I really enjoyed the next paragraph comparing Pebble's "5,500" apps to Samsung's 1,000 apps when the truth was just given. Not that it's bad to have 1,000 apps, just that it shows some of the hyperbole that smart watches have behind them right now.
I wasn't sure if Samsung's claim of 1,000 apps included watchfaces, so I went through the Galaxy store and counted them by hand. The results (sections may be off by a few numbers as I was counting kind of quickly):
108 clocks 11 health 21 finance 211 lifestyle 17 social networking 129 entertainment 171 utilities TOTAL = 668 Note that the actual number is lower, since several apps were repeated across multiple sections and I didn't subtract them from the total.
So, Samsung does include watch faces, but the ratio of apps:faces is much greater. As for the actual number not being 1,000 apps, I'm guessing Samsung is counting apps for different languages that wouldn't appear in the US store. I wasn't sure whether to get into this level of hair-splitting in the piece, but ultimately figured I could get into it more if someone brought it up.
Anyway, I wouldn't really discount the importance of watch faces, especially on Pebble since they're key to customizing the look of your device. And I think they'll get more useful with time; Jawbone's app is technically a watch face, for instance, and some faces can display the weather, battery and calendars.
I agree that bragging about app count stops being instructive at some point, but in this case I think they show Pebble has done a fine job of establishing itself.
Thanks for reading!