The smart watch comes back, with some help from Google

Eric Megikovsky still wears stones. Thirteen years after the establishment of WeaArables and found it Great success on Cake StarterAnd more than eight years after that The company sold to FitbitThat was then I got GoogleThe Migicovsky watch is still working. (If you are wondering: When I saw him in CES a few weeks ago, he seemed to wear white Tour of gravel model. But he has a box full of them at home.

Instead of buying another smart watch, Migicovsky decided to try to get Pebble again. he He sold his latest startup companyCorrespondent application Callee is called a whistleTo Automatic last year and the company left in the fall. Since then, consider starting a gravel -like product, with discovery that it would be easier to do the same again again. “But then I was like, What if you just ask Google to open the operating system? He says. It looked like a long snapshot, but he knew that the code was only sitting inside Mountain View somewhere. So he asked.

To surprise Migicovsky, Google agreed to the public OS version for the public. As of the two, All fixed programs are available on GitHubAnd Migicovsky started a company to capture the place where he stopped.

The company – which cannot be called Pebble because Google still has it – has no name yet. Currently, Migicovsky hosts waiting and subscribing to the news site called a website called Repubble. Later this year, as soon as the company has a name and access to all these Pebble programs, the plan is to start charging the new wearable devices that look and feel like the old gravel.

The reason, tells me Migicovsky, simple. He says: “I literally tried everything else, and nothing else is approaching.” Certainly, he may have a very specific set of requirements – many people are clearly happy with what Apple, Garmin, Google and others do. But it is true that there was nothing like gravel since the pebble. “For the things I want, such as a good electronic paper screen, long battery life, a good and simple user experience, can be penetrated, there is nothing only.”

He says, the essence of Pebble is some things. The gravel should be strange and enjoyable and it must feel like a tool In an important way. It offers notifications, allows you to control your music with buttons, lasts for a long time, and don’t try to do a lot. It seems that Migicovsky may have the Pebble-E aspirations outside the smart watches, but it seems to start with smart watches.

If this looks like the old gravel and not much, then this is the exact point. Migicovsky has repeatedly told me that the plan is not a Pebble, or AI Bejesus from the concept, or doing anything else you can do in 2025. The fact that the Pebble on its wrist is still working, and still works in its favor, is evidence that Pebble has completed it Already its job. “We are building a spiritual spirit, not a successor, but the cloning of gravel,” he says, because there is not much that I really want to change. “

Many other things have changed in eight years. Google, Apple and Samsung are all now good smart watches that are tightly linked to their other devices – the Pebble is always facing a problem reaching the features on iOS, in particular, and this is not easier. Smart watches are currently health and fitness devices above all, and they become more complicated and largely powerful in seeking to achieve these features. Google clearly does not see any form of Pebble as a threat; The best opportunity is to draw another path completely.

The biggest difference this time will be the way the company itself operates. Migicovsky books A long blog post in 2022 Explain the error that occurred in Pebble the first time and attributed its partial failure to take a set of investment funds and allow it to change the company. Since then, Migicovsky has made a lot of money from the whistle and during an investor in Y Combinator; His new company is alone. Currently, it’s just Migicovsky and a few part-time employees-will grow, he says, but not much. “The main thing here is: sustainable.”

Migicovsky also hopes to be part of a broader open -source society around Pebble OS. The stones are still present: a group of developers in reverse I worked for Keep many platform applications aliveFor example, along with Played app To contact the phones, and Subiddit stones Antihantically active for a product that has not been updated since the Obama administration. Migicovsky says he plans for an open source, all that his new company adopts and hopes that many other people will also build things. “There will be the ability of anyone who wants, to take the source code, assemble it, operate it on gravel, build new gravel, and build new hours,” he says. “They can even use it in other random devices. Who knows what people can do now?”

This entire project will take time, warn Migicovsky. I just discovered that Google will open the program a few days ago, and it was not able to use it at all. But it is already working on the initial models of the devices, and it is clear to what it wants to be new gravel. He knows he can do it because he did so already once. Evidence is on his wrist. All he tries to do is to make sure that he can stay there.