[HN Gopher] Engineering the First Fitbit: The Inside Story
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Engineering the First Fitbit: The Inside Story
Author : Brajeshwar
Score : 31 points
Date : 2024-08-08 15:34 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
| ta988 wrote:
| The few latest generations of fitbits have a really low record of
| reliability I guess they still have a lot of things to learn.
| mmmlinux wrote:
| Google doesn't care. people will buy them based on the Fitbit
| name, good quality or bad.
| jetrink wrote:
| They used to be reliable until Google bought the company. I'll
| never buy another piece of Google hardware after my last
| Fitbit. It lasted 18 months and they declined to replace it
| since their warranty is even shorter. I refuse to buy
| disposable electronics.
| nadis wrote:
| Interesting, I believe this although I stopped using mine many
| generations ago after losing it and not replacing it. I feel
| like there's been a big shift in recent years from Fitbit being
| a market leader to people preferring other wearables - either
| smartwatches like Apple's or Garmin's, or more use case-
| specific wearables like Whoop or the Oura ring for sleep.
| Urgo wrote:
| Really interesting read! I was one of those first 5000 units
| (preordered Sept 29 2009 and shipped Dec 29 2009) and I wore my
| fitbit religiously (upgrading to newer versions now and then)
| until last year.
|
| >> "That something had to be comfortable to wear all day, be easy
| to use, upload its data seamlessly so the data could be tracked
| and shared with friends, and rarely need charging. Not an easy
| combination of requirements."
|
| I ended up finally retiring my fitbit last year after seeing
| little by little Google dismantling all that made fitbit fitbit.
| Google's first version of Fitbit was the Pixel watch which didn't
| even last a day. It also may have been comfortable to wear, but
| was not comfortable to use and the social aspects of it, namely
| challenges, were axed. So all you were left was a device with the
| tracking aspects and upload aspects. Not great.
|
| I ended up moving over to a Garmin fenix 7X Sapphire Solar which
| has a very impressive battery life, fits way more comfortably,
| has way more features, and while still not the same challenges I
| loved on fitbit, still has better social features then google
| left the fitbit with.
|
| All in all, while I do love my Garmin device now, it was a very
| sad day leaving Fitbit behind. I still hold that, while unproven,
| I think I probably logged more days of data on the fitbit at the
| time I switched over then anyone else. I now know I have a 1 in
| 5000 chance at least of this being true!
|
| >> "In April of this year, Park and Friedman left Google. Early
| retirement? Hardly. The two, now age 47, have started a new
| company that's currently in stealth mode."
|
| Excited to see what you guys are working on now!
| ksd482 wrote:
| I loved my fitbit zip a lot!! Unfortunately, the smartwatch trend
| took over fitbits too and all of them are now just smart watch
| types.
|
| The thing is I am a vintage watch enthusiast and I only wear
| vintage mechanical watches. Thus, leaving no room for smart watch
| both from a space point of view and fashion point of view.
|
| Hence, my options are quite limited when it comes to pedometer. I
| either go with cheap alternatives (which are quite accurate btw),
| or none at all.
|
| I wish fitbit brings back clip-on devices as a first class
| citizens in their lineup.
| autoexec wrote:
| They spent so much time worried about fashion that it would have
| been nice if they'd spent even a tiny amount of time thinking
| about respecting user's privacy or their own morals. They
| refused, as a design decision, to allow users to download their
| data to their PC instead of having it uploaded to FitBit's
| servers because they wanted to collect that data and use it for
| their own purposes.
|
| Protecting their user's privacy was such an afterthought that
| their website in 2008 didn't even have a privacy policy which
| violated the California Online Privacy Protection Act of 2003.
| When they finally did add one it said that they sold your data to
| third parties for marketing/consumer research and used it to push
| ads at you for "health clubs, weight loss programs and sports and
| fitness equipment"
|
| Ultimately what they built was just one more shitty ad platform
| that exploited people's personal data for the benefit of several
| third parties at the expense of their users. It's no wonder that
| they got bought by Google, the ultimate ad platform that exploits
| people's personal data.
|
| It's such a shame, because they had an opportunity to create
| something useful that worked for the people who paid for the
| product instead of turning those paying customers into another
| product to sell. The fact that they were exploiting people's
| health data just made it even worse.
|
| I've never owned a FitBit and have often warned others to avoid
| them. Initially, I'd recommended pedometers that worked just as
| well (if not better) without the spying and ads, but these days
| wearable devices are capable of doing a whole lot more and it's
| still hard to find ones that respect their customers enough to
| let them control their own data and prevent it from being sold to
| data brokers, governments, and ad companies.
|
| I'm sure the FitBit will always be viewed as a great success
| story, but all I see is a tragedy and a lack of ethics.
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