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Pebble Time 2 Unveiled With 30-Day Battery and ePaper Display
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Custom apps for watch faces exist on watchOS too. Apple just doesn’t like them and like to keep control. watchOS has more advanced APIs and future expansion capabilities compared to Garmin from what I read. Plus Apple Watch hardware is Much more advanced than anything Garmin ships(64bit, More Storage, RAM). watchOS is much better planned for the future compared to the competition(including wearOS)
My take - their user base isn't exactly clamouring for this feature.
For me, I am comfortable with charging my Series 10 Apple Watch on a daily basis. Right now, its battery life is good enough that it ends each 24-hour cycle at around 50-60% battery life. I wake up at 5 am every day for work, and switch on the charger while I go wash up. Half an hour is typically enough to get it back up to full charge.
It's also easier to remind myself that I need to charge my apple devices daily (ie: iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch). Right now, I am indifferent between it lasting a day, and last a week or even a month.
Perhaps it might be useful if I were away on a longer trip, but that's simply not my lifestyle. Besides, people like likely still going to have their smartphone on them, which means they will bring a power bank, so it's relatively easy to just bring an additional Apple Watch charger while they are at it.
Second, the reason the Apple Watch has such "short" battery life is because it's essentially a computer you wear on your wrist. It uses more battery because it's doing a lot more in the background. Any improvements in power efficiency will eventually be offset by a larger display and / or a smaller battery to keep it thin.
Technology is all about engineering tradeoffs. Nobody is asking the question - what exactly is Pebble giving up in order to achieve that 30-day battery life? The likely answer is - it's the same OG design that lets you view notifications and maybe decline calls and that's about it. It won't really do much of anything else and this is the very reason it lost to the Apple Watch in the first place.
I can speak from experience as an OG pebble watch owner. the ability to read phone notifications on my wrist was a great proof of concept, but the device itself wasn't exactly an engineering marvel. The much-lauded week-long battery life quickly became 2-3 days for some reason, the pogo pins on the watch charger quickly corroded and had difficulty charging the watch, and well, it quickly became apparent that this was destined to go the way of the blackberry (it wasn't a bad product, but this was as far as it could go, and being obsolete by a better alternative was just a matter of time).
Even if it had the ability to respond to notifications, Pebble simply lacked the resources to push its smartwatch the same way Apple has. There was no reason to go with versions 2 and upgrade after the initial sales and the company simply ran out of cash. This will likely go the same way. It's a one and done deal.
I mean, will there even be app developers willing to invest the time to develop for the platform at this juncture?
Yes, actually. There are tons of apps getting updates and released, in addition to new faces. A very notable app is called Bobby, which is basically a frontend for using Gemini on a Pebble watch. A new watch face that caught my eye is called Oura Ring Stats, which is exactly what it says on the tin - displays data from your Oura Ring right on the face with the time.
Hell someone even made a Bluesky client if you're into that. Granted, none of this stuff works well on the iPhone due to Apple's restrictions. Having to open the app on your phone to push data to the app on the watch defeats the whole purpose - you might as well use your phone at that point.
The only thing that looks more horrible than that watch is the graphics/UI on that watch.
It'll be a huge hit when the '70s come back in fashion, though.
It'll be a huge hit when the '70s come back in fashion, though.
The counterpoint to that is - why should Apple be expected to give away their intellectual property away for free?
Of course corporations want more money, and up to a certain threshold, that's a relationship I am comfortable with, because it is the presence of supernormal profits that allow a company to remain in business and continue making the products that I like to use.
For example, let's look at the PC vs Mac dynamic. Most PC companies make very little money, because they are all running the same Windows OS, and so there is actually very little that allows them to properly differentiate their wares. The processor is the same (either Intel or AMD), meaning battery life and performance is more or less about there. You say there is nothing stopping people from integrating open platforms together, but the reality is that nobody has done it, because there is simply little (financial) incentive to do so. And I think this is the elephant in the room that nobody really wants to talk about.
Like Steam would naturally want to incentivise hardware manufacturers to sell gaming handhelds running steamOS, because they get to make 30% off game sales. But when you think about it, isn't this the whole Android dynamic all over again? What reason is there for said companies to push a product running someone else's software? There is little to differentiate my wares from the competition, I stop making money after that initial sale, because I don't get a cut of game sales, all I am doing is help prop up someone else's platform.
The right play (in my opinion) is to simply not play in the first place. The best way to make money is to still go the Nintendo route, where you own your own platform, and have a way of continuing to monetise your user base after the sale of the initial device. Maybe that's why I ended up going with a Nintendo Switch 2 over the Steam Deck. There's just something about the way Nintendo owns all its IP and is able to control the end user experience that speaks to me.
Meanwhile, apple silicon and macOS allows Apple to offer a unique experience made possible by their control over hardware and software, and charge a handsome margin in turn. A product like the Mac Studio is simply not possible on windows where the smaller form factor would just result in severe throttling due to all the heat being released by Intel or AMD processors.
It's all about gaming and specs and performance, this is what competition has done to the current state of windows, and it's just not for me (in that this has not resulted in hardware form factors that suit my computing needs the way Apple has).
And having an open platform that is free to download any app simply opened to gates to another aggregator to step in - Steam. And piracy, which appears to be another hot potato that nobody wants to address, or in the very least, seem to be openly championing.
Same for android phones vs iOS. More than a decade ago, people were claiming that the iPhone would lose to the more open Android platform. Today, while Android market share does dwarf iOS around the world, the reality is that the majority of android phone companies are not really making any money either. How many "iPhones killers" are no longer around today?
It appears to be a similar situation between the Apple Watch and android smartwatches. People are willing to pay $1k for a stainless steel Apple Watch or an ultra model. Meanwhile, users baulk at paying more than 2-3 hundred dollars for an android wear device. What this means is that Apple has the funds and the incentive to continue investing in R&D for their devices and supporting them, knowing that it will always be profitable.
I have been wearing an Apple Watch since 2016, and I can be sure that it will continue to still be around for the near foreseeable future.
On the flip side, how many android wear devices are there even today? Who's even actively developing processor chips for them? Can you trust the parent company to keep supporting them, much less sustain a thriving ecosystem, when there's simply no money to be made here?
The problem, ironically enough, doesn't seem to be that Apple's ecosystem is too closed, but that everyone else's is too open. It's all one giant race to the bottom for these OEMs, which means zero profit, and that's honestly not a fate I want to wish upon Apple.
E-paper is a broad term for display technologies that mimic the appearance of traditional paper, while E Ink is a specific type of e-paper technology known for its low power consumption and excellent readability.- Bing