Downstream: Living with Pebble

A few thoughts, in no particular order.

• Forget ‘smartwatch’, Pebble is better described as a HUD on your wrist. You can ignore your phone, not worry about missing anything, not have to keep flicking the screen on in case you’ve got notifications. You can just get on with things — and that brings the ‘smartphone’ age into a more positive balance for me.

• Smartphones have created a swarm of new common habits, while simultaneously becoming overkill to perform them. Apps can surface their most important actions or information in a far more convenient way. And because there are often so many, the time saved adds up fast.

• I want more of this “spoke and hub” design to my gadgets. Why not have my iPad act as a central brain, with its solid processor and battery, powering all these little devices? Then my iPhone could just be a connected screen, my Pebble could be a dumb little eInk screen, Nest is a dumb sensor on the wall etc. I imagine the challenges are not insurmountable.

• The App Store is at once very exciting and very disappointing. Currently it’s really hard to discover new apps and know which ones are worth trying. But the best ones are real gems.

• Should you get one? As much as you should buy yourself any toy you don’t need. It’s not in the realm of whether you could live without it, it’s more about whether you’re the kind of person who will get a kick out of what it lets you do.

Some of my favourite everyday uses:

• Checking items off my Evernote shopping list
• Bus/ train times in a click or two
• Multiple countdowns and timers for cooking
• Google Maps turn-by-turn directions on my wrist
• Controlling Chromecast, Netflix, Spotify remotely