Comment by Aurornis
20 hours ago
> How long does the battery last?
> Roughly 12 to 15 hours of recording. On average, I use it 10-20 times per day to record 3-6 second thoughts. That’s up to 2 years of usage.
I feel like I’m usually good about being able to imagine a market for different devices even when I’m not the target audience, but I’m having a hard time with this one.
Having 20 different 3-second thoughts transcribed to notes that I have to process every day sounds more like added complications than problem solving. If I stretch, I can think of a few things that flashed into my mind and then I forgot again for a couple days because I wasn’t in a location to immediately pull out my phone and put it on my todo list (which takes about 10 seconds because I put a shortcut in my lock screen). However, those locations weren’t something where I could be “whispering” to a ring, either.
So I don’t know. I hope repebble succeeds with everyone they’re doing, but this product feels like they went too far into the novelty end of the spectrum and neglected some of the actual usability that made the original Pebble popular.
EDIT: On second thought, maybe the lack of recharging is an acknowledgement that they don’t actually expect people to use this product a lot or for very long. Maybe the target audience is people who want to have something new and unique that they can also use as a conversation starter. Once the novelty wears off maybe it doesn’t get worn much. If it does become popular with a niche audience they can release a V2 with charging.
Different people have different lives. I myself can't imagine the type of life where at any given moment during the day I'm in a position to "immediately pull out my phone" when I want to create a record of something. I'm not a Pebble customer, past or present, and I have owned exactly zero smartwatches. Excluding portrayals of futuristic wrist-mounted computers I saw during childhood that seemed cool just because they seemed cool, this is the only worthwhile thing I've ever seen anyone actually propose a smartwatch could be good for. The fact that smartwatches could be (and are) widely embraced but that this seems like pure novelty to someone strikes me as very strange.
It sounds, though, like it doesn't solve a problem you have. I guess the only recourse you have about its existence is to not buy it.
I'm not a watch person, and the only reason I occasionally wear one is because it's a Garmin and I'm recording an outdoor activity with it. But while cycling, when the phone in my backpack makes a notification noise, it is kind of handy to just be able to look at the watch to see what kind of notification it is - the kind hardly worth looking at or the kind worth stopping and pulling out the phone to reply to. This particular gadget doesn't have a microphone and any app interaction on it involves a multi-button dance. But if there was a single button audio recording app, I can totally see myself using it. Especially as you get older (I'm guessing - can't interview younger me) fleeting thoughts can be awfully fleeting.
> if there was a single button audio recording app
Would the watch require 1 or 2 hands to record audio?
The ring seems easier to use while biking. Or driving.
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There is another way to go about it - ignoring the phone completely while enjoying biking or jogging. Or leaving it at home. Unless I am on a call duty, all my notifications can wait.
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Yeah, I'm old enough to remember when microcassette voice recorders were a fad, and pretty much everyone found they just weren't worth it.
Psychologically there's a sort of information hoarding aspect to this. I think a lot of people experience this with browser tabs, where they don't want to read something right now, but also don't want to just abandon it. So you end up with this backlog you feel you have to hold onto.
I've learned to just trust my brain more, where if something occurs to me is important, it'll probably occur to me again when its relevant, vs me treating random momentary insights like they're a priceless treasure.
It perhaps starts to make more sense now with better AI transcribing though. For the last few decades, the idea of dictating notes has been nice; but not the reality of typing them up/processing them however yourself if you don't have a secretary.
I could sort of see myself doing this coupled with good speech to text, but I don't know if I'd do it enough that it's worth having special hardware for vs. just recording on my phone or with earphones - or getting a smart watch for this plus other functionality.
> Yeah, I'm old enough to remember when microcassette voice recorders were a fad, and pretty much everyone found they just weren't worth it.
They really were worth it if you had a secretary to transcribe the voice recordings.
I actually tried this workflow with some ebay'ed microcassette recorders - even the really compact ones are bulkier (though not necessarily heavier) than a modern cellphone, plus being non-connected you basically have to set aside some time to transcribe and erase (doable, but if you're specifically using it as a memory assist then having to remember this isn't great.) They did do a good job of "one press and they're operating, and you can confidently believe it" (but you have to pick them up in the right orientation for that to work.)
A modern digital voice recorder would have been a better choice for the experiment perhaps? Pen form factor versions exist, e.g. Olympus VP-20, Philips Voicetracer DVT1600.
Recently I rediscovered that this has been solved by a small notepad that fits in my pocket and a pen. Maybe I should get some VC money for that
I think this could be useful for the type of person that uses uses todo lists to help them tackle lots of small tasks that they intend to do immediately but somehow get distracted mid-action from and never finish (and then forget about altogether). As described in this blog post that front-paged hn some time ago:
> When I notice a micro-task like this, my instinct is not to do it, but to put it in the todo list. Then I try to do it immediately. And if I get distracted halfway through, it’s still there, in the todo list.
https://borretti.me/article/notes-on-managing-adhd
The problem with this approach is that recording tasks become a good amount of relative overhead compared to the 'micro-task' if it involves pulling out your phone, and pulling out your phone also introduces a potential distraction. So, having something that is single purpose and as low-friction as possible is appealing.
I'm skeptical that this is actually any better than using a smart watch that you can dictate to though.
As someone with ADHD that’s me. I don’t think this product is for me, but I have to immediately write a thing down or do it. Otherwise it’s lost. Importance is irrelevant.
Funny enough I have a pebble core 2 duo from this team. There’s a simple voice app that jots down a short note quickly on the watch, it can support 10 notes total. I love it. I only use it when I really need to throw something down immediately and I can’t clutter it up with nonsense. It also means I check it every day because it’s not daunting.
I on the other hand love it. I am often out without my phone closeby and having a way to take notes with one hand during some activity would be great.
I mean on one side I can see using it for to-do lists, but on other, why would I want another device in addition to smartphone and smartwatch ? Especially that talking to your smartwatch looks slightly less crazy in public than to your finger
Au contraire, you'll look like a Secret Service agent talking into your wrist.
if it lasts even 1 year with on avg 1 min audio, I think it's nice disposable device to have.
Some ideas if you have an app which can be integrated to other services:
* I feel sick today, notify my manager about it, probably I will stay home
* schedule a task to pickup a trash
* something to remember, colleague X told me he is using service A for data clean up
...
The idea is immediately interesting to me because I often am in the car and want to remind myself to look something up and forget when off the road. I do not have a car with CarPlay. This would suffice beautifully.
...But that battery life absolutely kills it for me. I'd feel like each time I recorded something I was burning lifetime off my device. (Technically also true of rechargeable battery lifetimes, but it's abstract enough and minimal enough I don't think about it.)
> Having 20 different 3-second thoughts transcribed to notes that I have to process every day sounds more like added complications than problem solving.
Frankly, I'm surprised this is a selling point, because I think it attaches too much importance to our "ideas". If it's a good idea that you'll pursue in earnest, you'll come across it again. And if you don't, so what?
I say this as someone who does quite a bit of reflection throughout the day. I jot down things I find interesting, which can be, paradoxically, a way to move past the musing and onto other things instead of having it nag and pull my attention from other things. So, in all likelihood, this product would likely lead to a bunch of crap being stored in memory that you'll never return to.
Some people have serious memory issues, such as myself (I recently took a test from a neurologist and scored in the bottom 2%). I see this as being a lifesaver.
It's not just for "ideas", it's for reminders. Most of my remembering happens when I'm driving on the highway, and I don't want to text and drive.
For me it's more observations than ideas - "check out new restaurant/bookstore I saw while driving in Arlington" while not getting distracted from the actual driving...
i would also see this as being super useful for things you need to buy. i often notice halfway through cooking something that i'm running low on an ingredient. that's one of the worst times to have to stop and pull out a phone haha, but if i don't write it down i won't remember to get this random niche ingredient later
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