I've also been using Sleep Cycle since the first WakeMate delay and I've been thinking about this in some detail. Here are the conclusions I've come to:
* WakeMate seems to be primarily competing on price (!) against FitBit and Zeo. The problem is, Sleep Cycle way undercuts them.
* I would be willing to pay for dedicated hardware that would free up my iPhone for music listening before bed(like Zeo or FitBit). Unfortunately, WakeMate doesn't help in this regard.
* There are times that I think Sleep Cycle is inaccurate, but I think it's "good enough" in a lot of sleep circumstances. Dedicated hardware should improve over a bed accelerometer a bit, but I don't think the additional accuracy alone is worth $48
* I'm hoping WakeMate's statistics and analysis meet or exceed the Zeo, but to be honest Sleep Cycle's stats are "good enough" for a variety of circumstances.
I really do think they're in trouble, quite independent of the shipping delays. Unless they can come up with some novel feature that nobody else can emulate, I can't really see how they can improve enough on Sleep Cycle to capture enough of the market. I think their best bet is almost to avoid the iPhone now.
for me, the biggest hurdle to sleep cycle is that it needs to be physically on my bed whilst i sleep, whereas WakeMate is a wrist band.
i used sleep cycle for a while, however the phone would fall off my bed or i had to place it under my pillow (which is not recommended because of heat). plus, i don't really like having the phone that close to me whilst sleeping.
i look forward to WakeMate, i think it will be a more complete solution.
I'm not sure how much the wakemate improves on the iphone's accelerometer, but even if it's only a little bit, surely it's worth $48? I make $48 in 3 hours. I have to wake up every day for the rest of my life.
I don't know. Sleep Cycle works well about 94% of the time for me. With an improved wake algorithm, I think you could pull it up to at least 98% of the time in pure software, or at least that's what I got for my sleeping patterns playing around with the data in Mathematica.
Is improving 2% of your wakeups worth $48? Your wakeups would have a "valuation" of $2400 by that logic. Which, I dunno, maybe it should, but it seems a little high.
If drowsiness affects your productivity, then all of your wakeups over the lifetime of the device are probably worth $2400. Of course, it's best to leave judgement until we know whether WakeMate is better, and if so then by how much.
Maybe off topic, but I just did the pre-order and Google Checkout is one of the worst checkout experiences I had in the last few years. The translations look like they came from babelfish, no integration with WakeMate itself, ugly - you would think that a company with as many smart people as Google would figure out that this is not a good way to end your sales funnel.
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THus I wonder what differentiates WakeMate from Sleep Cycle?
* WakeMate seems to be primarily competing on price (!) against FitBit and Zeo. The problem is, Sleep Cycle way undercuts them.
* I would be willing to pay for dedicated hardware that would free up my iPhone for music listening before bed(like Zeo or FitBit). Unfortunately, WakeMate doesn't help in this regard.
* There are times that I think Sleep Cycle is inaccurate, but I think it's "good enough" in a lot of sleep circumstances. Dedicated hardware should improve over a bed accelerometer a bit, but I don't think the additional accuracy alone is worth $48
* I'm hoping WakeMate's statistics and analysis meet or exceed the Zeo, but to be honest Sleep Cycle's stats are "good enough" for a variety of circumstances.
I really do think they're in trouble, quite independent of the shipping delays. Unless they can come up with some novel feature that nobody else can emulate, I can't really see how they can improve enough on Sleep Cycle to capture enough of the market. I think their best bet is almost to avoid the iPhone now.
i used sleep cycle for a while, however the phone would fall off my bed or i had to place it under my pillow (which is not recommended because of heat). plus, i don't really like having the phone that close to me whilst sleeping.
i look forward to WakeMate, i think it will be a more complete solution.
Wakemate: Doesn't the phone have to be close to you to hear the alarm? Or does the wristband have a speaker in it?
my phone sits on my bedside table, next to my bed. easily close enough for the wakemate connection.
Is improving 2% of your wakeups worth $48? Your wakeups would have a "valuation" of $2400 by that logic. Which, I dunno, maybe it should, but it seems a little high.