tl;dr: If you’re thinking about buying a Twine, do yourself a favor and look for something else.
I was doing a bit of cleaning and ran across my old Twine. It reminded me of how excited I was initially, and how disappointed I was when it didn’t meet expectations. Supermechanical did a great job in the beginning, the design was good, the packaging was delightful and their user interface was easy to use.
Twine wasn’t perfect though, the backend system lacked some key features, wasn’t reliable and the device was a black box that wasn’t hackable at all. For the most part, the users were understanding in the early days, most of the original backers from Kickstarter knew they weren’t buying a mass market product and expected some bumps in the road. Supermechanical was responsive initially, but after a few months, their responsiveness and software updates tapered off.
While user questions went unanswered on the Twine Community forums, Supermechanical started talking about a new product on their blog. The new product turned out to be Range, an iOS thermometer. As one of those users, I felt dumped. The product I had purchased was being ignored for something shiny, new, and ready-made for the sous-vide craze.
Unfortunately, things never got better. While it looks like one can still buy a Twine, it seems totally unsupported, at least based on the recent comments in the community forums and on the kickstarted page. Too bad since it had so much potential.