closer to the metal, writing everything in Rust would be just as dumb as writing everything in C# or god forbid, JS.
No one cares? I am confident someone got a promotion out of AI automating that. It is the metric being tracked in performance reviews. What is not tracked is how the readers experience it, so no point in putting effort into that.
Bottom line is employees do what they're incentivised to do.
Google invented PWAs and broke their back trying to make them a thing. I'm not a fan of Google but credit where credit is due.
They were also highly incentivized to develop the APIs that make it all work as Chromebooks are basically hosts for browser apps. Apple, as well as the other tech giants involved in the W3C had no such incentives and were dragging their feet.
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