> Pebble devices will continue to work as normal. No immediate changes to the Pebble user experience will happen at this time.
> Pebble functionality or service quality may be reduced in the future.
That's very unfortunate. How much of Pebble relies on some online service? Is it still possible to install apps/updates without their infrastructure?
For companies that don't open source their stuff by default, it would be so nice if there was some kind of escrow service where upon dissolution of the company (sale, bankruptcy, etc) the required software to keep their hardware going would be released. I suspect the problem is while it's a win for consumers, not enough would care: the mass market is not going to only buy products that have this escrow service, and at the same time, it's handcuffs for the business, likely complicating a sale or liquidation of the company, and possibly turning investors off.
I hope the Pebble doesn't become a complete wristbrick, but it's always a shame to see perfectly good hardware crippled because there's no longer a piece of software running entirely outside the consumer's control.
I understanding them selling a lot of IP to Fitbit to pay back their debts and settle bankruptcy, but I really feel all the source for their app/store-services should have been made open source instead, prior to this announcement.
That way at least their customers could try to hack together stuff or make mirrors of their app repos to keep their devices functional.
This could also be an issue on Fitbit's side. Open Sourcing all the IP makes the deal less enticing to them (that's the first order analysis, but there's arguments in the other direction too)
I recall them having quite a good SDK ( https://developer.pebble.com ) to write your own apps and run basically whatever you wanted on the thing. I hope you can use the SDK to load apps directly, but I'm not sure.
Hopefully the community can run with this and set something up so people can distribute and install apps outside of the official services.
That's very unfortunate. How much of Pebble relies on some online service? Is it still possible to install apps/updates without their infrastructure?
For companies that don't open source their stuff by default, it would be so nice if there was some kind of escrow service where upon dissolution of the company (sale, bankruptcy, etc) the required software to keep their hardware going would be released. I suspect the problem is while it's a win for consumers, not enough would care: the mass market is not going to only buy products that have this escrow service, and at the same time, it's handcuffs for the business, likely complicating a sale or liquidation of the company, and possibly turning investors off.
I hope the Pebble doesn't become a complete wristbrick, but it's always a shame to see perfectly good hardware crippled because there's no longer a piece of software running entirely outside the consumer's control.