r/apple • u/digidude23 • May 11 '23

Facebook Messenger joining the long list of discontinued Apple Watch apps later this month Apple Watch

https://9to5mac.com/2023/05/11/meta-killing-facebook-messenger-apple-watch-app/
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986

u/[deleted] May 11 '23

Apple Watch, as a product, is an incredible success

As a platform - a$$.

I wonder if Apple saw this as a likely scenario before the series 0 dropped

499

u/Agreeable-Weather-89 May 11 '23

I know I'm outspoken and probably the tech version of 'I liked that band before they got big' but... Pebble is where wearables peaked and a modern pebble would be amazing.

We've got better e-ink, more efficient processors, better battery chemistry, better tooling, we could make a pebble the size of a Casio 91.

Instead we have a wrist mounted iPhone 4.

38

u/MasterRD13 May 11 '23

My OG Pebble stopped working due to the screen tearing issue, but I replaced it with the Pebble Time which I loved. Color screen with custom watch faces and games like Tetris and Brick Breaker. I love my Apple Watch but its no Pebble that's for sure.

29

u/Agreeable-Weather-89 May 11 '23

I loved the quirky UI it was just fun, and not 'fun' in the same way as independent burger joints are 'fun' because they have a bike on a wall but actually fun.

89

u/kinglucent May 11 '23

I loved the idea of Pebble, but could you explain how a modern version would be superior to the Watch in this context?

161

u/Agreeable-Weather-89 May 11 '23

Smaller, longer battery, cheaper.

119

u/boldjoy0050 May 11 '23

The battery life is my biggest complaint about the Apple Watch. I’d love a B&W screen that had basic time, timer, Apple Pay, and fitness functions. I don’t need access to my password manager or some banking app on my watch.

37

u/Agreeable-Weather-89 May 11 '23

Exactly, I'd love a decent feature watch unfortunately Google are hellbent on chasing Apple down the smart watch road with a fraction of the budget.

Google with all the 'AI' stuff could make a feature watch amazing, pebble was moving in that direction, and at $200 would be really nice.

9

u/doryoboe May 11 '23

Check out the Garmin Instinct. It's literally all of those things, except it uses Garmin pay instead of Apple pay. I have the smaller version and I charge my watch once every three weeks.

11

u/DogAteMyCPU May 11 '23

looks giant, i really liked my pebble 2 hr being very slim

14

u/refrigerator_runner May 12 '23

Holy shit, that Garmin is gargantuan. And I'm surprised how slim the Pebble is even to this day.

Garmin Instinct: 15.3mm thick

Apple Watch Series 7: 10.7mm thick

Pebble 2: 9.5mm thick

Timex Weekender Chronograph wristwatch: 9mm thick

4

u/xorgol May 12 '23

I have an older model of Vivoactive, it's slightly less rugged than the Instinct, but it has all the features and a whole lot of battery life.

2

u/londite May 12 '23

Check the Garmin Vivoactive 4S. It's an older model already, but mine is still going strong at almost 5 years old. Battery still lasts like 3-4 days of normal use (when I track hikes with GPS it dies in like 3 hours though, but I normally use the Fenix 6s for that). It's small and kinda cute.

1

u/skycake10 May 12 '23

Garmin Venu 2S is only 40mm face diameter.

1

u/DogAteMyCPU May 12 '23

That's more like it. Still mind boggling how many models Garmin makes.

2

u/LL-beansandrice May 12 '23

Fitbit charge 5 is pretty close to this. Doesn’t use Apple Pay but has a wallet.

3

u/-Green_Machine- May 11 '23

The battery life is my biggest complaint about the Apple Watch. I’d love a B&W screen that had basic time, timer, Apple Pay, and fitness functions. I don’t need access to my password manager or some banking app on my watch.

But then they could no longer charge these prices.

2

u/RegretfulUsername May 12 '23

They’d get such better market penetration though if they released an iPhone mini type of product.

2

u/Shaoqing8 May 12 '23

Garmin instinct?

2

u/cleeder May 11 '23

Hell, I’d take a B+W screen just because the rainbow of color on this thing makes it look like a children’s toy, and honestly I find it a little over whelming.

What ever happened to style?

And when you want color, like on the watch face, it’s never how you want it. Set a face color? Only on wrist up! Want to set the face text color? Not for the complications!

-5

u/Whodean May 11 '23

Ultra.

14

u/MobiusOne_ISAF May 11 '23

The Ultra is huge on some people's wrists, not even mentioning the price.

The answer to the bad battery life shouldn't just be to spend nearly $1000.

1

u/golfkartinacoma May 12 '23

An Apple watch for the rest of us? Classic digital watch + a Mac classic ?

1

u/Milk-Lizard May 12 '23

Authy on the Watch is godly though ;)

1

u/GrookeyDLuffy May 12 '23

Ultra solves this but ofc it’s a grand lol

1

u/phughes May 12 '23

I replaced my Apple watch with a Skagen smartwatch (it uses the same platform as the Fossil smartwatches.)

It's… OK. The software platform is pretty bad, but the battery life is wonderful, and it's a beautiful watch. I only have to charge once a month, and with a little too much effort my heart rate info goes into HealthKit. At that point I'm at 90% of what I want.

9

u/kinglucent May 11 '23

So you’re not arguing that it’d be a superior platform?

57

u/Agreeable-Weather-89 May 11 '23

It's a watch so being cheaper, smaller, and longer battery makes it superior to me.

I don't see how not having apps which get discontinued and needing charging every day or every other day to facilitate that as superior.

12

u/badDuckThrowPillow May 11 '23

You've basically described a quartz watch.

46

u/Agreeable-Weather-89 May 11 '23

Except with basic notifications and fitness stuff.

7

u/plexxer May 11 '23

Have you seen the Withings ScanWatch?

6

u/sizviolin May 11 '23

I use my Withings Steel HR pretty much daily. It looks fantastic and professional, battery lasts a month+, and it’s enough to tell if a notification is important or not alongside buzzing in case I don’t feel my phone. The only real time I use the Apple Watch is for cooking timers tbh.

I’m wearing it right now - pic

4

u/illbeyourchaser May 11 '23

I’m partially with you. I think the concept would be dope if for “fitness stuff” it’s not just an accelerometer, but also has a HR sensor, temperature, and blood O2. For me though I really enjoy the touch screen interface with the Apple Watch, and I started on a pebble as well. But adding touch screen capabilities would probably make it too big, no?

6

u/Agreeable-Weather-89 May 11 '23

Not really, touch isn't big or computational expensive.

I think temperature is a bit much but O2 and HR are easy since pebble did those.

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1

u/SynclinalJob May 11 '23

I just want a watch that shows me when someone is calling and to not need charge every night. No one makes one without health tracking and, for me, it just makes the watch more money for features I don’t use

2

u/Agreeable-Weather-89 May 11 '23

Xiaomi band would work

2

u/sizviolin May 11 '23

Look at the Withings options, I love mine - https://i.imgur.com/JuAltCx.jpg

9

u/[deleted] May 11 '23

At its peak Pebble was a superior platform entirely due to excellent developer support and custom watchfaces

5

u/LordElysian May 11 '23

That’s true of Fitbits already though. Do you want a Fitbit?

5

u/Agreeable-Weather-89 May 11 '23

Own one, just get the feeling Google doesn't care because Apple doesn't make a fitness band.

1

u/Easy_Humor_7949 May 12 '23

Cheaper isn’t necessarily better. You get what you pay for. Pebbles never came close to the sort of ease of use the Apple Watch has.

On the flip side, the Apple Watch can’t figure out how to reliably connect to my AirPods… much less act like an extension of my iPhone. (God forbid you walk out of Bluetooth range while listening to a podcast)

2

u/OkThanxby May 12 '23

On the flip side, the Apple Watch can’t figure out how to reliably connect to my AirPods… much less act like an extension of my iPhone. (God forbid you walk out of Bluetooth range while listening to a podcast)

Yeah, I’ve realised it’s good for 2 things - to tell the time and as a pretty amazing fitness tracker.

It’s not good enough to replace a phone yet though.

2

u/Easy_Humor_7949 May 12 '23

It’s not good enough to replace a phone yet though.

I’d love for it to just be a temporary stand in so I could get away with not always having my phone in arm’s reach… or Bluetooth range. 🙁

2

u/OkThanxby May 12 '23

I’ve got the cellular model and tried it for a bit, but decided that the extra monthly cost on my phone plan wasn’t worth it because of the limitations.

1

u/Easy_Humor_7949 May 12 '23

Yeah I kept toying with the idea of caving and paying my carrier more to get a cellular version, but you’re right. It’s not worth it.

1

u/[deleted] May 11 '23

There are already plenty of products on the market that satisfy those criteria.

4

u/Agreeable-Weather-89 May 11 '23

There are plenty of foldable phones... I'd still like Apple to make one.

11

u/pjazzy May 11 '23

I still have my pebble in a drawer. That was awesome tech.

25

u/WholesomeCirclejerk May 11 '23

They don’t spur the same sense of excitement, but I’ve grown to accept Garmin watches as the spiritual successor to Pebble

3

u/Atomicbocks May 12 '23

I like my Fossil hybrid with an e-ink screen and real hands. It’s not for everybody though.

3

u/workinkindofhard May 12 '23

Check out the Garmin Instinct Solar

3

u/AdamOas May 12 '23

I was super happy with my pebble steel. Looked so much nicer than any smartwatch before or after, and had pretty much all the features and functions I really wanted.

2

u/dvidsilva May 11 '23

have you tried whithings? really long battery and does everything i need at a fair price

3

u/shinra528 May 11 '23

Ooh, I wish I had gotten a Pebble. I went to buy one and found out they had been discontinued 3 months prior to me looking.

1

u/PM_ME_GOODDOGS May 12 '23

I backed it as a kickstarter or whatever it was. The project itself was a disaster but the idea was/is still there. Apple list of watch faces is a joke tbh. Also the watch app on iphone still has 1/3 of the dedicated bottom to just tutorials

0

u/Neg_Crepe May 11 '23

A hipster

1

u/[deleted] May 12 '23

Sony Wena is where it is at these days.

Replacement band for a normal watch, has 7-8 day battery life, a mic, notifications, etc.

1

u/HelpRespawnedAsDee May 12 '23

The watch faces were so fun!!!! Really added a personal feel to it.

1

u/that_leaflet May 12 '23

PineTime has been great for me. Not E ink or always on display, but it lasts a long time.

Unfortunately notifications don't work on iOS due to Apple restrictions.

1

u/red_hare May 12 '23

I bought a new pebble two a few years ago and it was the best warch I ever owned until the iOS app finally stopped working.

Step counter, HR monitor, apps, thousands of watch faces, vibrating silent alarms, AND 7 DAYS OF BATTERY.

The idea I'd have to pay all that money and then charge my watch every night is insane to me. I'd rather rock a $100 pebble or just a cheap casio.

1

u/Qorhat May 12 '23

Aww man the Pebble was great. The battery life was amazing and I loved how customisable it was.

1

u/Drarok May 12 '23

I loved my pebbles! I even made an app to start/stop timers in Harvest for my work. Nice little SDK, almost plain C though so quite a barrier to entry. I think they were working on some JS-based tools though?

Shame it couldn’t last.

1

u/AccidentallyBorn May 12 '23

I guess I'm the odd one out here then, in that I think the Apple Watch is near perfect in hardware and software. It's the only reason I continue to use an iPhone.

The design is (imo) beautiful, along with the display. The processor is fast and the user interface is snappy, with good shortcuts for common tasks. Siri actually works, and is responsive (vastly more so than Google Assistant on any Wear OS watch I've used).

And the best part for me is the huge wealth of health statistics it collects. Which I know isn't unique, but I have yet to find a better ecosystem for surfacing, exploring and exporting that data than HealthKit. Plus the Fitness app is really nice (far nicer than Fitbit imo).

I owned a Pebble Time and found it cool and customisable, but clunky, slow and not very smart at all.

1

u/Agreeable-Weather-89 May 12 '23 edited May 12 '23

Let's break it down, the device that costs £269/£419 is being used by you for

  • Siri

  • Fitness data

There is nothing intrinsic about how you use an Apple watch that would be incompatible with a feature watch, comparing it to a over half decade pebble is silly. Here for me are the most important things for a smartwatch

  1. Tell the time

  2. Good battery (minimum a day)

  3. Notify me of notifications

  4. Collect fitness data

  5. Pay

  6. Apps

1-5 can be done on a feature watch, the Versa does it as does say a Mi Band 7 pro does everything put Pay(outside China) and costs £85 which means for substantially less money a feature watch does 90% of what I want a smartwatch to do.

2

u/AccidentallyBorn May 12 '23 edited May 12 '23

I have the same basic requirements, and have used many smartwatches, including Pebble, Tizen-based (Galaxy Watch Active, Watch3), Wear OS (Huawei Watch, Misfit Vapor 2), and Apple Watch (Series 0, 4 and 6).

Apple Watch absolutely, hands down, destroys the rest in terms of actual convenience and usability. Tizen is glitchy as fuck and makes you use Bixby and Samsung shitware, Wear OS 2/3 were incredibly slow and buggy to the point of being unusable, and Pebble was just not very good.

Series 0 Apple Watch also sucked, to be fair, but the Series 4 and later have been pretty much flawless in terms of UX for me.

Let’s break it down, the device that costs £269/£419 is being used by you for

Siri

Fitness data

Those, along with the rest of the obvious stuff, and notifications+quick replies, tap-to-pay, home automation - usually but not always via Siri, music controls when I’m working out.

Given the amount I’ve spent on half as much functionality that barely works from every other major brand of smartwatch, I actually don’t mind the pricing. They’re surprisingly durable and are frankly the only platform that does everything a smartwatch should do, reliably.

1

u/Agreeable-Weather-89 May 12 '23

You are wholly ignoring my point, you are comparing a smartwatch to other smartwatches and yes the Apple watch is better.

My point is that smartwatches are overkill for how I, and many others use them, fitness doesn't require huge amounts of processing, nor does notifications yet I bet the Apple Watch 8 is more powerful than an iPhone 4. A ton of money is being spent to give user power to achieve very little.

It's like cramming a high power i9 into an ultrabook, yes it gives extra performance, but for how the person uses it offers little improvement.

You're right Apple pulls off the 'smart'watch better than most but they'd be equally well equipped to pull off a feature watch and unfortunately Android companies are hellbent on following Apple

2

u/AccidentallyBorn May 12 '23

My point is that smartwatches are overkill for how I, and many others use them, fitness doesn’t require huge amounts of processing, nor does notifications yet I bet the Apple Watch 8 is more powerful than an iPhone 4. A ton of money is being spent to give user power to achieve very little.

Disagree. Fast processors enable vastly richer end user experiences, on-device ML inference, better real-time sensor fusion for fitness tracking, and a long list of other advantages. If you want to do modern smartwatch things, you need a multitasking OS. That comes with a bunch of complexity that requires a decent processor.

And fwiw, the Watch chips are definitely a lot more power efficient than an iPhone 4. The Series 0 had a modified iPhone 4S A5 chip, iirc.

It’s like cramming a high power i9 into an ultrabook, yes it gives extra performance, but for how the person uses it offers little improvement.

Perhaps little obvious improvement, but in this case the “ultrabook” actually needs the “i9” to offer much of its best functionality.

You’re right Apple pulls off the ‘smart’watch better than most but they’d be equally well equipped to pull off a feature watch and unfortunately Android companies are hellbent on following Apple

I care about being able to leave my phone at home and listen to music and make/receive calls on my watch while I track a workout. I care about receiving rich notifications that I can respond to very quickly with a swipe or a tap, and not have to wait for the UI to lag or poke at gummy side buttons while waiting for a Bluetooth connection to shuffle data to/from my phone. Those are requirements that feature watches will never be able to satisfy. I think we’re just looking for different feature sets.

1

u/Agreeable-Weather-89 May 12 '23

Now that you mention it when I'm looking at my Casio watch I constantly think 'I wish this had more on-device ML inference'. /s

You are just working backwards from what the watch can do and insisting it needs to do it rather than work forwards from what you need it to do.

2

u/AccidentallyBorn May 12 '23

As I said, I want these things. I don’t have my watch solely to tell the time. If you don’t need or want the smart features (many of which do require ML inference), then don’t buy a smartwatch.

0

u/Agreeable-Weather-89 May 12 '23

What you have said is how exactly having ML enhanced neutral nets AI Blockchain has fundamentally improved your experience of a watch.

It just feels like you're basing your view of a product off of the marketing presentation not how you use it.

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1

u/skycake10 May 12 '23

I have a Garmin watch that feels like an evolution of Pebble. It does basic notifications, fitness stuff, and has an OLED screen. It's a bit bigger than the Casio 91, but not a lot.

1

u/Agreeable-Weather-89 May 12 '23

Yes but does it do on device ML inference?

1

u/skycake10 May 12 '23

No, thank goodness

1

u/Agreeable-Weather-89 May 12 '23

How will you cope with local neural nets... the only way to tell time. /s I don't think I could ever go back to a watch without a dual core 64 bit processor and 5GHz wifi.

1

u/BorisThe_Animal May 12 '23

>pebble the size of a Casio 91

"Pebble" version of Casio 91! Actually, Casio is making connected G-Shocks already, all they need to do is figure out the e-ink and add just a notch more functionality.

1

u/[deleted] May 13 '23

[deleted]

1

u/Agreeable-Weather-89 May 13 '23

Yeah, problem is Google being Google is concentrating on emulating Apple rather than being their own thing. The amount of money spent on the Google Watch could have been better spent making the Versa 4 better.

1

u/levijohnson1 May 14 '23

Buy a Garmin

0

u/Agreeable-Weather-89 May 14 '23

Doesn't solve the problem.

1

u/levijohnson1 May 14 '23

Which problem?

0

u/Agreeable-Weather-89 May 14 '23

Companies spending insufficient resources to deliver a product beyond the real world needs of the consumer.

1

u/drgut101 May 15 '23

I had a Pebble. They were sooo fucking cool. I miss that thing.

26

u/_sfhk May 11 '23

I wonder if Apple saw this as a likely scenario before the series 0 dropped

Nah, watch the first reveal again. They had no idea what to do with the product and were hoping apps would come.

12

u/[deleted] May 11 '23

I don’t got time to sit through 45min of an 8 year old keynote but I’ll take you at your word

6

u/[deleted] May 12 '23

Tim Cook spends like the first 10 minutes talking about how precise telling time in this watch is

1

u/Toysoldier34 Jun 04 '23

That's such a sad/pathetic thing to even really bring up let alone spend that much time on since keeping time has been pretty reliable and simple for decades. The only thing that makes a lot of clocks inaccurate is just a dying battery making it fall out of sync. They make some great stuff but they really had to have had nothing and needed to pad for time to go on about that.

1

u/userlivewire May 12 '23

So basically what a headset is going to be also?

2

u/_sfhk May 12 '23

Maybe! The cool thing about Apple being so slow to change course is that they'll likely keep iterating for at least a few years, and hopefully it'll be good by then.

1

u/userlivewire May 12 '23

When people can’t even IMAGINE what would possess them to wear a headset for hours at a time it’s not a good sign. Let alone is there actually any demand.

18

u/GetReady4Action May 11 '23

I doubt it because when S0 dropped, everyone was making Watch apps. then they all dwindled away. I love my Watch for what it is, first and foremost a the fact that it’s a watch, but it’s also a fitness tracker, an iPod shuffle essentially when I go to the gym, an occasional communicator for calls/texts, and the ability to glance at my notifications. that’s it. and I love it for those things! but a legitimate mobile platform it is not.

5

u/BIGSTANKDICKDADDY May 12 '23

I think Apple eventually realized that sensors and tracking are the killer features and things like notifications/wrist apps add negligible value for end users.

19

u/[deleted] May 11 '23

[deleted]

15

u/[deleted] May 11 '23 edited May 11 '23

Link?

Edit - I guess not haha

2

u/adamlaceless May 12 '23

They knew this 100%

I’ll never forgive Tim for killing the Fuel Band for it.

2

u/purplemountain01 May 11 '23

A while back I saw it mentioned that Apple is great at making hardware but sucks at making software. Google is great at making software but sucks at making hardware. I still think this is accurate.

9

u/[deleted] May 12 '23 edited 17d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

5

u/purplemountain01 May 12 '23

Several examples are

  • Siri and Google assistant
  • Gmail
  • Gmaps and Apple Maps
  • Notifications on Android and on iOS
  • iCloud and Google Drive/Google Cloud. iCloud web interface miles behind Gdrive's interface
  • Apple Notes and Google Keep
  • Chrome and Safari
  • Google Office and Apple pages etc

Google for a long time as been ahead with software and web interfaces. Apple is about non existent on the web. They have only in the recent years started to appear on the web with iCloud and Apple TV+. You're not wrong with Google does kill off quite a few projects. But with the projects they fully commit behind come out well built.

1

u/Spatulakoenig May 12 '23

Famous example:

Apple doesn’t offer a calculator on the iPad.

Google offers a calculator everywhere via search.

2

u/GorgiMedia May 12 '23

That's so funny to post that under an article like that.