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Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky hosts Reddit AMA to talk about the biggest Kickstarter to date

Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky hosts Reddit AMA to talk about the biggest Kickstarter to date

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With Pebble's production phase soon to begin, creator Eric Migicovsky hosted an AMA on Reddit yesterday to answer all of the burning questions around behing the biggest Kickstarter project ever.

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Pebble smartwatch
Pebble smartwatch

There's now nine days and counting until the Pebble smartwatch gets its funding on Kickstarter, and it's still raking in cash at a rapid rate (nearly $10 million in backings as of today). With the production phase soon to begin, Pebble creator Eric Migicovsky hosted an AMA (ask me anything) on Reddit yesterday to answer all of the burning questions around behing the biggest Kickstarter project ever. From a hardware perspective, Migicovsky was firm on saying the Pebble's design was finalized and there wouldn't be any changes like a color eink screen forthcoming — his group of 10 employees is now focused squarely on getting the software ready to go. As for the decision to not use a touchscreen, Migicovsky said that he "didn't like the idea of obscuring our relatively tiny screen with my fat fingers."

The software as much as hardware will make Pebble successful, and Migicovsky said that Pebble's open SDK will be the "key" to future-proofing the smartwatch — "developers will be able to write apps that continually improve your Pebble!" There's a lot to be done between now and the SDK's release in August, and Migicovsky admitted there were still many changes or additions that could take place. One commenter suggested adding Siri or Android Voice control activation via the Pebble, to which Migicovsky replied, "haven't thought about this, but we'll look into it!" As for greater overall Android compatibility, Pebble is "pledging support" for Android 2.3 and up; Migicovsky noted that "Google has done an excellent job with 4.0 by recommending a standard Bluetooth stack." As for the third major smartphone OS, Migicovsky said there were "no plans" to support Windows Phone because it "does not include any Bluetooth SPP APIs" — but he'd be open to support if those APIs were available. Unfortunately, there's no planned support for the iPad either at the moment.

As for how Pebble will produce the 65,000 and counting watches, the company is "working with the manufacturing experts at Dragon Innovation who have helped bring tons of awesome startup hardware projects to market." Still, it'll be a big job — Migicovsky was only expecting to have to produce 1,000 watches initially. And as for how Pebble's been able to drum up such intense support in such a short time? Migicovsky simply said that "Paul Graham said it best: Make something people want. That's pretty much the only thing that matters, everything else will work itself out!" There's a lot more Q&A over at Reddit, so check it out if you're interested in learning more about how Pebble came to be.