The MetaWatch was just recently released last month and has been gaining some popularity. It’ll set you back 200 dollars and can be purchased here. It carries many of the same ideologies as the Pebble smart watch, and if you are going to be on the market for something developer friendly, these two watches are what you’re likely going to be fighting between.
Origins
The MetaWatch emerged as a project that was backed by Fossil over a year ago. The creators Bill Geiser and David Rosales, like Pebble, aimed to create a device that can give information at a glance. It originally was compatible with Android, but it was quickly realized that iOS has far too big of a following to be left untapped. A recent update gave MetaWatch users Bluetooth 4.0 and iOS capabilities.
At a glance
- Reflective Display for use in different lighting conditions
- Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity uses less power
- Android and iOS support spans across more users and developers
- Clean Design that is easy to look at
- Developer friendly unlike some other current smart-watches
But will it blend?
All these attributes add up to a seemingly solid smart-watch, but we won’t know how robust the MetaWatch is until it gets in the hands of some developers. Its recent implementation of Bluetooth 4.0 and iOS support puts it on the same playing field as Pebble, keeping both watches ahead of the curve. How do you think they will stack up against each other and which one are you planning on getting your hands on? Let us know what you think, or come hang with us on Facebook or Twitter.
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5 Responses to Introducing the new MetaWatch
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Congratulations on the Pebbleuser blog & forum. By way of background, I’m one of the co-founders of Meta Watch. Since you were kind enough to mention us; thought I’d reciprocate by sharing some of our thoughts on your article and on this new category of watches.
First, I’d like to address a couple of items in your article. The origin of Meta Watch goes well beyond being a Fossil-back project. My personal journey in smart watches goes back over 17 years. My co-founder, David Rosales, and I hooked up at Fossil in 2004 where I headed up Fossil’s Watch Tech Division. In the span of 2004 – Aug 2011 David and I were responsible for designing & shipping over 250k ‘smart’ &/or sensor-based watches.
Additionally, characterizing our recent announcement of Bluetooth 4.0 & iOS as ‘catching up’ with other contenders such as Pebble as a method of playing ‘catch up’ is naive. Anyone who has built mass-produced consumer electronics knows it takes a long time to go from idea to mass production. The fact is we’ve been working on this since September 2011. We had already been through multiple test production runs before Pebble launched their KickStarter project.
Last, but certainly not least, I’d like to congratulate the Pebble team on their Kickstarter campaign. I learned a long time ago to embrace my competition; not only do competitors make you better but they also shoulder responsibility for building awareness which helps the overall market to grow bigger and faster.
Thanks!
@billg
Bill we certainly do appreciate your feedback on our post. The article has recently been updated to better reflect some of the points you introduced.
Also we were aware of the history of you and your co-founder David, but if you could offer some insight on when plans for the MetaWatch in specific came to be, I feel like others would find that interesting.
Thanks again for your comment!
JChron
JChron,
From a timeline perspective, we commenced development on Meta Watch in December of 2009. Our first customer shipments took place in September 2011 – 22 months later. This is typical IMO. Setting up the supply chain, production network, and logistics infrastructure is very time consuming.
Here’s some additional context that might be of interest to anyone interested in smart watches. It also explains how we got to where we are today.
There have been many attempts to turn the concept of a smart watch into reality; and most have failed. David and I knew about these failures intimately well as we had ‘front row seats’ to the two biggest smart watch failures of them all: Microsoft SPOT Watch and the Palm Watch.
What we came to realize is that we and all the other teams that failed to create a successful smart watch had been focusing on the wrong problem. We each spent millions of dollars and multiple years in our failed attempts to come up with the ‘perfect’ smart watch. What none of us realized was the root problem was not the watch itself; it was the process of developing, manufacturing, and selling smart watches.
The problem was we thought we knew exactly what the consumer wanted. So we spent millions of dollars and 2-3 years developing the *perfect* smart watch; and then millions more marketing it. We failed every time. Why? After multiple failures and considerable analysis we realized our collective failures weren’t due to a single problem; there were multiple problems at work:
• We thought we knew what consumers wanted; the reality is consumers are fickle; their needs are incredibly hard to predict; and their needs can change quickly
• We thought we were building standalone, hardware-based products; the reality is smart watches are much more about software and the ecosystem of services that surround them
• We completely ignored the principles of agile or lean development – rapid iteration, feedback loops, ongoing refinement – in short, we never solicited feedback from customers
• We ignored the developer community and the opportunity afforded by embracing ‘open innovation’
• We assumed a mass market existed from day one; the reality is the market for smart watches is fragmented. There are thousands of markets….of thousands
• We focused on technology while ignoring the single most important driver of watch sales for the past 50 years – providing a constant flow of cool, new, fashion-oriented industrial designs
Meta Watch is the result of experience. We shifted to a platform strategy comprised of hardware, software, SDK, & API’s to significantly reduce development costs and risks. We embraced open source & open innovation methods that gives us access to valuable domain expertise through 3rd party experts who develop applications for vertical markets. And we fostered a company culture embracing both logical and emotional / fashion design. This last point is important because form will be just as important as function as this category grows.
Hope this additional context helps you and your community to better understand who we are.
- @billg
Wow a lot of valuable information there. Seems like you guys went through a lot of trial and error before coming out with the smart-watch you have today.
I’m sure readers will find what you posted here very interesting. I certainly do. It’s easy sometimes to just see the finished product and not what went into it.
Thanks for you comment
-JChron
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