Pebble smartwatch app guys! Put your mind at WRIST: New SDK + iOS 7 alerts Pebble smartwatches gained new capabilities on Wednesday, thanks to a second version of the Pebble software development kit (SDK) and a new iOS app that handles improved iOS 7 notifications. Pebbles were always able to display caller IDs, SMS messages, and email notifications from an iPhone linked via Bluetooth. With the new …
This is exactly what the platform needed. All the fluff about supporting developers looked so flimsy given the poor quality of the v1 SDK.
But the Javascript sandbox, which uses the same AppMessage framework as other apps have available, is a real boon, the new SDK seems easier to use and the documentation feels a bit more finished - especially for those of us who haven't used C for a while and need a bit of hand holding.
Looking forward to finally making a useful app for it...
The key weakness for Pebble imho. These changes are great and needed but they should have been out already not "later this year". We still lack magnometer access and an app store so there can be easy installation and updates for apps. Crucially though I think they need to either make a few good apps to fill obvious niches like fitness tracking or pay someone to do it for them.
They got off to a reasonable start with Runkeeper and Freecaddy but they need more apps to drive demand.
There is at least now access to the accelerometer though.
I do agree that the lack of any official app store is a significant issue, seeing as the only ones out there seem to be overrun by the sort of crappy copy and paste jobs you got with Winamp themes back in the 90s.
I wouldn't say that Caller ID and email notifications always worked on iOS. Far from it. Email notifications didn't work at all for me and using the email part of the app wasn't an option because I use Active-Sync to get at my email on my phone and didn't want to open 143/tcp to the outside world to get that working.
Caller ID itself was very hit and miss, it would always notify me that a call was coming in but only about 50% of the time would it display the name of the caller, usually it would display just the number even though the phone itself was showing the name.
I'm really looking forward to the new iOS app, it will hopefully make Pebble the device they promised it would be. The fucked up notifications on iOS were a real pain! Not to mention that when you had got Facebook, Twitter and whatever else you wanted working you would then have to set it all up again if the phone and Pebble lost communication.
It's just in time too, the Agent smartwatch is due quite soon and the Pebble was in danger of being put in a drawer and forgotten about.
You don't have to set everything up again, just turn on airplane mode for a few seconds and all should be good.
If it's still not linked, kill all the applications on the iphone and try again.
if that didn't work, press the middle and top left buttons on the watch until it resets.
if you have too many apps / watch faces then the communication can block constantly. leave as much memory free as possible. I currently have Swedish & Chinese fuzzy time, PeaPod and Counter on mine.
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