To me, these look even uglier than the first-gen Pebble. The first-gen Pebble has a casual plastic look — it’s far from elegant, but it at least feels true to itself, in a low-res digital watch sort of way. itself. These new Steel models are aping the design cues from high-end high end wristwatches but fall horribly short. They reside in an uncanny valley. And the huge “Pebble” logo below the display? Gross.
If Pebble, or any “smartwatch” maker, wants to succeed in the real world, they need to make watches that look good compared to any watch, not just “looks good compared to other even uglier smartwatches”.
See also: iMore’s interview with Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky.
This is a beautiful explanation of a key property of human evolution: we evolved to be catapulted as infants.
I can tell, though, that Weinersmith has not had direct experience with raising babies, at least not yet, or he would have cited another significant factor: instinctive parental urges to place small children in catapults. Our first child was one of those colicky babies, and I can tell you that there were many late nights when I was trying to comfort the squalling infant that I would be bouncing him on the balcony of our apartment, and thinking that a good powerful trebuchet to launch him out over the Willamette River towards Springfield would be a good thing.
The lack of handy siege instruments was the only thing that saved him, but clearly that would not have been a problem in more primitive cultures.