iPhone Compatible 'Pebble' Wristwatch Tallies Nearly $4 Million in Kickstarter Presales
Kickstarter is a popular place for wild ideas to gain some traction, but sometimes an idea clicks with so many people it's possible to wonder why no one thought of it before. Such is the case with the Pebble digital wristwatch.
It uses an e-paper display, similar to the screen on the Amazon Kindle, and connects to the iPhone (and Android devices) via Bluetooth. Pebble uses vibrating alerts to tell the wearer of incoming calls, emails, calendar alerts, Facebook and Twitter messages, weather alerts and more. It also has an extensive SDK for developers and its own "Pebble watchapp store". It will also be waterproof enough to swim with, but it will not be a dive watch.
The company behind the watch even has experience with smart watches. Pebble has been making a BlackBerry-compatible watch called the inPulse, and is a graduate of the Y Combinator startup incubator. It has now received pledges for $3.8 million from 26,500 backers on Kickstarter for a watch that will retail somewhere around $150 when it goes on sale this fall.
An article by Bloomberg notes that Kickstarter wasn't Pebble's first choice for raising funds. He tried to raise money via traditional venture capital firms, but "few investors were interested in betting on a hardware startup, or dealing with the headaches that often come with manufacturing goods." However, Kickstarter seems to have worked out very well. The watch is the most funded Kickstarter project ever.
Pebble told
MacRumors that it's treating Kickstarter as a discounted pre-order mechanism, and once the funding period closes in a month it will continue taking orders on its website. US buyers can preorder a Jet Black Pebble watch via Kickstarter for $115, while foreign buyers will pay slightly more to cover shipping.
Update: Pebble has now passed the $4 million mark.
Popular Stories
Apple is planning to launch new MacBook Pro models as soon as early March, but if you can, this is one generation you should skip because there's something much better in the works.
We're waiting on 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, with few changes other than the processor upgrade. There won't be any tweaks to the design or the display, but later this...
Wednesday February 11, 2026 10:07 am PST by
Juli CloverApple today released iOS 26.3 and iPadOS 26.3, the latest updates to the iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 operating systems that came out in September. The new software comes almost two months after Apple released iOS 26.2 and iPadOS 26.2.
The new software can be downloaded on eligible iPhones and iPads over-the-air by going to Settings > General > Software Update.
According to Apple's release notes, ...
It has been a slow start to 2026 for Apple product launches, with only a new AirTag and a special Apple Watch band released so far. We are still waiting for MacBook Pro models with M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, the iPhone 17e, a lower-cost MacBook with an iPhone chip, long-rumored updates to the Apple TV and HomePod mini, and much more.
Apple is expected to release/update the following products...
Apple plans to announce the iPhone 17e on Thursday, February 19, according to Macwelt, the German equivalent of Macworld.
The report said the iPhone 17e will be announced in a press release on the Apple Newsroom website, so do not expect an event for this device specifically.
The iPhone 17e will be a spec-bumped successor to the iPhone 16e. Rumors claim the device will have four key...
Apple acquired Canadian graph database company Kuzu last year, it has emerged.
The acquisition, spotted by AppleInsider, was completed in October 2025 for an undisclosed sum. The company's website was subsequently taken down and its Github repository was archived, as is commonplace for Apple acquisitions.
Kuzu was "an embedded graph database built for query speed, scalability, and easy of ...
