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August 12, 2020

Moved to Garmin.

Maybe less powerful but battery life is the most important feature for me.


Counterintutively, that didn't work out well for me. When the watch has ample power to make it through one day, but not two, I just put it on my schedule of daily rituals. Usually just throw it on the charger while I take a shower. But when the battery life is measured in weeks, I don't build any sort of habit like that and I end up finding out about it the hard way. My ideal watch never runs out in a single day and charges fast enough that during my shower it will get me through the next day. Based on the stats of the Series 12, it would probably fit the bill.

Just continue to charge your Garmin when you take a shower. I don’t understand why you need to change your habits. Are you worried about making the battery full at longer durations causing degradation? A smartwatch is fundamentally a disposable piece of electronics that last a few years.

The garmin has so much battery life that when it's at 10% and starts complaining that the battery is close to dying I still have about 2 days to remember to charge it.

And obviously you don't get penalised for charging it more often. Just charge it every Sunday if routine is a big issue.


I had the exact same experience. Charging an Apple Watch is a routine thing, charging a garmin is an infrequent annoyance.

And like the other commenter says, I could just fix my habits. But no, that’s not how my brain works


I am currently using both an apple watch SE 2 and a garmin vivoactive 5 simultaneously. Even if the Garmin has better battery life, I don't really like it for 2 reasons: - the round watch UI is ugly and doesn't work with the other UI elements. Also I don't mind using a squared watch, I like it. My Casio is also square-ish. - the UX is terrible, the customization is terrible. The default watch faces are all quite ugly, and the Garmin app makes the customization experience even worse.

Also, I feel like the sleep is more accurate on the Apple watch than on the Garmin from a couple episodes that happened and in general from the differences in tracking time.

Also, as you already said, I just charge the watch everyday while I shower, so battery life is not really an issue for 80% of the time. For the other 20% it's really annoying... but I think a newer model (and I hope that the new ones will be even better on that side) will have better battery life. When the battery life will be ~48 hours it will be perfect for me.


Same.

I just wish Garmin would get their act together with filtering notifications on iOS. No, I'm sorry, not every app on my phone should be important enough to buzz my wrist. Filtering works fine for Garmin on Android, and apparently for other watch brands on iOS (Coros, Pebble, etc).

The sad thing is all I really need is app-level granularity (slack, you're banned from my wrist!).

If this isn't fixed by the time my 5 year old Fenix fails, I'll move to a different brand that enables filtering.


From what I’ve heard, this is actually a problem with the exposed OS level api’s provided by Apple. Other manufacturers have solved this with on device workarounds. Doesn’t make it better though. I resorted to only the system only notifications (Phone, Texts).

As an end user, all I really care about is that the watch doesn't buzz every single time my long-winded colleague hits <enter> on slack, but that I do see slack notifications when I'm able to look at my phone. And I always want to see my wife's texts on my wrist...

Whether that filtering is in the app, in the OS, or on the watch is not important to me.


I think the way to do this is in iOS itself. I would be shocked if Coros has better notifications tech than Garmin; it’s a way smaller company. I don’t even remember touching notifications when I set up my Coros watch. I think it is just governed by my iOS settings.

iOS has a lot of power to finely control notifications. For example for Slack I just have app badges, while iMessage buzzes. In Mail, only people I’ve added to a small “VIP” list cause a buzz. Otherwise I just look at the Mail app badge to see how many emails have come in.

It takes time to tune it, but it is a very good investment IMO.


I was recently looking for a new running watch but couldn't for the life of me figure out what Garmin's higher end watches do to justify being over $1000. Like, ok, better battery life... but besides that?

For workout tracking depending on your sport the Garmin is way better- for swimming the lap counter and for hiking the trail maps on Garmin gets more granular and better for tracking. For skiing the altitude tracking and vertical distance is better on the Garmin.

For phone, calendar and work integration the apple watch is better (I have it hooked up to take calls from the watch) so I ultimately went with the apple watch even though my triathlon training tracking was better on the Garmin!


In one social group I am part of, Garmin just became the new trend. Watches have historically been status symbols even more than they are functional. Someone drops a few hundred/thousand/whatever and then brags about the newest new and how they are on it, then others move over to keep up.

People often buy these kinds of discretionary toys with their hearts and do post-hoc rationalization with their minds. You can't figure it out because your heart hasn't brought you there so your brain isn't wasting time creating justifications.

For what it is worth, sometimes these trends die an early death when people realize there is no substance underneath the justification. At least in the Garmin case, most people I know are happy with the purchase, in that it does deliver on certain needs. Since it matches their expectations, they don't have to suffer any cognitive dissonance between the heart-to-brain justification and their lived experience.


Better running metrics. Maps. On-device routing. Longer battery life.

I was on the Ultra for 18 months or so and came away from it feeling like a much less powerful and capable Garmin is much nicer as a daily watch. I found myself wanting to find reasons/excuses to justify the Ultra. Ultimately I couldn't, and it wasn't worth its cost, charging schedule, and lack of battery life.

I can see why others like them (they want WatchOS and Apple-specific capabilities). That stuff is useful, but not often enough for me to care.

Really, the watch was a regular reminder of how functional life was before the watch existed, if that makes sense. It's a genuine marvel, and yet... I got by (and get by) great without it.


I think a large percentage of your problem might be that you bought the most expensive model. Was the Ultra really the one to get?

It’s the thickest and heaviest, for one thing.

There’s a decent argument for the SE as the best Apple Watch for most people because it’s cheap and it does most of the things that regular people want out of a smartwatch.


As I recall, I went with it because it supported the best dive features. I used it for that quite a bit for a while, but eventually realized my basic cheap dive watch worked fine, could take a beating, and was actually better rated for deeper dives. Having physical buttons is a huge advantage over the Ultra. The dial was never enough to get the control I wanted, even if the UI only required it.

> Maybe less powerful but battery life is the most important feature for me.

I've been using Garmin watches for years, wife always had Apple Watches. This year she got envious enough of the battery life that she also switched to Garmin now. Her watches sometimes barely lasted a day, requiring daily charges. Meanwhile, you get a week of battery easily with most Garmins.


From Apple:

"Apple Watch Series 12 continues to offer up to 24 hours of everyday battery life and now offers up to 10 hours of battery life during an outdoor workout — 25 percent more than the previous model.

Apple Watch Series 12 also offers faster charging: Just 15 minutes now gets up to 12 hours of additional battery life — 50 percent more than the previous model — so users can quickly recharge while getting ready for the day or before bed."


I had one of the first really cheap Xiaomi Smart Watches for 6 years and by the end a single charge lasted 2 weeks. Switched to an Apple Watch and 1 year in it lasts a single day, stopped wearing smart watches a few weeks ago, mainly due to this and just the fact that none of them look good imo.

Moved to Suunto, and I couldn't be happier.

I had an Apple Watch series 7, which I had to charge twice a day now. I was on a fence between buying a new AW or switching to another brand, but Apple dropping the software support for my model have made the choice for me. I


Been using Suunto Run for a year and have been happy. The thing I mostly miss is Apple Pay and Runna compatibility. I usually have my phone with me for the former, and I'll be snagging the Race 3S when it supposedly launches in Oct.

Assuming you’re using the Garmin for fitness related reasons — are you really carrying your phone around with you for music? I guess it works if you bike?

Some clothes have this technology called "pockets".

lmao this is the most HN comment ever

running with a phone in your pocket is hell


This person gets it.

It was fine up till the 13 mini. Every iPhone after that is too big and heavy to fit in a running belt without jostling.


I run daily with a 13 mini easily. My shorts have a pocket in the liner that makes it trivial.

I don't fully understand people that carry their phone in hand when running.


Why did you downgrade from your 13 mini? It's supported until 2030.

I used to have my phone on a strap around my arm. Even that stopped working

I run with phone clenched in hand.

I bought a series 11 with the esim option for this very reason and it just - doesnt - work. The airpod connection drops randomly, spotify stops working, navigation randomly stops working, the apple health app doesnt respect my other workout app, etc.

I'm really unsatisfied with this device.


A lot of garmin watches let you download YT / Spotify or your own mp3s

Gotcha! Been a minute since I’ve looked it up.

Battery life on Garmin’s is genuinely terrible as soon as you have music running though. Less than the apple watch.

The plot thickens. Frankly even if it did get music right it would be tough to replace streaming my own Plex music library directly on my Apple watch. 100% worth paying for cellular.

The interface is terrible I've never actually remember to use spotify like this on my garmins and I've worn like 4 over the last decade. Maybe if you use it for a week straight it'll be muscle memory, but I only accidentally play music on it.

It can download and sync playlists and you connect bt headphones to it.

I'll keep buying garmins but I do hate the ux.


Looks good, but after pricing change I have already used 26% this month with very light usage.

Last month I used Copilot heavily, much much more than I usually do, but did not manage to use more than 58%.


> Looks good, but after pricing change I have already used 26% this month with very light usage.

Forced me to switch to OpenCode Go (not Zen), which isn't quite as nice as Copilot Chat deeply integrated into VSCode / Intelli but the models (DeepSeek v4 Pro, GLM 5.1, & Qwen 3.7 Max) are able replacements for Claude Sonnet 4.x / GPT 5.x while being way cheaper (especially DeepSeek).


We had settled on Copilot's Sonnet 4.6 which incidentally is one of the models that got shanked in the pricing update.

Easily 7x or more for what amounts to self–serving work. At this point, we might just switch to 4.8 Opus.

Honestly, I would not spend a cent of my own money on a model that won't run on my PC, but still I feel like this is the end of this Microsoft product I hadn't used a month ago. We'll see if our sugar daddies keep funding it.


Use less effort and thus tokens.

I swear I did few tests and it's rare you need more than medium on mundane job work.


1 day and 26% of usage? wildly inflated!


Living in Eastern Europe has its perks. I hardly ever notice big GitHub outages because of time zone.

I'm also happy with how generous their free hosting and actions are.


I've got quite expensive ski jacket with 4 YKK zippers.

3 of 4 zippers are broken after few years of usage.


This is a little late for your nice jacket, but a lot of zipper damage comes from dirt getting into the teeth and then the zip grinds everything up. Outdoors shops sell a zipper lubricant to keep the dirt from sticking.


I have multiple ski jackets and ski a couple times a week. No broken YKK zippers.

Do you know a better zipper?


Can you connect it to USB-C/Thunderbolt monitor/dock and use it with keyboard and mouse?


Has been for a while, assuming you can get work done on the iPad UI. It doesn't do a normal mouse and there are some limitations to things like screen dimensions.

Works in a pinch but Apple is not going to compete with themselves on this front, they're expecting you to buy a macbook for serious work and an iPad for work in a pinch.


yes. Has been possible since at least M1.

Buy M-based iPad, nice monitor, keyboard and mouse. Connect mouse and keyboard to monitor via USB. Then iPad via USB-C/Thunderbolt to monitor. Everything "just works" and you can handle surprisingly high amount of work this way


Can you share more about this experience please? To me, you're still left with apps that are designed for a touchscreen and consumption.


If you are using an iPad as a second screen - you get the same app you have on your mac (obviously, iPad just acts as a second screen: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102597).

If you are using an external keyboard and a mouse with it - you will get the same touch UI, yes.


Many apps are missing many keyboard shortcuts that you may be used to if you’ve used the equivalent on the desktop. You’ll need to keep the iPad screen accessible to tap on UX elements. There’s also the issue that shortcuts that do exist may be hard to discover because there’s no menu bar to look in.


> Many apps are missing many keyboard shortcuts that you may be used to

This is true. To see the ones that are available, hold down the command ⌘ key to get a scrollable list of all of the shortcuts for the app you’re currently using, and use Fn-m or globe key-m to see a list of the system shortcuts.


Specs show that Pro models got Thunderbolt and Air only got USB-C.

Very vague specs.

Can iPad Air USB-C deliver 4k 120hz or how much bandwidth that USB-C got?


It's been possible since the iPad 2.

I used to code HTML/CSS that way back in... 2011?


Had no problems connecting iPad Air 4 to external display via USB-C DP. Have not check whether periphery devices work this way though - I used BLE keyboard.


I was about to ask the same. I'd like to get an ipad for the same purpose. The iPad pro can for sure, but I don't want to spend ipad pro money.


Traffic to facebook.com must have dropped hard to make that kind of move.

It's strange to abandon the Messenger brand for such a reason.

I was similarly surprised when MS abandoned the MSN Messenger brand.


Disgusting aggression from the US.

Trump is copying his friend Putin too much.


So it is a collection of the best pirate sites?


No, it isn't so. It misses even the most notorious yet still private sites


Such as?


It is to me, faved.


Pretty much, yeah. Those they can't get to despite efforts.


Let me write those down, to be sure no to go there by mistake.


[flagged]


I don’t know why you think this is an edgy comment, I’m actually screenshotting it to take a look tomorrow at the links. I’ve seen Anna archive and SCI hub which are extremely useful, if it helps finding more gems I’m all for it !


You're screenshotting URLs to type out?


I do that on my phone. It's almost as easy to tap an ocr-ed url in my photos app as it is to click a link on a web page.

(On my laptop, I'm just as likely to spend half a day writing a scraper or reverse engineering the javascript and apis to collect a dozen or two urls that I should have just jotted down in my notebook...)


This is probably the best innovation in the last decade as far as I’m concerned.

It has conquered the 20 digit WiFi password in 6 font.


why type, when you can copy and paste text from images these days??


It read that way to me too. It's the familiar switcheroo/hoist by their own petard/ironic one-upping move, a routine as well known to the internet as ape behavior is to Jane Goodall.


Well it's the truth ¯ \ _ ( ツ ) _ / ¯


Collection goes into my blocklist for at home.

Pirating is theft. Pirating is inhumane.


Correct, pirating is bad. Copyright infringement on the other hand is kewl.


Sure buddy. Price-gouging consumers, regional lock-ins, paying creators a tiny %, revoking licenses, using public funds to make for-profit media, etc., these are all humane and chill.


Don't forget DRM. That alone breaks the societal contract of copyright.


This is the result of the laws put in place, and yes they should be changed. That doesn't make pirating morally or legally justified. 'Because he is bad I can be bad too' is morally wrong.


I understand your point, but the laws in place are heavily decided by the lobbyists and cartels that pad the pockets of politicians. If the system is unfair or immoral, playing by its rules doesn’t make things any better.

I’m not saying “hey, go steal from content creators”. I studied multimedia and was a content creator myself. I pay for many of my media, but draw the line somewhere, e.g. do I think Disney deserves my money…


"I don't think Disney deserves money". And that, in my eyes, makes it morally incorrect. They are the copyright holder, or a lot of times the creator. They thus deserve the income. They being evil doesn't make your evil correct.


Disney is notorious and indefensible in their appropriation of works that were not copyrighted, lobbying for extending copyright duration and reach, and even violating copyright themselves.

All this without going into the vast and comprehensive criticism that can be levied against Disney.

If you agree with their business antics and that they legally and ethically hold copyright rights to all their work, then I propose you pay them indeed. That’s fair. But then we’ll disagree on these terms, not whether I’m evil for not paying them.


Or maybe it does. For some of us


What if the content is not available in your country? You can't steal what you can't buy.


That must be worst website ever made.

Zero information available on mobile.

I thought it is some kind of portfolio site that does not work on mobile.


Not a mobile issue. I am on desktop and had no idea what this service was because nothing on the initial UI explained what we were looking at. I went and double-checked when people here were talking about pricing and VMs. From the home page, I figured it was some text-based game or experiment and closed the page.

It looks like some people who work there are watching this thread, so to them I say: You have got to explain what this is, not just say "the disk persists..." and expect people to dig deeper. Most aren't that curious.


>From the home page, I figured it was some text-based game or experiment and closed the page.

Same, my first thought was that it's some pentesting game where you're given a VM and your task is to somehow break it. The line "the disk persists. you have sudo" sounds like game rules.


It's odd to see how people are not accustomed to plain websites anymore. You click the 'About' link in the footer, and get a direct explanation of what it is, pricing and the entire documentation.


why do we need to click anything? Why wouldn't the relevant information be there in the initial view?


Gatekeeping mechanism. This effectively filters useless traffic and trash contacts.


You’re right that it probably filtered out a lot of traffic. Traffic that may have converted to users if they didn’t meet such a useless landing page


Given that this is an AD for the ten millionth VPS service, it should be upfront about the value proposition. Most people think its a game or something interesting and when they find out what it is they're disappointed. You dont want people associating that with your brand.


Even the 'About' page doesn't have much information either though

All the About page contains is:

> exe.dev is a subscription service that gives you virtual machines, with persistent disks, quickly and without fuss. These machines are immediately accessible over HTTPS, with sensible and secure defaults. You can share your web server as easily as you can share a Google Doc. With built-in optional authentication, so you can focus on your thing.

> Your VMs share CPU/RAM. Create as many VMs as you like with the resources you have.


As (probably?) their target audience, this is very clear to me. It’s a service to create persistent VMs and ssh into them. What’s missing?

Granted, navigation on mobile could be better – the “All docs” breadcrumb is the only way to find the pricing and rest of the docs. On desktop it is clearer.


What is the purpose of the landing page of this site, if it conveys nothing? Sure, 'about' explains what it is, but then from there I need to go back to a page that's called 'all docs' to see the link to pricing.

Don't defend this. It's not plain. It's obtuse.

A properly designed plain site will have the following text front and centre on it's hero:

"virtual machines in the cloud with persistent disks and sudo, starting from $20/month."


You truly, honestly believe that to be the real problem? Come on. You don't need to do whatever this is.


The website has a huge `ssh exe.dev`, so I'd expect that running that works, but:

    SSH keys are required to access exe.dev.
Why put an SSH command in a huge banner if I have to go around and register before I can use it anyway?


you don't need to register the key. just have some sort of key.


I thought it was one of those game sites where you had to "hack" it every step of the way to advance the next level.


It's kind of funny our experiences are so diffent. I almost immediately surmised it's some sort of on the fly generated vm you can access via a ssh jumpserver. Which it is! It's actually really neat. It's quite obvious that the authors want us to just ssh into it and try it out first.


> I almost immediately surmised it's some sort of on the fly generated vm you can access via a ssh jumpserver

How? It just says `ssh exe.dev`. Unless you are clairvoyant.


"ssh exe.dev" is exactly the Linux command you would use to connect there via ssh. And it's stylized like command prompt.


The question wasn't "how to ssh into a server", it was "how did you figure out what it it from looking at the website"


Because it literally tells you what to do


"exe.dev is a subscription service that gives you virtual machines, with persistent disks, quickly and without fuss."

scroll down and hit the "about" link. I do agree though the landing page could be more resourceful.

I'm not going to SSH to a random server.


That's my point, the home/landing page tells you nothing other than "try to ssh into this van"


All a malicious website has to do to be convincing is to have a more conventional landing page then?

The disk and sudo mentioned are good enough clues, then you have the about.


Where did I say that, that wasn't a topic I just commented on the *entirety* of the content on the landing page.

> The disk and sudo mentioned are good enough clues

I mean, you do you and let's agree to disagree about a good landing page UX.


tbh maybe this service doesn't want you as a customer if you can't figure this out. it seems like you'd be an above-average support burden


Are you honestly suggesting that startups should be picky about taking on customers?

That’s probably the oddest thing to read on a tech VC forum.

The lading page was garbage. It’s forgivable because designing goods landing pages is hard. But inventing wacky ideas about why a bad landing page might have some hidden genius, isnt constructive feedback


Why are you giving in to such a troll/AI/low effort comment. If the page was some genius implication and I were too stupid to get it then his comment had a good point. The page has a random ssh command and this dude thinks it's genius.


You made me lol


> I'm not going to SSH to a random server.

Opening a random website likely exposes you to more risk.


Likely? Definitely.


How to ssh into a server isn’t a question, it’s a command.


Being pedantic, I meant statement not command.


Except it doesn't trigger the keyboard on my phone and I can't interact with it.


It's not interactive. It's just an extremely brief brochure for the actual service, which is available via SSH. All the useful copy is under the About link at the bottom, which is so light as to fail WCAG contrast standards.


Ah, that makes sense, thank you!


You are not the target audience if "how" was not apparent to you


I am the target audience and I still had no idea what the site was promoting from just the landing page.


Someone else said it's not actually interactive. So which is it?


The "how" is very obvious, but not the "why". I'd assume this much would be very apparent from the OPs complaint, but apparently not I guess...


I became target audience after I had a cup of coffee...


I mean, I've done engineering work for the last 15 years on most layers of the stack. Seeing an ssh command into a fancy url does not tell me anything about what that is going to accomplish. But yeah, you must be right.


Yep, with no privacy policy published.


Exactly.


Agree, I finally found information via

Homepage -> blog -> docs -> "all docs" button:

https://exe.dev/docs/list

Which has an about and pricing etc.

That is very counterintuitive to just find out what this is.


I wouldn’t go that far but some link to pricing and documentation would be useful. I have absolutely no idea what the offering is here without those pieces of info.


Their pricing page says that it's currently a free trial.

https://exe.dev/docs/pricing


That link isn’t really easy to find from the home page is a large part of the gripe here. You have to click About in the footer, remain curious enough to click All Docs on that page (which Pricing isn’t usually a part of “docs”), then all you get is a Pricing paragraph that says “Plan options for individuals, teams, and enterprises.” Not very helpful until you realize the heading text “Pricing” is a plain colored link to this pricing page with more info. The whole UX of this site is garbage and what has fostered so many gripes here.


Yeah. I managed to backtrack my way to the pricing through the about page.

It's really annoying when you're interested in a product but can't find a price.


I was confused too. I first thought I should open up my terminal and just enter `ssh dev.exe` and this would be some kind of ssh-based interface? Honestly my first thought is that it would be one of those cool dev hack / art projects like the old starwars traceroute to 216.81.59.173

It didn't read as a company with products at all to me from the front page. Just a cryptic " The disk persists. You have sudo." with links to "Login" and "About * Blog * Discord" --- no pricing link, which made me think it was a weird hobby / art.


ssh exe.dev works


The exact text on mobile is

> ssh exe.dev

> The disk persists. You have sudo.

I've seen enough of these kinds of services in my lifetime that I also immediately knew what it was, for example sdf.org, which is one of the OG services, and various "tilde" services like tilde.town.


I thought the same, but it’s not quite like either of those things. It has their same benefits but way more flexibility with its VM model. It offers auth, and will forward most ports for developer access.

All this was totally lost on me from looking at the website. “I already have tilde and sdf, I don’t need this.”

If I hadn’t looked into the comments I would still think that.


I can see

> ssh exe.dev

> The disk persists. You have sudo.

on mobile


It is showing non-stop loading blink but nothing happens.

And cannot open keyboard if that is needed. It is like big CTA but does not do anything.

Very strange landing page for maybe cool product.


It’s not a loading blink, it’s just some text telling you what the service is


it's a cursor ready blink

I think knowing what the ssh command does is a pretty low bar for this platform


That as my first thought too. Landing page may as well be an empty page


Hyperbole much? I'm on mobile and think it's great. I wish more websites were like this. Just straight to the point instead of all the regular marketing fluff you need to decipher.


pricing information and what it does/how it works is not marketing fluff


It is not ”to the point”.


I thought it was a web game.


Agreed. Target audience will understand instantly


This thread seems to reflect how the HN audience has shifted — less commenters know what `ssh example.com` does and more commenters concerned about privacy policy.


i'm not sure what you mean; the demo runs with the ssh command in the centre, there's an 'about' link at the bottom, and that links to a docs index

it's fiine i think


Come on guys, it literally says 'ssh exe.dev'


Yeah, and it really is not I would want to do, just like diving into unknown water that sparkles weird.. It's an instinct, can get past it but to get more info about the service... nah.


That's okay, you're not in the target audience is all.


If their target audience is someone who remotes into a random machine because a opaque landing page them to, it's probably not gonna work very well. Those people are too busy sniffing glue.


It would be funny if it was literally the best website I've seen in like a year...

... which it is.


Did you try clicking one link into "about" and reading one paragraph of text?


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