The original founder is a hack who has bailed on each of his companies. When Pebble shut down people were supposed to keep their jobs. Many found at the last minute that their jobs weren’t part of the deal.
He then started Beeper, fucked around and found out with Apple iMessage without a plan and then almost immediately gave up, which is wild because Beeper was a paid service. Don’t even get me started on the privacy implications of having them in control of all your bridges and them needing a fleet of Macs online to push the iMessages through. This meant, especially early in development, you were handing a bunch of credentials to Beeper. (Not to mention my own personal experience with their lack of care towards user privacy) He then bailed and sold the whole thing to that dickbag Matt Mullenweg.
Eric Migicovsky sucks noodles and I don’t trust him. This definitely feels like a cash grab. This guy has failed upward too many fucking times.
EDIT: Also to be clear, Google made this Open Source very recently after buying Fitbit a few years ago. Migicovsky jumping in feels to me explicitly like a cash grab.
Beeper can still do IMessage, just selfhosted, which I think was the right route. Beeper has also contributed hugely to matrix’s bridges ecosystem, and all the bridges can be selfhosted, so there was never any need to give them your credentials, or even use their servers for your matrix host. I like what beeper is doing a lot. They also claim E2EE, and they use matrix so that’s entirely possible ( likely even ), but it’s also entirely possible that they can snoop on your messages as their version of the matrix server is closed source. They are also working on on-device bridges and have already released one for signal so you never have to send your credentials to any beeper servers. Beeper solves a ton of legitimate problems for me with stuff like client compatibility across platforms ( I can use any terminal to send iMessage now. That’s wonderful. ).
Eric’s projects consistently strike me as cool. It doesn’t seem like he really wants to do them himself though, it seems more like he just wants them to exist, and the only way that happens is if he does it. I assume that with the beeper situation he sold it because he assumed matt mullenwig would keep it going and the problem of unified messaging is solved. Then matt went a little crazy and that was less cool. I don’t know if there were signs of him being like this before the wp engine stuff, I only started paying attention to him after beeper sold to automattic.
There are a lot of problems in my life that I want solutions to that I think could be sold as products, but I don’t particularly want to run a company. I don’t think products will ever be developed which solve some of my problems. I could totally see myself doing what Eric has done here.
It seems like Eric bringing back pebble is just him wanting a good hackable watch. I don’t see why it needs to be any deeper than that. He doesn’t seem profit motivated ( otherwise why would you wade so deep into open source ).
I’m hesitant with Eric as well, mostly coming out of the fact it sounds like they’re completely separate from the rebble team that kept the watches going for the past decade. But they are using the rebble discord to interact with people so maybe we’ll see.
If you have any evidence otherwise, I’d be interested as I’ve been following all of this since the original kickstarter. But I’m thinking you might be mixing what rebble is as it’s not the source code.
Either way, not sure how this will go, I’m wishful as I really don’t want to see pebble go bankrupt again.
Apparently one of the people on the Rebble board is working on the project:
Some people are working on this for my new company, Core Devices, including Joshua (also one of the Rebble board members), Gerard (firmware) and crc32 (Cobble). We’ll be joined soon by Steve Penna, my OG Pebble colleague who helped build the Pebble Android app.
Heiko, the brilliant mind behind much of Pebble’s aesthetic and engineering beauty, is helping as technical advisor, along with my first colleague at Pebble, Andrew Witte and another key Pebble design leader, Mark Solomon. Others are helping via the Rebble community Discord.
Sorry, that’s me wording it badly. I know Google only open sourced it only very recently, but they did buy Fitbit “a few years ago” in 2021. I mostly just meant that Micigovsky seemingly had nothing to do with it getting open sourced. I’m sorry for the confusion, that’s on me and a badly worded sentence.
Here is hoping the revival is at least as good as the originals instead of a cheap cash grab on the product name and history.
the original founder is involved and it’s been open sourced so hopefully
The original founder is a hack who has bailed on each of his companies. When Pebble shut down people were supposed to keep their jobs. Many found at the last minute that their jobs weren’t part of the deal.
He then started Beeper, fucked around and found out with Apple iMessage without a plan and then almost immediately gave up, which is wild because Beeper was a paid service. Don’t even get me started on the privacy implications of having them in control of all your bridges and them needing a fleet of Macs online to push the iMessages through. This meant, especially early in development, you were handing a bunch of credentials to Beeper. (Not to mention my own personal experience with their lack of care towards user privacy) He then bailed and sold the whole thing to that dickbag Matt Mullenweg.
Eric Migicovsky sucks noodles and I don’t trust him. This definitely feels like a cash grab. This guy has failed upward too many fucking times.
EDIT: Also to be clear, Google made this Open Source very recently after buying Fitbit a few years ago. Migicovsky jumping in feels to me explicitly like a cash grab.
Beeper can still do IMessage, just selfhosted, which I think was the right route. Beeper has also contributed hugely to matrix’s bridges ecosystem, and all the bridges can be selfhosted, so there was never any need to give them your credentials, or even use their servers for your matrix host. I like what beeper is doing a lot. They also claim E2EE, and they use matrix so that’s entirely possible ( likely even ), but it’s also entirely possible that they can snoop on your messages as their version of the matrix server is closed source. They are also working on on-device bridges and have already released one for signal so you never have to send your credentials to any beeper servers. Beeper solves a ton of legitimate problems for me with stuff like client compatibility across platforms ( I can use any terminal to send iMessage now. That’s wonderful. ).
Eric’s projects consistently strike me as cool. It doesn’t seem like he really wants to do them himself though, it seems more like he just wants them to exist, and the only way that happens is if he does it. I assume that with the beeper situation he sold it because he assumed matt mullenwig would keep it going and the problem of unified messaging is solved. Then matt went a little crazy and that was less cool. I don’t know if there were signs of him being like this before the wp engine stuff, I only started paying attention to him after beeper sold to automattic.
There are a lot of problems in my life that I want solutions to that I think could be sold as products, but I don’t particularly want to run a company. I don’t think products will ever be developed which solve some of my problems. I could totally see myself doing what Eric has done here.
It seems like Eric bringing back pebble is just him wanting a good hackable watch. I don’t see why it needs to be any deeper than that. He doesn’t seem profit motivated ( otherwise why would you wade so deep into open source ).
Upvoted for well considered and presented argument even if I disagree.
I’m hesitant with Eric as well, mostly coming out of the fact it sounds like they’re completely separate from the rebble team that kept the watches going for the past decade. But they are using the rebble discord to interact with people so maybe we’ll see.
Either way, no, the source code was only open sourced on the 27th.
Also see the actual repository.
If you have any evidence otherwise, I’d be interested as I’ve been following all of this since the original kickstarter. But I’m thinking you might be mixing what rebble is as it’s not the source code.
Either way, not sure how this will go, I’m wishful as I really don’t want to see pebble go bankrupt again.
Apparently one of the people on the Rebble board is working on the project:
Source
Sorry, that’s me wording it badly. I know Google only open sourced it only very recently, but they did buy Fitbit “a few years ago” in 2021. I mostly just meant that Micigovsky seemingly had nothing to do with it getting open sourced. I’m sorry for the confusion, that’s on me and a badly worded sentence.