Let’s get this out of the way right at the start. I love my Pebble watch – that’s mine on my hairy wrist to the left.
I have absolutely no regrets whatsoever about putting my money down and making the project happen through Kickstarter.
Also, as a small business owner, I know that you have to do everything that you can to make a success of your business and bring the cash in through the door.
That out the way I really worry about the recent news that from this weekend you will be able to walk into a US branch of Best Buy and pick up your own Pebble watch.
On the one hand it is great news as it takes what is a product at the forefront of the wearable computing revolutions into the mainstream. On the other hand I fear for Pebble when the product which isn’t ready for the prime time reaches the great unwashed masses.
Kickstarter is, by and large, a relatively sophisticated audience and tech savvy in a way that those wandering into Best Buy won’t be. How a Best Buy purchaser will react when they find that simple things like CLI doesn’t work, notifications, other than SMS, never show up and crashes are frequent, I am not sure.
My feeling is that this move is probably too soon and could end up damaging Pebble’s reputation and while it is a coup it could also be their undoing as a less forgiving audience get the otherwise excellent watch in their hands.