Comment by tenacious_tuna
18 hours ago
from the article:
> Initially, we experimented by building this as an app on Pebble, since it has a mic and I’m always wearing one. But, I realized quickly that this was suboptimal - it required me to use my other hand to press the button to start recording (lift-to-wake gestures and wake-words are too unreliable). This was tough to use while bicycling or carrying stuff.
I’ve never had that issue with my Apple Watch. Granted, apple are a world-class developer (arguably), so their stuff might be more reliable, but I use raise-to-speak and hey siri with my watch all the time.
Raise to speak is the most unreliable feature for me, I’ve tried it several times and it’s like 30% success rate
I have an ultra 2, and I typically hold it about 5-10cm from my mouth when I try to use raise-to-speak. Maybe that approach will help you?
This is probably also part of the reason that the AW battery lasts so much less time. It's always on the lookout for these events, and over time that ends up having a non-trivial impact on battery. For Pebble users, that would significantly compromise one of the main selling points of the Pebble.
But you have to instruct Siri to record/transcribe/save what you want to say; this does it automatically. It removes friction if you just want to record short notes.
I almost never want to take a note though, I usually want to perform an action.
Recording a note isn’t high friction in my opinion though: “Hey siri make a note XYZ”. Admittedly I don’t create or use notes like this, but I use reminders a lot and I’ve never felt like there was friction: “hey siri remind me to call Dave when I get home”
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I use it all the time too, but recording a voice memo doesn’t seem possible without touch (you need to tap to actually record)?
Siri sends your contacts list to Apple with every request. That makes it a nonstarter for me.
Pixel Watch have "raise to talk" to trigger Gemini, so you don't need your other hand.
Other watches detect gestures like pinching fingers on the hand wearing the watch.
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.
Add $75 (the price of this ring) to the Pebble time and you're almost at the price of a Pixel Watch 4. And you can get a PW3 for cheaper.
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