

Pebble Raises $15 Million as Wave of Smart Watches Arrives - taylorbuley
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/16/pebble-raises-15-million-to-ready-itself-for-wave-of-smartwatch-competitors/

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roc
Wearables ought to ditch the attempted interaction.

The second I'm prodding at a watch to do more than triage notifications or
cycle through a couple google-now-style 'cards', I might as well have pulled
out my phone.

They should focus on data collection -- which they can be awesome at;
notification triage -- which they can be legitimately more-convenient for, and
some security integration [1]. And if they did some NFC-triggering, that'd be
cool too.

Even _supporting_ deeper interaction is going to relegate these things to
'calculator watch' territory.

[1] if my watch is near my phone, phone should only require the 'simple'
unlock code (or none). if watch isn't around, require the full password. also:
lock my workstation when the watch 'leaves' the presence of the PC.

~~~
rhplus
You'd need some pretty hefty antennas to trigger NFC tags at the range of
watch-to-phone or watch-to-computer (say 1 to 2 metres max). Most NFC readers
operate around a couple cm, maybe 10cm max. Your computer would lock every
time you sipped your coffee :-(

The general idea is great though. I'm not sure what the right proximity tech
would be. Someone else can no doubt chime in. Bluetooth would be overkill, NFC
not enough.

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jessriedel
Is there one can't just use Bluetooth instead of NFC? Does the power
consumption get bad?

~~~
danielsamuels
The power consumption of Bluetooth is so minimal that turning off Bluetooth on
an iPhone only hides the icon, it doesn't actually turn Bluetooth off.

~~~
stbtrax
do you have a source for this?

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jtchang
Pebble is in the land grab stage right now. Their primary advantage being that
they are the first mover.

Their #1 priority is to win the hearts and minds of their users.

A successful kickstarter campaign is a good start but to create "raving fans"
they need to be hyper focused in getting you to love the product. To adore it.
Otherwise competition will rip them to shreds.

So those of you that have a Pebble? How do you like it? Is it everything you
hoped for?

~~~
chriswarren
I've had mine for a couple of weeks, using it with an iPhone, and so far it's
a neat toy that doesn't do very much. I can see text messages, and I can see
the phone number of the person calling me (not their name yet, though). I can
control the music playing on my phone. That's about it right now. I haven't
tried Runkeeper yet.

I've heard that Android users can hook in to a lot more. Hopefully iOS opens
up more access for other apps to send notifications to it.

The feature I probably use the most is the watch itself - I don't have to pull
my phone out of my pocket to check the time, and flicking my wrist to activate
the backlight works really well.

~~~
antidaily
Exactly what I was about to write. Went back to my Nike Fuel band almost
immediately. As a watch, it's just ok. Beyond that, it just isn't that useful.
And as phones continue to get thinner and lighter -- I guess I don't see the
point.

~~~
drcongo
The Fuel Band is the worst watch I've ever owned. It drives me mad how many
times I have to hit the button, and how long I have to wait, just to find out
the time.

~~~
antidaily
Fair point. In truth, I use my phone as my watch. I pretty much dont switch
from Fuel reading on band.

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mikestew
It will be interesting to see what happens if rumored watches show up from
larger companies. If that happens, I think Pebble is done. I have one, I like
it (but I don't "love it!"). Pebble has demonstrated trouble with coordinating
all of the moving pieces, from manufacturing to software and firmware. I don't
fault them, it's a tough job, but their window is shrinking. At the moment
they have yet to fulfill all of their Kickstarter backers, and I just don't
see that happening until at least July.

Those 600 "apps" the article mentions? They're just watch faces (and a few
small games, I guess). Those were built with an alpha version of the watch
face SDK, with the warning that your watch could be bricked if you install any
of those 600 "apps". A real SDK with two-way communication with the watch is
nowhere to be seen.

Maybe that $15 million will allow them to get cracking on getting that SDK out
the door. Without some real dev support, allowing them some real traction, I
suspect they will suffer the same fate as Microsoft's SPOT watch.

~~~
evan_
The just released the two-way SDK today.

[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-e-
paper...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-e-paper-watch-
for-iphone-and-android/posts/482492)

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salimmadjd
They raised from CRV. George Zachary is one of the best VC guys in the valley.
No matter what, he always replies to your email. You'll get a reply from him
which might come 1-2 weeks later on Sunday midnight. Which means he is working
all the time and tries to respond to everyone! Big congrats to the Pebble team
from starting a whole new market segment with their vision starting from the
kickstarter till the closing the round to all the stuff that they'll be doing
in the future!

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bane
I'm strongly cross-dominant [1], I write left-handed and mouse right-handed (I
also swing right-handed in baseball and golf, but box southpaw so go fig). As
a result, I have no comfortable hand to wear a watch. In high school I got by
with cheap pocket watches for awhile. But let's be honest, pocket watches are
not a great fashion statement.

The mas market adoption of cell-phones was great for me, since they're
essentially pocket watches with a phone (and now a computer) attached.

I've seen various smart watches over the years, but I inevitably fall back to
"but I'd have to wear a watch".

1 - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-dominance>

~~~
bryantraywick
Wow, I'm the same and never knew it had a name. I write left-handed use use a
fork with my left-hand and generally consider myself left-handed. But, I throw
right-handed and swing right-handed (although I became a decent switch hitter
in little league, I had more power left-handed but more accuracy right-
handed). Some tasks I have trouble picking a hand and go back and forth
between the two. When I bowl (which is usually only about every 5 years or so)
I spend the entire time switching between both hands to find one that feels
more comfortable. I also pass a tennis racket from hand to hand depending on
which side the ball is on, but I play ping-pong solely with my left hand. When
I first started using computers in elementary school I made a conscious effort
to use the mouse with my right hand because even then I knew that every
computer I came to would have the mouse on the right side. However, I usually
use a laptop trackpad with my left hand. I, like you, found wrist watches
uncomfortable to use. I wore one in high school and always put it on my left
wrist but I had to remove it every time I sat down to write or type. I think
smart watches could have some useful applications, especially when cycling as
a glance-able cycle-computer paired with a ride tracking app, but I just don't
think I could put up with the pain of wearing a watch every day to get any
benefit from one.

~~~
bane
Yeah watches just ended up being a huge irritant to me as well. It bothered my
father tremendously as he thinks not wearing a watch is a symbol of being a
"layabout". But of course I always had a watch or clock on me or near me, just
not a wrist watch.

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rdl
I got a pebble to try to build a specific app: electronic leash (using bt
4.0le) to a phone and/or laptop. It's pretty easy to do electronic leash of a
Mac laptop (or Linux, or Windows) using an iPhone; hard to do for the
iPhone/iPad alone due to Apple. Presumably feasible to do on Android, but most
hardware still seems to lack 4.0le, which would kill battery.

Wouldn't wear it as my watch in general. It's really "tall" (not thick, not
wide) -- I have decent-sized wrists, and the watch still bumps against stuff
more than what I wear otherwise. I really prefer metal-cased watches with
deployment clasps and tritium gtls, too, which would be difficult to Pebble-
ify. The pebble is really well made for a kickstarter'd consumer electronics
device, and well made for any non-Apple consumer device in general, but it's
still not quite a $100+ wristwatch mechanically or aesthetically.

Otherwise, the "show a notification" thing is interesting, but I can feel my
iPhone vibrating in my pocket, so if I have a way to tune notifications (like
dnd mode) and lock-screen viewable messages, it's pretty close. I'd still
prefer the Pebble for quickly glancing on public transit, or in any situation
where I'd feel uncomfortable taking out my phone.

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andrewljohnson
Smart Watches are on my radar. We develop a lot of GPS type apps, so this sort
of platform is an easy and natural shift for us. It seems like there is a lot
of uses for smartwatches, from health and fitness, to productivity and and
people management.

I think the watches will have a quicker start than the glasses out of the
gate, and usher in the era of cyborgs. I'm not sure if there is iPhone-level
of money for the first to reach the platform though. It's really PC, Internet,
and iPhone sized shifts you get the most from recognizing.

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micahroberson
I still can't see myself ever wearing one of these. It's cool and all and I
would love to write some custom apps for it, but its just not there yet
aesthetically.

~~~
marknutter
That is a very easy problem to solve from their standpoint. The next step
after this first round of watches is to offer different styles, I'm sure.

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kailuowang
I think a good combination might be Smart watches + Google Glass. Smart
watches can provide more sophisticated input while glass provides great output
and camera. I don't really see the value of a smart phone + smart watch
combination.

~~~
andrewljohnson
How about getting alerts on your watch, while your phone is in your pocket? Or
syncing your watch with your iPad after taking a run, over bluetooth,
automatically? Or talk into your watch while your phone is a camera?

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kirillzubovsky
It's funny right, there was a time when investors didn't think smart watches
were going to be of any interest to anyone; that was just a few years ago.
This is really the difference between a visionary entrepreneur and the rest.
Congrats Eric and the team, great job and looking forward to see what's to
come. Pebble glasses, perhaps ?

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Cardeck1
I wouldn't call them first-movers because there are some companies including
Nokia, Apple and Microsoft that already had a smartwatch project on hold.

Plus the fact that Pebble is focusing on sports watches.The others will focus
on a full-featured smarwatch.

~~~
bvdbijl
They are however the first the ship, and that's what counts

~~~
Cardeck1
We will see in the near future I guess...

