most of the smartwatches have sidetracked by using smartphone operating systems and hardware which gets them unacceptable battery life
That's not at all the case. In fact I can't think of a single smart watch shipping in any volume that uses a smartphone operating system - not Android Wear, not the Apple Watch, not Pebble... also very few are using smartphone hardware - most have very tiny screens and a very small form factor.
That small form factor is the reason for the poor battery life. There is simply very little room to hold a battery, then of course the LCD itself even small adds a large drain. Pebble at least steps around the LCD, and gives you an idea of how significant that portion of battery consumption really is in relation to communications or processing on power consumption.
Smart watches should have focused on notifications and remote control of the smartphone
That I think the the absolute least interesting aspect of smart-watches. They are much more interesting in being a more immediate conduit to networking and sensor data from your phone or on-board sensors.
Pebble is doing it right, but doesn't have the weight to make mainstream.
How is a $20 million Kickstarter not mainstream? I would say Pebble is more mainstream than AndroidWare - I really doubt the combination of all AndroidWear device sales combined matches what Pebble has done.
I do like a lot of what Pebble is doing, the smart straps and related 1mm development time along with a really unique approach to the smart watch interface may with a lot of people over. The advantage Apple has is (probably) a much more polished project and (certainly) a vast array of developer support for the watch out of the gate, and increasing from there.