Eric Migicovsky, founder of Pebble, writes about smartwatch hardware and software, Pebble's history, and its revival with open-sourced PebbleOS.
HN links it for Pebble's return and Google open-sourcing PebbleOS, and for his argument about Apple's iPhone restrictions, which commenters debate.
> This is more than just a revenue calculation
Everything is a revenue calculation
> that has massive engineering implications for an ecosystem as vast as Apple’s.
That is Apple's problems. All Eu says is "do not deliberatly hamper competition and don't install artificial barriers to differentiate your products".
Apple has had no issues complying with every single request from any government.
> Simple features like Live Translation or iPhone Mirroring become 10x more complex to build when you need to test and support other vendor devices.
You don't have to test and support them on vendor devices. You either provide an API, or let "vendor devices" implement the same features. This has never been such big of an issue.
> In fact some features become downright impossible if you require interoperability.
Then those features are either not needed, or it's Apple's own fault (e.g. for preventing others from building the same feature set).
It's insane to me that Hacker News, of all places, would argue that walled gardens are good, actually. Ponder this article, for example: "Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones" https://ericmigi.com/blog/apple-restricts-pebble-from-being-awesome-with-iphones
> This is about slowing down the pace of development and adding engineering complexity to everything worldwide
The only ones insisting and making it so are Apple. A great example is this: https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/03/14/dma-compliance-default-maps-app-in-eu/ Apple…
> I replied to someone else in the same vein but having had a garmin watch in the home there was nothing that it would have done better if it was able to work with Apple's proprietary stuff
Maybe to you. Garmin watches cannot respond to notifications on Apple devices, for example. Detailed article about restrictions on iOS from Pebble: https://ericmigi.com/blog/apple-restricts-pebble-from-being-awesome-with-iphones
> If random devices of unknown provenance were able to freely connect with Apple devices then the security of Apple's ecosystem would take a hit. This would be bad.
Random devices are not able to connect over bluetooth to your device without your consent. Then, the bluetooth device can only get as much information as the companion app will allow it to get.
Besides, we have that on Android (and PCs) and the security of these "ecosystems" is not worse because of it.
Also includes news about a new Appstore, which can probably be seen as a reaction to the stories from last week:
We’ve created our own Pebble Appstore feed (appstore-api.repebble.com) and new Developer Dashboard. Our feed (fyi powered by 100% new software) is configured to back up an archive of all apps and faces to Archive.org (backup will gradually complete over the next week). Today, our feed only has a subset of all Pebble watchfaces and apps (thank you aveao for creating Pebble Archive!). Developers - you can upload your existing or new apps right now! We hope that this sets a standard for openness and we encourage all feeds to publish a freely and publicly available archive. https://ericmigi.com/blog/pebble-watch-software-is-now-100percent-open-source#:~:text=app%2E-,We%E2%80%99ve,available%20archive
> Surely if a lack of open phone OS and feature access was the problem, we’d see a rich ecosystem of integrations that exist on Android devices that are just impossible to achieve on iOS right?
...yes, and that's exactly what has happened. Android has a thriving ecosystem of excellent smartwatches (Garmin, Pebble, Fitbit, Samsung & Pixel watches, etc) with lots of features (particularly around notifications and interactions with apps on the device) that are impossible to support on iOS. https://ericmigi.com/blog/apple-restricts-pebble-from-being-awesome-with-iphones has some concrete details.
The watch is only listed as water resistant, not waterproof. I don't know if he's said anything specific about the Time 2, but for the 2 Duo (same target water resistance rating) he's written about the water resistance here: https://ericmigi.com/blog/pebble-2-duo-is-in-mass-production . He says you shouldn't take the watch swimming, shouldn't expose it to hot water like a shower (weakens the glue and eliminates the water resistance), and shouldn't expose it to high pressure water. They seem designed mainly to protect against incidental splashes rather than any serious water exposure.
For visibility (via comment by 1337shadow @ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42848245):
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> Instead, we took a more direct route - I asked friends at Google (which bought Fitbit, which had bought Pebble’s IP) if they could open source PebbleOS. They said yes! Over the last year, a team inside Google (including some amazing ex-Pebblers turned Googlers) has been working on this. And today is the day - the source code for PebbleOS is now available at github.com/google/pebble (see their blog post).
https://ericmigi.com/blog/why-were-bringing-pebble-back
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