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COMMENT PAGE FOR:
HTML Vacheron Constantin breaks the world record for most complicated wristwatch
tomcam wrote 10 hours 6 min ago:
I like my watches the same way I like my women. Quiet, and with fewer
complications.
Joke! Itâs a joke! Aw, downvote away ye bastards.
standardUser wrote 14 hours 2 min ago:
Is there something I don't know about mechanical watch culture/industry
that would explain their terrible choice of watch band in those photos?
mrtransient wrote 16 hours 33 min ago:
Is there an open source Android app with all these complications?
euroderf wrote 20 hours 28 min ago:
Where is my wristantikythera ?
DonDhump wrote 20 hours 51 min ago:
Well that's certainly an achievement but not water resistant though.
azinman2 wrote 20 hours 50 min ago:
what about this is practical?!
gene-h wrote 22 hours 30 min ago:
At some point, making mechanical watches more complicated will require
going digital. It is possible to make very small gears with
semiconductor processes, however, very small gears wear out fast due to
stiction.
In order for gears to work they must have sliding contact and that
means wear. Mechanisms based on flexures don't have this problem, but
this requires building the clock very differently. It might be possible
to implement many of these complications using flexure based logic[0].
[0]
HTML [1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-08678-0
staplung wrote 22 hours 56 min ago:
Many moons ago, William Gibson did a piece for Wired about his
obsession with mechanical watches[1]. The whole thing is worth a read
but this bit is worth quoting:
"""
Mechanical watches are so brilliantly unnecessary.
Any Swatch or Casio keeps better time, and high-end contemporary Swiss
watches are priced like small cars. But mechanical watches partake of
what my friend John Clute calls the Tamagotchi Gesture. They're
pointless in a peculiarly needful way; they're comforting precisely
because they require tending.
And vintage mechanical watches are among the very finest fossils of the
pre-digital age. Each one is a miniature world unto itself, a tiny
functioning mechanism, a congeries of minute and mysterious moving
parts. Moving parts! And consequently these watches are, in a sense,
alive. They have heartbeats. They seem to respond, Tamagotchi-like, to
"love," in the form, usually, of the expensive ministrations of
specialist technicians. Like ancient steam-tractors or Vincent
motorcycles, they can be painstakingly restored from virtually any
stage of ruin.
"""
HTML [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20240930092315/https://www.wired.c...
snovv_crash wrote 21 hours 37 min ago:
I have a feeling we'll feel the same looking back on combustion
engine cars.
bigstrat2003 wrote 21 hours 28 min ago:
We already do. Lots of people love older cars (say, from the 80s or
earlier) because they are a mechanical system without a computer
controlling everything. They are something you can understand and
work on yourself without having to own a lot of specialized
equipment.
nayuki wrote 21 hours 37 min ago:
> mechanical watches are among the very finest fossils of the
pre-digital age
Clocks have discrete ticks. They are digital devices. Even a base-60
second hand is digital because the number of states is finite.
Mechanical and digital are not mutually exclusive concepts. For
example, "The analytical engine was a proposed digital mechanical
general-purpose computer designed by English mathematician and
computer pioneer Charles Babbage." -- [1] Going further, I could
argue that the digital age is very old. Humans who wrote numbers for
accounting purposes were engaging in a digital activity; only the
numbers matter, not the medium they were written on or the exact
handwriting style of the scribe who wrote those numbers. DNA is a
form of digital data conveyed through a sequence of 4 possible
symbols, and DNA predates humans by billions of years.
The pedantic phrase substitution for "pre-digital age" would be
something like "age before widespread digital electronic computers on
solid-state microchips" (thus differentiating from analog electronic
computers and vacuum tubes).
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_engine
tokai wrote 20 hours 51 min ago:
Digital has three meanings; having to do with fingers and toes.
Having to do with something discrete. And having to do with
computers, with electronic as synonym.
You are arguing from the second definition while the quote is of
the third definition.
gweinberg wrote 16 hours 9 min ago:
You're missing the meaning where the display uses the symbols we
call digits (rather than hands). I don;t think most people would
call an electronic watch "digital" if the display was hands, even
if the "hands" are actually an lcd display.
gweinberg wrote 18 hours 34 min ago:
It would be absurd to say an analog electronic computer was
digital.
emchammer wrote 17 hours 59 min ago:
GP wrote that a base-60 second hand is digital, but the second
hand on a Rolex ticks at 5 steps IIRC. It is not clear to me
that the natural numbers would exist at all if human beings did
not.
nayuki wrote 20 hours 26 min ago:
> And having to do with computers, with electronic as synonym.
Computers do not have to be electronic. Counterexamples:
Mechanical calculators, LEGO logic gates, hydraulic logic valves,
electrical (not electronic) relays. Heck, even human meatbags
were called "computers" back in the day.
amscanne wrote 19 hours 43 min ago:
Youâre being needlessly pedantic. Obviously, âcomputersâ
also has varied meanings. In this case, it is referring to
systems built with discrete electronics and ICs. That is, its
operation is based almost entirely on the manipulation of
electrons and their associated fields.
Watches are nice because itâs much less common to have such
tiny precise physical machines anymore, since so many of these
use cases have been replaced by âcomputersâ.
theamk wrote 19 hours 49 min ago:
Technically correct, but you are being pedantic.
It was pretty clear to me that the 3rd sense of "digital"
pertains to modern-ish electronic digital computers. I would
not call mechanical calculator, human or hydraulic logic
"digital computer". (Relay computer is on the fence)
CSSer wrote 22 hours 13 min ago:
It reminds me of the Theo Jansenâs Strandbeests
philshem wrote 22 hours 43 min ago:
Another nice longform essay, from the NYer (2017)
HTML [1]: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/20/confessions-of...
jxjnskkzxxhx wrote 1 day ago:
Most complicated wristwatch, has all the things you never knew you
didn't want.
I'll keep my Casio thank you.
offsky wrote 1 day ago:
I became interested in complicated watches several years ago and knew I
could never afford one, so I made a website with simulated watch dials.
Just for fun and education. It was also a great way for me to learn svg
animations.
HTML [1]: https://www.complication.watch/
primax wrote 17 hours 18 min ago:
There is a giant world of high end replica watches that are so close
to the original that they take expert mechanics to tell apart. I've
got a few $500 watches that are identical to $10-40k watches.
Worth checking out reptime to scratch that itch without selling a
kidney.
eddyg wrote 1 day ago:
Nice!
I loved the Emerald Chronometerâ½Â¹â¾app for iOS / iPadOS and all
its various âcalibresâ that you could flip over and show in day
or night mode. Sadly the dev has removed the apps from the App Store,
but it still runs (for now.) Itâs a fun use for an older iPad on a
stand.
Wanted to mention it in case it gives you some inspiration. :)
â½Â¹â¾
HTML [1]: https://emeraldsequoia.com/h/
mwexler wrote 1 day ago:
Emerald Time ( [1] ) was my favorite clock-setting app. Always fun
to see the variation among sources. I was sad to see the company
shut down.
HTML [1]: https://emeraldsequoia.com/et/index.html
ngcc_hk wrote 16 hours 28 min ago:
If maintenance is an issue and do not want subscription, why not
try open source and patron â¦
ttepasse wrote 20 hours 11 min ago:
Back on New Years Eve 2016 I wanted to see once in my life one of
these leap second which got inserted every few years. Emerald
Time was the only clock app I found which displayed the
deciseconds: [1] (00:59, because of UTC+1)
HTML [1]: https://imgur.com/a/r1d6OkW
netsharc wrote 1 day ago:
The next step up from this would be to simulate all the internal
mechanisms as 3D models that interact with each other...
rpozarickij wrote 22 hours 13 min ago:
For those interested, the following article is a really cool
explanation/visualization of the mechanical watch: [1] (The website
contains so much more than this)
HTML [1]: https://ciechanow.ski/mechanical-watch/
danielktdoranie wrote 1 day ago:
Sounds complicated
gcanyon wrote 1 day ago:
Time Measurement (6 Total):
1. Day and night indication for reference city
2. Second time zone hours and minutes (on 24-hour display)
3. World time indication for 24 cities
4. Second time zone day and night indication
5. 3Hz tourbillon with silicon balance wheel (with high Q factor)
6. Civil time display module coupled to the base movement
Gregorian Perpetual Calendar (8 Total):
7. Perpetual calendar
8. Days of the week
9. Date
10. Months
11. Year indication
12. Leap-year indication
13. Indication for the number of the week within the year (ISO 8601
calendar)
14. Number of the day of the week (ISO 8601 calendar).
Vacheron Constantin Les Cabinotiers âSolaria Ultra Grand
Complicationâ
Lunar Indication (3 Total):
15. Astronomical Moon phase and age of the Moon
16. Tide level indicator
17. Spring and neap tides indication.
Astronomical Indications (14 Total):
18. Indications of seasons, equinoxes, solstices & astronomical
zodiac signs
19. Position of the Sun
20. Sunrise time (according to the city of reference)
21. Sunset time (according to the city of reference)
22. Duration of the day (according to the city of reference)
23. Equation of time on tropical gear
24. Culmination time of the Sun (according to the city of
reference)
25. Height of the Sun above the horizon (according to the city of
reference)
26. Declination of the Sun, 3-dimensional Earth showing the
latitude of the Sun in the North/South hemisphere
27. Sidereal hours
28. Sidereal minutes
29. Astronomical zodiac signs
30. Sky chart (according to the city of reference)
31. Temporal tracking of celestial objects.
Vacheron Constantin Les Cabinotiers âSolaria Ultra Grand
Complicationâ
Chiming Complications (5 Total):
32. Minute repeater
33. Westminster carillon chime (4 hammers & 4 gongs)
34. Choice of hour-only or full chime
35. Crown locking system during the chiming
36. Double-stop hammer system to limit rebound and optimize
transmission of the hammers' kinetic energy
Chronograph (4 Total):
37. Chronograph (1 column wheel)
38. 60-minute counter
39. Split-seconds chronograph (1 column wheel)
40. Isolator system for the split-seconds chronograph
Additional Feature:
41. Power-reserve indication (outer disc at 190°)
rlupi wrote 1 day ago:
Isn't this the closest thing to a portable antikitera?
HarHarVeryFunny wrote 1 day ago:
Plot twist : the antikitera mechanism was worn round the neck as a
piece of bling (jk).
microtherion wrote 1 day ago:
By Ancient Greek rappers, presumably.
JacobiX wrote 1 day ago:
What I like about mechanical watches is that, having survived a
near-death experience when quartz watches were introduced, theyâve
evolved into a completely different kind of product. Itâs fascinating
that, unlike most other businesses and products, people donât buy
them for their utility, and the less automated their production
process, the better. Brands like A. Lange & Söhne even pride
themselves on assembling their movements twice.
When inefficiency and craftsmanship are considered features rather than
flaws, you have an industry that wonât easily be replaced by AI or
robots.
wiether wrote 22 hours 50 min ago:
> people donât buy them for their utility
That's called luxury goods and that's not limited to watches.
s0rce wrote 15 hours 22 min ago:
Exactly, a painting, for example, has zero utility.
nevertoolate wrote 15 hours 4 min ago:
What item on a wall would have more utility I wonder.
PeterStuer wrote 1 day ago:
Hold my beer. I'm sure i can cram some 2FA, biometric authentication,
opt out except for 'legitimate interests' activity tracking, cloud
services and AI assistants in there.
dogman1050 wrote 1 day ago:
Incredible. This thing started as metal ore and minerals, and look at
what was crafted. Is there even a single phone app that does
everything this watch can do?
hiyer wrote 1 day ago:
Amazing workmanship. And they managed to make the watch look beautiful
as well.
lofaszvanitt wrote 1 day ago:
This looks nice.
sombhadursubba wrote 1 day ago:
Chick Heidi gogo chick guddu wishlist flair
mrweasel wrote 1 day ago:
Is anyone actually going to use those complications? That's really my
question for most high-end watches. I can see a diver using the
features on their watch, but how many are actually using a Rolex or an
Omega as their regular dive watch?
Chronographs, while cool, isn't exactly a useful why of measuring speed
these days, and how often do you really need to do that anyway.
On a mechanical watch having the date might be useful, I know I keep
forgetting the exact date, but do I really need a watch to remind me
that it's Saturday?
I really love mechanical wristwatches, the mechanics of it is amazing
and they are beautiful pieces or engineering and works great as an
accessory/jewellery, but I don't understand the need for many of the
complications.
barbs wrote 1 day ago:
I use the day-of-the-week indicator on my Casio watch an embarrassing
amount!
mytailorisrich wrote 1 day ago:
These are special, collectors items and pieces of art. Of course
there is no "need" for all these complications, but it isn't the
point.
ZiiS wrote 1 day ago:
The watch with the most complications is any $200 WearOS. You will
need to have spent over $1,000,000 on their other watches before they
will talk to you about a price for this one; practicality is not a
factor to consider.
mrweasel wrote 1 day ago:
I realise that, but it's just weird. Technically the majority of
the complications wouldn't even need to work, because... Who'd
notice?
Seems a bit soul crushing to be working on a complication that no
one would ever use.
guax wrote 1 day ago:
Everyone will see and praise how good you are. The elite
swordmakers of royalty did not think their elaborate swords would
see battle, they knew it was a show piece. The point was not the
use, was the position and recognition it brought you.
More than half of the watch world does not appreciate the
engineering. They appreciate the exclusivity.
TimByte wrote 1 day ago:
I love that we've apparently reached the "absurd flex" stage of
watchmaking where it's less about telling time and more about seeing
just how much ridiculous wizardry you can cram into a tiny mechanical
space
quickthrowman wrote 1 day ago:
This is not new to watchmaking in the slightest. Highly complicated
watches have been made for over 200 years.
Henry Graves Supercomplication was made by Patel Philippe in 1933,
which was 92 years ago; [1] An even older example is the Marie
Antoinette watch by Abraham Breguet, which was started in 1783, 243
years ago:
HTML [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patek_Philippe_Henry_Graves_...
HTML [2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Antoinette_(watch)
Hauthorn wrote 1 day ago:
I think watchmakers have been pushing this for quite a while.
If you want more recent examples, see Richard Mille.
Mainan_Tagonist wrote 1 day ago:
I happen to work in this industry, and just a word for those that
compare this with an Apple Watch or a Casio, this Vacheron-Constantin
will likely be around 200 years from now, it will still be a testimony
of the refinement and engineering of a fine craft that few can achieve,
a highly valued item with specialist technicians marvelling on the
talent of its builders, just as is the case today with 200 year old
timepieces.
you'll be very lucky if your Casio can last as long. Your mass
commoditised Apple watch will likely be worthless.
Personaly, I like the IWC on my wrist as much as I like my Casio
G-Shock, both are wonderful in their own way.
The Apple watch on my wife's wrist is a fine computer i guess, but at
some point, it will have the same "quaint charm" as the IBM Thinkpad
she owned 23 years ago.
xvokcarts wrote 17 hours 23 min ago:
One could argue that the potential number of complications in any
smartwatch is practically limitless, and also that the sophistication
and craftsmanship required to make it, including the hardware part,
is the ultimate testimony of refinement and engineering.
If you took an Apple Watch and this Vacheron 2000 years in the past,
which one would the people of the time find more impressive (until
the juice runs out, that is)? In other words - which one looks more
like magic?
We're just used to microprocessors we can't see tick and maybe don't
always appreciate the complexity.
wenc wrote 21 hours 14 min ago:
I own mechanical watches and had the hardest time switching to an
Apple Watch.
But one thing sold me on it. Apple Pay. Itâs so convenient to be
able to wrist tap things without whipping out my phone. I can pay for
things in 1 second. With express transit I can tap to ride subways
and buses.
I gave up the status of a mechanical watch wearer for this
convenience. And the status is often more limited than we think â I
realized no one except other mechanical watches enthusiasts really
notice what watch I was wearing. You can wear a Vacheron Constantin
and realistically 99% of people you meet will not know what it is and
likely will not notice it.
hinkley wrote 20 hours 52 min ago:
When I started on a plan of ramping up my walks to half marathon
distances, I knew I didnât want to have to carry a wallet with
me. I had Apple Pay already, which gave me the idea, but I was due
a new watch so I got the cellular version, so if I got caught in a
storm or tweaked a knee I could call someone to pick me up.
I still wish they got better battery life with each new version.
You can chew up that whole battery in about 2:30 by running the
workout app, music, and Bluetooth headphones. Half the reason I
bought a HRM was to improve the battery life.
And sure enough the time I actually did tweak my knee, I had to
stop listening to music and the workout app to conserve the battery
long enough to ask for a ride and get somewhere that I could be
picked up. By the time they arrived my watch was dead.
wenc wrote 19 hours 48 min ago:
Yes battery is definitely a limitation. Iâm able to get 15-16
hours on my Series 7 between charges. That works for me because I
just charge it when I shower and it takes no time.
I wonder if for your use case a Watch Ultra might work better? It
has a bigger battery.
That said, I agree with you that the battery could be better.
Other smart watches have battery lives measured in days. (That
said, they also do less)
hinkley wrote 17 hours 46 min ago:
Music and workout at the same time seem to have a power law
relationship with power drain.
Most batteries produce more juice when discharged at their
preferred rate and produce more heat if driven at full tilt.
crazygringo wrote 22 hours 12 min ago:
Sure, but I wear watches to tell the time or (mainly) as a fashion
accessory. Not as an object to donate to a museum someday...
And 200 years from now, I'm sure there will be a few Apple Watches in
museums as well. And some Casios too.
Mainan_Tagonist wrote 19 hours 41 min ago:
I wonder how many of these Casios and Apple watches will be in
working order, and as functional as day one.
crazygringo wrote 18 hours 40 min ago:
Museums don't operate objects that are 200 years old, so it
doesn't really matter.
But also, it's not like a mechanical watch is going to work for
200 years without maintenance and repair either. Lubrication,
springs, bearings... these all degrade over time.
zx10rse wrote 1 day ago:
There is craftsmanship in software.
It is just the reality that we live in you are not gonna exactly hear
from A list celebrity talking about what a wizard Ken Thompson is but
you are gonna spot the celebrity secure a brand deal wearing some
monstrosity like RM.
As much as like and appreciate mechanical watches let's not kid
ourselves you are talking about CNC machines and cad models rest of
it is marketing from the 70's quartz crisis.
Given that just Apple watch outsold the whole swiss watch industry I
am not sure if VC we will be here in 200 years but some piece of
software will be probably still running.
coldtea wrote 1 day ago:
>you'll be very lucky if your Casio can last as long
The Casio would last even longer - and would be closer to the right
time even without touching it in between.
elorant wrote 1 day ago:
Good luck finding a compatible battery for it after 200 years.
coldtea wrote 18 hours 48 min ago:
Adapting to whatever battery exists 200 years from now to the
form of a CR2032 battery would be simple. A Casio just takes a
round battery shell that contacts with the positive and negative
terminals on each side.
Hell, I can make one from scratch in my workshop trivially, from
basic materials.
Finding high-end mechanical watch technicians? Not so easy. And
hardly so cheap.
WXLCKNO wrote 1 day ago:
I'll just ask the ruling AI to summon one into existence from the
required atoms?
diego_moita wrote 1 day ago:
> this Vacheron-Constantin will likely be around 200 years from now
And why should I care? I won't be alive 50 years from now.
Besides, right now, what I care about is functionality. And, right
now, my old Pebble offers far more of it than this jewelry for
millionaires.
This thing is just a stupid Veblen Good[1], like a diamond ring, a
Hugo Boss suit or a Porche Carrerra.
Remember, 150 years ago, millionaires used beaver fur top hats to
show off. Have you seen any billionaire wearing them?
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good
Mainan_Tagonist wrote 1 day ago:
Nobody asked you to care. As for co fusing soft from hard luxury...
a Porsche Carrera or Bugatti Veyron will likely be worthy of
consideration 150 years from now, a Hugo Boss suit, not so much..
diego_moita wrote 23 hours 56 min ago:
> Nobody asked you to care.
Well, you did. It is implicit in your comment.
Don't get me wrong, you have every right of fooling the fools,
even to the point of believing in the foolishness and fetishism.
But don't expect me to be one of the fools.
Your overcomplicated watch is just another version of "Jackie
Kennedy's fake pearls necklace", as in this video[1]. Your
"timelessness" of it is just fake sophistication, like Michael
Jordan's "signature" in Air Jordan Nike. You are selling
illusions, but it is coherent that you believe in them.
HTML [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63oErn-gKfU
Gud wrote 1 day ago:
I've had my Casio g-shock for 20 years, including bringing it to two
war zones. I have a physical job and I abuse the shit out of it.
I'll take my chances with my Casio.
throw0101d wrote 1 day ago:
> I've had my Casio g-shock for 20 years, including bringing it to
two war zones.
Watch aficionados appreciate G-Shocks just as much as an A. Lange &
Söhne. If you visit their Youtube channels and web sites you'll
often see things like Seiko SKXes were recommended for years
(pre-discontinuation) as good value and great for day-to-day wear
(beach going, gardening, etc).
LandR wrote 1 day ago:
Yep. I have 40 watches, from tudors, omegas, iwc, zenith,
dunhill, nomos, oris, grand seiko, panerai.
I still love the shit out of my g shock. The only reason it
doesn't get worn much is it was replaced by my garmin.
lm28469 wrote 1 day ago:
Mostly because it'll be worn by a rich dude who uses it one day per
week and sends it for CLAa every 5 years, treating it like some sort
of religious idol every step of the way. The most extreme thing it'll
go through is the swing of a golf club
bipson wrote 1 day ago:
No, because the achievement, the mastery behind it is not
obliterated in the next few years, by the upcoming iterations of
newer smartwatches.
Smartwatches, Phones, (most) Cars, TVs, ... all of these are mass
produced, and as such completely obsolete in a few years, even if
they are sold as "premium" products for a month's salary.
Unique, manufactured Design pieces are... timeless. It's a piece of
art. And I say this without any inclination to ever join that
market.
euroderf wrote 20 hours 34 min ago:
Wristwatches are fetishized but not buggy whips.
To each his own I guess.
microtherion wrote 1 day ago:
> No, because the achievement, the mastery behind it is not
obliterated in the next few years, by the upcoming iterations of
newer smartwatches.
That's just another way of saying that there is no real
innovation in end user benefits in mechanical watches. The
marketing is all about how difficult they were to make.
Look at the functionality that the watch described in the article
has to offer:
* It can show the time â to an accuracy of 8.5 seconds a day,
apparently: [1] Technological marvel, innit?
* It can show the date (with squiggly hands, for some
unfathomable reason). It probably can even account for different
lengths of months, and leap years (I was flabbergasted when I
learned that there are watches being sold today for hundreds or
thousands who require a manual adjustment at the end of every
month that doesn't have 31 days).
* It can show the phase of the moon. Awesome if you're a werewolf
running a hedge fund, I guess. It has a ton of other astrological
indicators (Zodiac signs, etc.)
* It can chime every hour (presumably to remind the people around
you that you exist and wear an overpriced watch).
* It works as a chronograph.
That's it, as far as I can tell. Nothing a $10 watch on
Aliexpress could not do. It does not even seem to have an alarm,
apparently. You get three actually useful functions (time â
inaccurately, date, chrono) in a package that is 15mm thick.
No payment functionality, step counter, agenda, calculator.
But yes, you have a $100K or whatever watch that you can leave to
your great-grandchildren so they can be assured that prior
generations overpaid for gimmicky crap as well.
HTML [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/VacheronConstantin/comments/1ai...
wan23 wrote 18 hours 12 min ago:
The end user benefits are none of the things you mentioned.
Mechanical watches are jewelry. They look nice, and hopefully
they remind you of something. For many people it's a connection
to something cool. Omega sells a lot of moon watches, and it's
not because anyone buying them is going to use the chronograph
to time a fuel burn with life or death stakes. You're probably
not wearing your Daytona at the race track or using your
Longines watch for anything Amelia Earhart or Howard Hughes
did. But it's fun to think about how you have a tool with a
historical connection - whether that is to history everyone
knows, or something more personal to you.
WillPostForFood wrote 19 hours 7 min ago:
I was flabbergasted when I learned that there are watches being
sold today for hundreds or thousands who require a manual
adjustment at the end of every month that doesn't have 31 days
Watchmakers deserve more appreciation for how hard it is to
track months/years mechanically in a package small enough to
fit on your wrist! It's a lot of expectation for watch in the
hundreds of dollars.
RHSeeger wrote 22 hours 17 min ago:
A $2 print of a picture from the internet serves the same
purpose, and provides the same functionality, as a $1,000 piece
of art, or a $1,000,000 piece of art. The value isn't in the
raw functionality it provides.
davidivadavid wrote 22 hours 40 min ago:
The fact you think this is a $100k watch shows you may not
really be looking at it with the right framework?
lm28469 wrote 1 day ago:
> No, because the achievement, the mastery behind it is not
obliterated in the next few years, by the upcoming iterations of
newer smartwatches.
Just like a Casio F-91W, or the $50 mechanical Swatch.
> It's a piece of art
Yes, that's the only argument really, it's a good looking
wearable piece of art. It won't last longer than a waterproof
gshock, it isn't more precise than a $5 quartz watch, &c.
jasode wrote 1 day ago:
>I happen to work in this industry, and just a word for those that
compare this with an Apple Watch or a Casio, this Vacheron-Constantin
will likely be around 200 years from now, it will still be a
testimony of the refinement and engineering of a fine craft that few
can achieve, a highly valued item [...] The Apple watch on my wife's
wrist is a fine computer i guess,
My friend does not work in the watch industry so maybe that's why she
came to the opposite conclusion from yours. She has several high-end
watches Omega, Ebel, Cartier ... and when she got the Apple Watch
almost 10 years ago, it instantly demoted all her expensive jewelry
watches to the drawer.
The cheaper "disposable" Apple Watch instantly cured her from wanting
any new expensive jewelry watches. She let the batteries die off in
the old watches and has never replaced them. Instead, she just
loves having the weather, timers, task notifications, etc on her
Apple Watch. Sure, the classic watches have "diamond encrusted
bezel, gold wristband, Swiss mechanical movement yada yada yada..."
but all that is negated by the useful features of the smart watch.
It's a rare situation where a cheap product completely replaces an
expensive product.
I had a a similar evolution in thinking when technology made me
re-evaluate products I once coveted. When I was young before the
internet existed, I drooled over this Geochron illuminated framed
wall map $4000 : [1] A lot of expensive offices had that and I
thought I had to have it too. But then I bought cheap atomic clocks
you never had to set and the web had dynamic maps I could explore.
Even the new Geochron units don't automatically set to the radio
signal from atomic clocks. New technology completely cured me of
wanting to buy a Geochron. People used to want tall grandfather
clocks in the house foyer as an elegant piece of accent furniture.
Now you can't even give away those clocks for free on craigslist.
Everybody has clocks on their smartphones so buying a grandfather
clock for the house isn't a priority anymore. Even if we romanticize
grandfather clocks with descriptions about "heirloom furniture
craftsmanship, intricate wood carvings, etc", it still won't entice
most people today to want one.
HTML [1]: https://www.geochron.com/clocks/boardroom/
umanwizard wrote 19 hours 33 min ago:
A watch with batteries that can die is by definition not a
mechanical watch like this one.
Mainan_Tagonist wrote 19 hours 42 min ago:
The fact that she had batteries in those Cartier and Omega says a
lot, and explains why the Apple watch had such an appeal.
cjpearson wrote 20 hours 41 min ago:
I wouldn't say that's the opposite conclusion. Plenty of people
have switched from mechanical or quartz watches to Apple watches
for their daily wear. But a decade from now the watches in the
jewelry drawer will have retained their value more than the watch
that's on her wrist today.
Of course there's nothing wrong with wearing a smart watch. For
practical purposes they are better in every way. They just have a
different lifetime. It's a similar situation with cars. Some like
the constant maintenance that a 60 year old car requires, others
want a Toyota that will reliably get them to work, and others want
a sports car with engine that can go three times as fast as they'll
ever drive.
Also, I think the cheap product winning is pretty typical. CDs
replaced vinyl records and were then replaced by music streaming.
Few people buy cameras now that smartphones exist. And these
mechanical watches were already replaced for the most part decades
ago by quartz watches.
Despite the existence of more practical alternatives, there are
people who still like to buy grandfather clocks, vinyl records and
mechanical watches. They are certainly in the minority and you
won't find a grandfather clock or record player in every home, but
there is a market there.
(I kind of hate to be that guy, but if there were batteries inside,
those weren't Swiss mechanical movements)
WillPostForFood wrote 19 hours 18 min ago:
For practical purposes they are better in every way
Mostly agree, except you have to take the Apple Watch every
single day for maintenance (charging). You can buy a Casio F-91W
for $20 and go 7-10 years before you have to take off your wrist
for a battery change. If you simply want to tell time, digital
watches, quartz watches, and arguably mechanical watches beat
smart watches.
jasode wrote 19 hours 49 min ago:
>, but if there were batteries inside, those weren't Swiss
mechanical movements
Yes. The Cartier Tank watch is mechanical. I just lumped in the
other nice jewelry watches with batteries to talk about them as a
group because they've all been eliminated from her mindset.
>Also, I think the cheap product winning is pretty typical.
When I wrote "replace", I didn't mean in terms of sales. It was
more about the cheaper product replacing the previous thinking in
the mind about the old product.
For example, she used to color-coordinate the different jewelry
watches with different outfits... If it's a blue outfit, wear the
stainless steel watch ... if it's this other dress, wear the
gold watch with black face. If the shirt has starfish, wear the
seashell theme watch. That whole ritual is eliminated. (I guess
one could also change watch bands on Apple Watches for different
occasions but she doesn't bother with it. Maybe because
arthritis makes it hard to squeeze the band's release mechanism.)
The new Apple Watch alters the psychological relationship with
the previous jewelry watches so thoroughly that it makes her
impervious to gp's praise such as, "Vacheron-Constantin [...], it
will still be a testimony of the refinement and engineering of a
fine craft that few can achieve, [...] you'll be very lucky if
your Casio can last as long. Your mass commoditised Apple watch
will likely be worthless."
Her comeback to the gp's "timeless" qualities is that she likes
lifting the Apple Watch to her face and asking, "Hey Siri, how
many inches is 5 centimeters? (when sewing clothes) ... Or how
many cups in a liter? (when cooking from a recipe with metric
quantities)." She thinks it's a miracle that a little watch can
understand her voice and give her answers. Yes, everybody at HN
is jaded and we all know Apple's Siri is the worst voice
assistant technology out there but yet she loves it. If that
means it's wearing a mass-produced watch that nobody cares about
in 200 years after she's buried in the ground, that doesn't
matter at all. Her "dressy watches" phase is over.
That's the type of rare product replacement situation I'm talking
about. Usually, the opposite happens: we all get on some
hedonistic treadmill with various consumer products and the next
better thing we desire is more expensive. In the 1980s, CDs were
actually 2x more expensive than vinyl records and cassette tapes.
Vinyl was about $6.99. CDs were $15.99+. It took over 10 years
for CDs to gradually lower in price such that Walmart was selling
them for less than $10. The new CD players themselves were about
$1000 in 1980s. Record players were $100.
cjpearson wrote 17 hours 42 min ago:
Perhaps we're reading gp's comment differently. I don't think
he's telling your friend she should be wearing this Vacheron
Constantin (or any luxury watch) instead of her Apple watch.
He's rather defending its achievement in engineering and
craftsmanship despite everything it does being trivial for a
smart watch. I read it as appreciation rather than a sales
pitch.
RHSeeger wrote 22 hours 25 min ago:
I think of my watch the same way a lot of people think of jewelry,
or suits, or things like that. While it does serve a purpose
(telling time), the primary reason I wear it is because I like it.
It's functional, but mostly decorative.
I inherited my watch from my father, and I almost certainly
wouldn't spend thousands to buy one myself; but I wear it every
time I go out to dinner for anything fancier than that.
jaybna wrote 23 hours 42 min ago:
Damn you HN, I went down the rabbit hole on Geochron. No, I don't
need this. Yes, I want it, but not the old version - this one: [1]
Certainly someone has hacked/recreated this with a Raspberry Pi. I
must now go waste a weekend...
HTML [1]: https://www.geochron.com/product/geochron-digital-atlas-2/
RHSeeger wrote 22 hours 22 min ago:
I'm having trouble wrapping my head around the price on this.
$500 up front, _plus_ a subscription, and it doesn't even include
the display. What are you getting for that cost? It _feels_ like
something you could install as software on an RPi or any other
computer.
theamk wrote 18 hours 35 min ago:
Corporate money - if all you have is software engineers getting
$250_000/year , the company likely pays ~$250/hour with all the
overhead. So you are not paying "$500", you are paying 2 FTE
hours. This is pretty small, corporate-wise: a single 1 hour
meeting with 10 people in it is 10 FTE hours, and most managers
won't think twice before organizing it.
Even DIY solution might not be more economic: sure, if you are
familiar with RPi and have one on hand, and someone already
wrote the software, you can do it in under 2 hours. But a
single problem, like a defective SD card, and the pre-paid
solution is now cheaper. Same goes for subscription: $80/year,
or 20 FTE minutes. Yes, you can find those layers for free.
Will this take you >20 minutes per year to setup and maintain?
Probably not.
I was at my first job when I discovered "corporate money" and
this was a real eye-opener... That $2000 tool that can only do
one super-specific operation? Pays for itself if you can have
two fewer defective assemblies.
RHSeeger wrote 18 hours 5 min ago:
Sorry, I didn't ask my question well.
Your answer seems to speak to the idea of "we need this in
order for our offices to be able to function, what's the most
cost effective way acquire it. I can't imagine _any_ office
that would need such a thing. It seems to be purely
decorative in nature. And the (quality of the) monitor (which
isn't part of that cost) is the majority of the decorative
part.
I was asking more from the individual perspective; why
someone would spend $500 + subscription on something like
this, when it should be relatively trivial to just run
software that does something like it yourself. Given that it
doesn't come with the display, picking a nice display and
hooking it up seems like the majority of the work involved.
theamk wrote 14 hours 44 min ago:
Offices don't only spend money "to be able to function" -
there are all sort of expenses which are entirely optional.
Workers' morale, manager's morale, "prestige", etc.. Have
you ever heard about management ordering pizza for workers
when something goes well? Do you know how much this costs?
It's $50 in pizza + 10 people x 1 hour = $2500 in wages,
for total $2550 for that pizza party. A totally optional
spend, which is not required for offices to be able to
function. And yet it happens all the time in many many
offices. And don't get me started on cost of all-hands
meetings.
And that's why most offices won't think twice about buying
that $500 box. A random manager, or even a senior
programmer wants it? Sure, get it, no need to even get any
approval since it is under $1000. There are exceptions, but
that's the thought in many US-based software organizations.
From individual perspective, you are right it makes no
sense. If this was my house, I'd do it all myself. But this
is not marketed to individuals, it is marketed to people
working in companies.
42772827 wrote 22 hours 34 min ago:
I want one, but not with that terrible projection! Iâd prefer
one inverted at least.
mplanchard wrote 1 day ago:
How sad. That wall map is a nice object and a good conversation
piece to boot.
I guess you havenât actually tried to buy a grandfather clock.
Quality ones are in the thousands at least, if not tens of
thousands. Even cheap ones are hundreds of dollars.
To my mind an apple watch is a fundamentally different product from
a watch. They just both happen to be worn on the wrist.
jasode wrote 1 day ago:
>How sad. That wall map is a nice object and a good conversation
piece to boot.
It shouldn't be sad to avoid adding another artifact of
consumerism to one's life. I'm at a stage in my life where I've
gotten rid of most of my "conversation pieces". E.g. I once had
an expensive antique warship in my office as decoration. ( [1]
). I thought it looked really nice. But one day as I was
cleaning the dust off of every crevice with an art brush to keep
it from looking like a junked up antique, I realized it was an
example of a possession making me its slave. I got rid of it
and don't regret it. I dodged a bullet by not getting the
Geochron and saving $4000 but my journey of enlightenment wasn't
complete so I still got suckered into the wooden warship.
>I guess you havenât actually tried to buy a grandfather clock.
Quality ones are in the thousands at least, if not tens of
thousands.
Yes, I agree that grandfather clocks are expensive and that's why
I used it as a parallel example to the expensive wristwatches.
HTML [1]: https://www.google.com/search?q=hms+bounty+model&tbm=isc...
jstanley wrote 1 day ago:
How can it be true that they're really expensive and you can't
even give them away for free on Craigslist?
Probably if you want a good one it's expensive and nobody wants
bad ones.
theamk wrote 19 hours 44 min ago:
Easy. Think specialist equipment: a nice high-speed factory
machine to put caps on bottles may be more than $100K new,
but I doubt you can give it away for free on craigslist. It
is huge, heavy, and has no practical value outside of soft
drink factory.
The old clocks are getting the same status: it's specialist
equipment for very rare circumstances.
jasode wrote 1 day ago:
>How can it be true that they're really expensive and you
can't even give them away for free on Craigslist?
I tried to give away an 30+ year old Ethan Allen grandfather
clock (cost about $2500 new) on Craigslist. Nobody was
interested in picking it up. To most young people,
grandfather clocks are "dated" and it's only something they
see at their grandparents house. It used to be a rite of
passage to buy a grandfather clock to the house but that
trend is gone now. Like expensive china cabinets, it's just
not something a lot of people desire these days.
I suppose if I had left the grandfather clock on Craigslist
for a year instead of a month, and if I offered to deliver it
instead of requiring pick it up, eventually somebody would
have wanted it.
The only way I finally got rid of it was bundling it with an
old curio cabinets I was selling. Taking the grandfather
clock as a complete package was a condition of the sale.
Maybe like vinyl records, grandfather clocks are making a
comeback and I got rid of it too early.
SoftTalker wrote 13 hours 55 min ago:
A 30 year old Ethan Allen was probably a quartz movement
with a fake pendulum? Yeah thatâs not interesting. Or was
it still a real mechanical clock with weights or a spring
you had to wind?
42772827 wrote 22 hours 35 min ago:
> Nobody was interested in picking it up.
When youâre one rent hike away from packing up and
moving, this type of thing is not very appealing
konart wrote 1 day ago:
I have somewhat different store.
Moved to Garmin (for sports and outdoor activities) and Mido as an
everyday watch from Apple Watch (had 3 and 7 versions). Can't
really imagine going back.
I guess I was sold the idea that I neeed notifications, weather and
all this bullshit on my wrist all the time.
At some point I realized I've disabled notifications completely and
basically the only thing I was using my Apple watch was paranoidal
heart rate monitoring.
>Swiss mechanical movement yada yada yada...
Most swiss mechanical movements cost 50-100$ though.
jasode wrote 1 day ago:
>I guess I was sold the idea that I neeed notifications, weather
and all this bullshit on my wrist all the time.
I understand your viewpoint but people are different. My friend
is almost 80 years old and wasn't drawn to smart watches because
of FOMO fear-of-missing-out on some Instagram notification or
hustle culture to constantly check emails. Instead, she's always
worried about "forgetting something" and the Apple Watch has
reminders for medicine, upcoming appointments, etc. It was a
total quality-of-life improvement. It caused a total rethink
about the old mechanical watches that didn't assist her in that
way.
If a mechanical watch that will be "admired 200 years from now
instead of being in a landfill" -- doesn't help her take pills --
then she's not going to be attached to the romanticism of it like
a watch collector enthusiast.
>Most swiss mechanical movements cost 50-100$ though.
Your clarification means you misinterpreted my comment. I was
not insulting mechanical watches such as your Mido or gp's
expensive IWC. My point was that it's rare and counterintuitive
when a cheap disposable product causes a total rethink of
previously valuable items regardless of the older item's
"timeless qualities" (e.g. "200 year heirloom").
userbinator wrote 1 day ago:
The Apple Watch has billions of transistors in its microcircuits,
mass-produced repeatably at very low cost. It's a different type of
engineering but I think it's nonetheless impressive too (and I'm not
actually a fan of Apple either.)
StopDisinfo910 wrote 1 day ago:
> this Vacheron-Constantin will likely be around 200 years from now,
it will still be a testimony of the refinement and engineering
Usual playbook of the luxury watch market since marketing somehow
made it relevant in the mid to end of the 20th century. Thank Haye
for not being able to stand near a Swiss mechanical watch without
someone uttering the world "timeless". This is the second best
achievement of marketing after making people believing that diamonds
are valuable.
These watches use small mechanical pieces (which are still very far
away from the state of the art - a watch is an engineering
achievement by the standard of 200 years ago). They require very
regular maintenance to keep working and this maintenance is very
expensive. They are not in anyway "timeless".
This is an expensive piece of jewellery, subject to everything
related to expensive pieces of jewellery including fashion. Itâs
basically a Veblen good signalling wealth.
HarHarVeryFunny wrote 1 day ago:
Jewellery, masterpiece of craftsmanship, wealth signaling ... and
least importantly a time keeping device!
It is a nice looking watch!
milesrout wrote 1 day ago:
Mechanical watches don't require much maintenance. They need
reoiling every decade or so. They also aren't usually very
expensive. You wouldn't say that clothes are a Veblen good just
because there are expensive clothing brands that are. Most
mechanical watches are not this kind of luxury example.
StopDisinfo910 wrote 1 day ago:
Cheap mechanical watches are not generally what people talk about
when they brandy the usual marketing points.
They are poor timekeeping pieces bottom feeding from the
expensive brand marketing. A quartz movement in the same body is
an all around improvement except for the smugness.
DennisP wrote 1 day ago:
I agree that the marketing of some very expensive watch brands
is over the top, and that some of the people wearing those
might be rather smug. But you're overlooking a large market of
watch enthusiasts who just like mechanical watches because they
think they're cool, who buy decent quality watches that don't
cost that much.
I got into it after reading the book Longitude. As someone who
grew up sailing, who'd learned celestial navigation as a kid, I
thought it'd be nifty to have that tech on my wrist. Plus I
like that it's possible to understand exactly how it works. Now
I have a small collection.
One of my watches, a Hamilton, cost me $700 and as long as I
wear it, keeps time within a couple seconds a day, which was
good enough to win the Longitude Prize in the 1700s with
essentially the same tech. Lots of really expensive watches
don't do any better. Hamilton is a brand that goes back to the
1800s, just like the expensive guys.
My only watch that cost over $1000 is from a guy in Denmark, a
watch reviewer who decided to make his perfect watch. He hired
a designer, spent a couple years blogging about the whole
process, made it the best quality he could, produced 300
watches, and sold them at at a modest profit for $2700 each. I
wore it in my wedding. To anyone else it's just another
anonymous watch.
Lots of mechanical watch enthusiasts like quartz watches too. I
have one I quite like that's solar powered. Just like a
mechanical, I won't have to replace the battery in a few years.
I usually don't need to know the time to the exact second, and
I generally have my phone with me anyway. But when I wear the
Hamilton, for fun I usually check against time.gov every day or
two to see how it's doing, and adjust to the exact time if it's
off by more than a few seconds. I've seen it be exactly
accurate after a week.
StopDisinfo910 wrote 20 hours 2 min ago:
Yes, thatâs the marketing working. People are basically
purchasing a dream in the same way Rolex actually sell the
idea of James Bond and Roger Federer. The brand wants people
to somehow think that owning a random bunch of expensive
metal connects them to people who did compete from the
Longitude Prize more than just thinking about them.
Itâs completely fine if it makes people happy but itâs
also in a lot of way manipulative and disingenuous. Thatâs
why I hate industries which are purely marketing based.
DennisP wrote 18 hours 28 min ago:
I don't think I'm connected to those people. I think it's a
nifty device and I like how it looks. I learned about the
Longitude Prize from a history book, and I doubt that it
was commissioned by the watch industry.
Not everything is some ugly marketing conspiracy. People
have appreciated beautiful, clever things for as long as
they've been making them.
mplanchard wrote 1 day ago:
I like watches where I donât have to change the battery. I
have a kit to change them, but I appreciate the elegance of the
purely mechanical solution, and my mechanical watches are
generally my favorites for that reason. None of them are luxury
goods or particularly expensive.
Even though I am not the kind of person who would spend an
insane amount of money on a watch, I still think the elegance
of the manufacturing of a piece like the one under discussion
is really impressive and interesting.
chuckadams wrote 1 day ago:
Having to change the battery every now and then doesn't
bother me, but I'm not at all jazzed at having to charge my
watch every day or or so. Plus I just don't like wearing
watches: I'm no steampunk, but they do need to bring back the
form factor of a pocketwatch on a chain.
ZiiS wrote 1 day ago:
But I can buy an Apple Watch Ultra every year for the next 200 years
for less.
sorokod wrote 1 day ago:
Apple watches are unlikely to exist then
Apple is unlikely to exist then
You... well you already know.
threeseed wrote 1 day ago:
Apple will likely exist in 200 years. It has $86B in cash on hand
and could easily have had $1T if shareholders didn't kick up a
fuss a few years ago.
I wouldn't bet on the Swiss watch market being necessarily around
given that many young people aren't being taught how to tell the
time and have little appreciation for watches.
chuckadams wrote 1 day ago:
The shareholders will kick up another fuss someday, probably
led by some Carl Icahn type, and loot the company until selling
off the corpse. Berkshire Hathaway may be around in 200 years
if civilization still is. I don't see the same for any tech
company.
bookofjoe wrote 1 day ago:
Perplexity Pro's list of companies that have been around since
1825 (200 years ago):
1. Kongo Gumi (578 AD, Japan)
3. Specializing in temple construction for over 1,400 years,
it was acquired in 2006 but still operates under Takamatsu
Construction Group.
2. Drohobych Saltworks (1250, Ukraine)
State-owned and Europeâs oldest salt producer, now also a
cultural heritage site.
3. Shirley Plantation (1613, USA)
Virginiaâs oldest family-owned business, operating as a
historic farm and museum.
4. Avedis Zildjian Company (1623, USA)
The worldâs premier cymbal manufacturer, founded in Istanbul
and relocated to Massachusetts in 1929.
5. Hudsonâs Bay Company (1670, Canada/USA)
Originally a fur-trade monopoly, it now operates department
stores like Saks Fifth Avenue.
6. White Horse Tavern (1673, USA)
Americaâs oldest continuously running restaurant, serving
patrons in Newport, Rhode Island.
7. Bakerâs Chocolate (1765, USA)
Launched by James Baker in Massachusetts, it remains a baking
staple under Kraft Heinz ownership.
8. Laird & Company (1780, USA)
The oldest licensed distillery in the U.S., producing applejack
since the American Revolution.
9. King Arthur Baking Company (1790, USA)
Founded in Boston, itâs now a Vermont-based leader in flour
and baking products.
10. Brooks Brothers (1818, USA)
Americaâs oldest clothing retailer, surviving bankruptcy in
2020 and continuing under new ownership.
bookofjoe wrote 12 hours 24 min ago:
It has become clear to me that using an AI in ANY capacity to
add to a discussion here results in guaranteed downvotes.
cmenge wrote 23 hours 40 min ago:
This list seems very wrong. The US is overrepresented given
its relatively short history. The number of breweries in
Europe that are older than the US is probably over 100.
While there are a lot of tricky questions around the exact
definition, I feel this Wikipedia list seems more believable:
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_compani...
bookofjoe wrote 21 hours 59 min ago:
I agree. So much for my $20/month AI. BUT â it did a
great job of guiding me to the perfect Jump/Carry/Charge
device for my car....
Mainan_Tagonist wrote 1 day ago:
So, 199 Apple watches Ultra in landfills 200 years from now.
Congrats.
PeterStuer wrote 1 day ago:
499 actually. Can't let our unsold overproduction dilute the
demand for the next model, so straight to the landfill it is.
ZiiS wrote 1 day ago:
A very worthy concen, but I don't think you want to go too deep
on the morality if luxury goods. An Apple watch a decade leaves a
lot of charitable giving.
LeafItAlone wrote 1 day ago:
>this Vacheron-Constantin will likely be around 200 years from now
Iâm interested to hear more. Typically things that are âmost
complicatedâ and lost lasting donât go hand-in-hand.
benhurmarcel wrote 1 day ago:
The people who buy this kind of watches donât usually wear them
much, they store them in a safe environment.
Mainan_Tagonist wrote 1 day ago:
You should visit this museum : [1] Since mechanical watches are, by
design, open source, there will always be a technician interested
in keeping them going.
HTML [1]: https://www.patek.com/en/company/patek-philippe-museum/the...
TimByte wrote 1 day ago:
My $40 Casio surviving everything from camping trips to getting
dunked in a sink still feels like its own kind of masterpiece
bookofjoe wrote 1 day ago:
Iconic F-91W currently costs $16.88 at Amazon AND it now comes in
colors: Clear, Pink, Blue, Gray, Green, Gold, White (and Black)
tokai wrote 20 hours 49 min ago:
All the F-91Ws I have gotten through Amazon have been fakes.
bookofjoe wrote 12 hours 23 min ago:
Remarkable. I've purchased at least five over the decades, all
the real thing.
jxjnskkzxxhx wrote 1 day ago:
I went thru a couple of F91W and the bracelet kept breaking. I
since got a A158WA-1. Check it out.
bookofjoe wrote 23 hours 46 min ago:
Done. Thank you!
dole wrote 1 day ago:
A158 (Obama) for the upgrade to steel, A168 for EL backlight.
helij wrote 21 hours 43 min ago:
Just go for solar radio sync G-Shock square and you're done. No
batteries, no setting up, extremely rugged and imo it looks
good as well. Since I got that one a few years ago I only wear
mechanical watch for various "occasions" - pretty much like a
jewellery.
ooterness wrote 1 day ago:
Look at moneybags over here paying $30 for a watch. /s
jxjnskkzxxhx wrote 1 day ago:
One thing I like about Casio's, especially the cheap ones, is
how unpretentious they are.
PeterStuer wrote 1 day ago:
Used to have one of those. Survived daily swim practice and saunas
for years.
Mainan_Tagonist wrote 1 day ago:
And in a way, it is...
7373737373 wrote 1 day ago:
I do hope watchmakers start to integrate "computational" (instead of
temporal) complications into their watches, like a mechanical turing
machine or other tiny mechanical computers or calculators which I
believe have never been constructed this small.
Inspiration:
Wooden Turing Machine: [1] Curta Calculator: [2] Zuse Z1 Computer: [3]
Maybe also analog ones!:
HTML [1]: https://youtube.com/watch?v=vo8izCKHiF0
HTML [2]: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZDn_DDsBWws
HTML [3]: https://youtu.be/R5XnuT6ZLKg?t=283
HTML [4]: https://youtube.com/watch?v=s1i-dnAH9Y4
microtherion wrote 1 day ago:
What I really want is a mechanical bluetooth implementation. It would
open up so much other functionalityâ¦
7373737373 wrote 20 hours 25 min ago:
Maybe possible with a mechanical speaker and microphone, or a tense
string between two watches ;)
appplemac wrote 1 day ago:
It feels like a lot of complications the watchmakers are building now
are stuck in the early 20th century. Sure, perpetual calendars will
always be useful, but what about:
* pomodoro focus timers
* multiple TZ support - like GMT watches but more than one additional
TZ shown at once
* timers
* alarms
kingkongjaffa wrote 1 day ago:
All of those already exist.
World timers show every timezone
Alarms and timers are available.
Pomodoro can be done with something as simple as a rotating divers
bezel.
I agree it would be cool to have them more available in cheaper
watches, most complications increase the cost and the more niche
you get
curiousgal wrote 1 day ago:
Yeah I would never give a cent to some Swiss watch company. The only
luxury watches I see actually worth their price tag are those made by
independent watchmakers like Masahiro Kikuno.
I watched a documentary[0] back in the day that goes over his process
of designing and making a watch and it's nothing short of amazing.
There's something about swiss watches being so commoditized (even the
most expensive ones) that makes their clientele seem outright stupid in
my opinion.
0. In Tune with Time: Watchmaker Masahiro Kikuno
dyauspitr wrote 1 day ago:
Iâm always impressed by the Swiss. They manage to charge an arm and
leg for regular things that a lot of the world makes nearly as well on
purely mystique and vibes. Watches, chocolates, diamonds, banking etc.
eqvinox wrote 1 day ago:
I don't think "a lot of the world" makes a clock like this.
Also that "mystique and vibes" is essentially "a reputation of
quality", which has to be earned, and I'd say they did that. Whether
it still holds is another question.
mofunnyman wrote 1 day ago:
For those of you that don't know a lot about Swiss mechanical
movements, this watch isn't just nuts, it's fuckin nuts.
TimByte wrote 1 day ago:
Right?? This is like mechanical watchmaking turned all the way up to
11, took a left turn into madness, and just kept going
paulsutter wrote 1 day ago:
At first you think, great, im going to buy a fancy watch and I'll wear
a platinum Patek that only a banker will recognize. That's how assholes
recognize each other, its all in the watch.
But in the end everyone ends up wearing an Apple watch. Nobody knows
how to use an Apple watch. Amazing hardware with the worst software
ever developed. But it says that you dont care and at least the watch
will tell you the temperature outside.
rpicard wrote 1 day ago:
The recent Acquired episode on Rolex is a great peak into the world of
luxury Swiss watches: [1] What I love about it all is that whatever
arguments are made for or against these sorts of things, I think people
are just into it because itâs fun.
HTML [1]: https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/rolex
kyledehovitz wrote 1 day ago:
So cool that Dan Flashes makes wristwatches now
pmdev03 wrote 21 hours 44 min ago:
These watches are my EXACT style
iFire wrote 1 day ago:
Would an Apple iPhone 16 Pro be considered a very expensive wristwatch
and would the number of transistors break a record?
kijin wrote 1 day ago:
Apple watch maybe. Most people don't wear full-size phones on their
wrists...
michaelssilver wrote 1 day ago:
Patek Philippe held the precious record with the Grandmaster Chime:
HTML [1]: https://www.patek.com/en/company/about-time/the-grandmaster-ch...
nateburke wrote 1 day ago:
No Easter complication?
atonse wrote 1 day ago:
Iâve never heard of this company but according to the video below,
theyâre large enough to have a huge building.
How do these economics work? Iâm guessing theyâre a maker of very
expensive low volume products. But are there that many buyers? [1] Same
with Richard Mille. Never heard of them but theyâre rich enough to
sponsor the Ferrari F1 team.
HTML [1]: https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/video-vacheron-constantin-be...
quickthrowman wrote 1 day ago:
Vacheron is part of Richemont, a watchmaking conglomerate/holding
company. [1] It works like any other luxury company, charge an arm
and a leg, control the supply so you donât overproduce, spend a ton
on marketing.
Almost all Swiss watch brands (by volume) are owned by either
Richemont, Swatch Group, or LVMH. Rolex, Patek, Audemars Piguet,
Breitling, and Chopard are the last of the big Swiss independents,
but there are smaller ones like Czapek and Cie, H Moser & Cie,
Gruebel Forsey, Richard Mille.
HTML [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richemont
bitmasher9 wrote 1 day ago:
> economics
* Margin. A relatively low prestige Swiss brand (Tag) has stated
they charge 3x bill of materials for their watches. The more
exclusive the brand, the higher this number goes.
* Volume might be higher than you think. Popular Swiss models sell
in the tens of thousands of units a year. Not bad if youâre
charging four or five figures per unit.
* Consolidation. Thereâs a handful of actual parent companies for
watch making that are responsible for most sells. Swatch, Citizen,
Rolex. They share resources between each other.
* Common suppliers. Some movements are used in multiple brands, even
across multiple parent companies. Sometimes a company will buy a
movement, modify the movement, and completely rebrand it. This
allows better economics of volume for the most complicated aspects of
watches.
* Marketing works. Thereâs no practical reason to buy a $10k (or
$40k) Rolex compared to a $25 Casio. Thereâs a reason James Bond
wears expensive watches and that reason is product placement. Some
watch conglomerates are publicly traded, so you can look at how much
they spend on marketing.
* The fact that you havenât heard of the brand is part of the
point. If youâre wearing >$100k on your wrist you probably donât
want everyone to know. Even at this price point, itâs a highly
liquid asset in some cities.
jsheard wrote 1 day ago:
> Thereâs a reason James Bond wears expensive watches and that
reason is product placement.
Only since Goldeneye when Omega started paying for product
placement. Bond had worn Rolex since the original novels, which
were written before their big pivot to luxury, so him wearing
expensive Rolexes in later films was more of a historical accident.
Rolex never actually paid a cent to appear on screen.
microtherion wrote 1 day ago:
The novels always had a lot of wealth signaling from Bond. E.g.
in 1953, he ate an avocado, which to British consumers at the
time was virtually unknown.
dharmab wrote 18 hours 51 min ago:
Originally Bond wore a Submariner, which wasn't a wealth signal
at a time- it wasn't a _cheap_ watch, but also not the choice
of a wealthy person. The Submariner was originally a tool
watch, used by naval infantry. The modern equivalent would be
wearing a G-Shock DW5600 with a tuxedo. It hints that Bond is a
military vet.
sbassi wrote 1 day ago:
Richard Mille watches, priced at $500,000 or more per piece, are
primarily used by wealthy individuals, elite athletes, and Hollywood
stars.
atonse wrote 22 hours 33 min ago:
Right, again my point is, if you're charging 500k for a watch,
isn't the market for that watch relatively small (people who have
the money + people who care about the watch?) Or are they actually
selling, say, a thousand of them?
As I'm saying this, I realize selling a thousand of them probably
isn't a crazy volume.
KaiserPro wrote 1 day ago:
Richard mille watches are a brilliant way to work out who is a
prick. Neer trust anyone who wears one.
milesrout wrote 1 day ago:
Because they have money? Do you know how envious you sound? I
wouldn't be surprised if you were literally green with it.
dharmab wrote 18 hours 57 min ago:
I collect watches and also agree with the parent. Anyone who
wears a Richard Mille, and isn't being paid to do so, cannot be
trusted.
KaiserPro wrote 19 hours 58 min ago:
I work for a FAANG, Iâm in a team that was part of a buyout,
Iâm surrounded by millionaires. One is wearing a patek
phillipe right now. Iâve never seen them be rude to a
waitress.
However, richard mille owners on the handâ¦..
nottorp wrote 1 day ago:
Do they have money? Or do they want to make you think they have
money?
magicalhippo wrote 1 day ago:
> primarily used by wealthy individuals, elite athletes, and
Hollywood stars
I'm assuming the two latter categories are sponsored to get the
first category to buy?
I just know these brands from F1 where the drivers are sponsored,
which is very obvious from the way they wear them.
bookofjoe wrote 1 day ago:
You will notice at Grand Slam tennis matches the first thing the
winner does â even before walking out for the interview â is
put on the watch made by their sponsor.
__loam wrote 1 day ago:
Vacheron Constantin is one of the big 3 Swiss watch brands that also
include Patek Phillipe and Audemars Piguet. These are a tier above
Rolex and Omega and they specifically trade on scarceness and
exclusivity. You haven't heard of them because they advertise in very
specific places to watch nerds and the very wealthy. Each watch can
be like $30,000 to $50,000, or even $120,000 for small run products
with unique complications.
There's more interesting brands like Moritz Grossman and Bovet that
make even rarer pieces but fewer people have heard of them.
lossolo wrote 1 day ago:
Richard Mille is well known to anyone interested in watches,
especially very rich people. You probably havenât heard of Jacob &
Co? Or maybe youâve heard of Hublot? Itâs the same story with
Loro Piana when it comes to clothing, and Koenigsegg or Pagani when
it comes to cars.
In certain circles, all of these brands are as common as Nike or
Mercedes are to the general public.
dharmab wrote 1 day ago:
To give you an idea of margins:
- A real Rolex dive watch costs $5k-15k.
- A similar Swiss-made dive watch from
a less famous brand costs $2k-4k.
- A similar Japanese-made dive watch from a famous brand costs
$500-1000.
- A Chinese-made replica/fake Rolex, mechanically identical to a real
one, and only distinguishable by an expert under high magnification,
costs about $400-800.
- There are some low-volume watches that are sold for 4-6 figure sums
to repeat buyers. Richard Mille in particular has done one-offs for
celebrities in the range of 7-8 figures.
As you can imagine you don't need a high volume with margins that
large.
KaiserPro wrote 1 day ago:
Think of it like âartâ
Youâre paying for time. Seiko make great watches with cnc
machines under the orient brand. They cost about £150-300.
In terms of watch, itâs the same type of parts and accuracy as a
base Rolex.
Rolex you are paying for the name. Yes, they are better quality
than an orient, but not much. There is better QC, and more people
looking at the watch before itâs sent out, but in terms of
precision of manufacturing, or amount of cnc machine used, itâs
mostly the same.
There is a thriving scene in small watch producers, spinnaker,
holthinrich, de ryke and co, vortic, Weiss, lorier to name a few.
Some are sub £300, others not.
dharmab wrote 9 hours 16 min ago:
I will say there is a easily noticeable jump in build quality
from a $300 Orient or Seiko to something like a Tudor Black Bay,
or even some of the microbrands in the 2-4k range. You can
especially feel it by rotating the bezel and feeling the play in
either direction.
But after that tier the quality increase to price ratio pretty
much drops to zero.
ZiiS wrote 1 day ago:
Chinese ones are down to $100-$300
dharmab wrote 18 hours 55 min ago:
Is that for an homage, or a superrep?
manarth wrote 1 day ago:
> A real Rolex dive watch
The "dive" part is a red herring these days, as the use of watches
to manage decompression strategies has declined since the 90s, and
by early 2000s dive computers became the default tool. Use of a
dive-watch for diving is almost non-existent these days.
Some example dive computers, for those interested:
- Suunto Zoop [1] - Shearwater Perdix [2] - Garmin Descent [3] [1]
[2]
HTML [1]: https://www.suunto.com/en-gb/Products/dive-computers-and-i...
HTML [2]: https://shearwater.com/products/perdix-2
HTML [3]: https://www.garmin.com/en-GB/p/632320
cjpearson wrote 1 day ago:
It's simply a description of the style of the watch. Just as most
people wearing a bomber jacket aren't flying B-52s, and most
trench coat wearers aren't fighting in trenches, most dive watch
wearers aren't diving. They are still useful terms, despite their
relative professions moving on to newer tech.
yjftsjthsd-h wrote 1 day ago:
That's the price, but as someone ignorant of this area, I don't
know enough to even guess margins from that. How expensive are the
parts? I would assume that grade of mechanical components aren't
cheap. And we should probably price in the labor.
colechristensen wrote 1 day ago:
>How expensive are the parts?
They make the parts.
CydeWeys wrote 1 day ago:
These are luxury products. That's not the point. They use
precious metals when steel would work just as well, and the
really high end ones take hundreds of hours of hand labor to very
finely decorated the dials and movements. Why? Because it's
luxury. It's art.
And let's not even get into how much money they spend on
marketing and sponsorships ..
noitpmeder wrote 1 day ago:
The labor and design are probably the most expensive parts. Think
hundreds if not thousands of hours of many ultra specialized
people's time.
The actual raw material has to be a fraction of the worth.
adriand wrote 1 day ago:
Hopefully steep tariffs on Switzerland will bring watchmaking
and watchmakers back to America.
JumpCrisscross wrote 1 day ago:
> Hopefully steep tariffs on Switzerland will bring
watchmaking and watchmakers back to America
Itâs actually a good case study. It no longer makes sense
to buy a fine watch from an American retailer. The tariffs
incentivise a trip abroad. (Iâm seeing something similar
happen with skis.)
secondcoming wrote 22 hours 1 min ago:
You risk paying a tariff when you return to the US though.
dharmab wrote 18 hours 43 min ago:
I've bought watches overseas.
Hypothetically, one could simply wear the watch on their
wrist on the flight home. Personal jewelry is not subject
to duties.
JumpCrisscross wrote 21 hours 16 min ago:
> You risk paying a tariff when you return to the US
though
Not really. Iâm bringing back a few thousand dollars of
mounted, probably lightly-used, skis. Nobody expects to
declare random purchases made abroad. Much less an
article of jewellery on their wrist.
KaiserPro wrote 1 day ago:
Itâs already back in America. Plus fr high end customers,
there are many ways to avoid tariffs
nextos wrote 1 day ago:
Panerai is a good example to estimate margins. When they were
unknown, watches costed $1-2k. This was in the mid 90s. Same
models now, distributed by a big luxury conglomerate, cost 5-10x
more. Quality and components on comparable models are virtually
the same.
Likewise, long ago, Rolex was a toolwatch brand and their
products were relatively affordable. They are still great, but
prices are insane. Vacheron Constantin is on a different class,
though, as they sell lots of watches in the high horology
category. Insanely complex and difficult to produce. Some similar
brands have had financial issues or gone bankrupt.
wincy wrote 1 day ago:
Iâd imagine a single one of your watch makers dying/quitting
would be catastrophic to your business with something that
requires this level of skill.
ehnto wrote 1 day ago:
I was unsure how to word it, but I think there is a
pricesless aspect to the talent that this took. Even though
they were probably paid a wage, sometimes outputs by
individuals at a company a literally irreplaceable.
umanwizard wrote 1 day ago:
They are both extremely well-known luxury watch manufacturers. The
fact that you havenât heard of them has nothing to do with them, it
just means youâre not into luxury watches.
atonse wrote 22 hours 37 min ago:
Indeed. In case I didn't explicitly state it, I was expressing more
of a fascination that there are these companies that seem to make
high priced luxury items (so they have to be low volume, and likely
handmade) but are still large enough in scale to afford these
massive fancy buildings, as opposed to be boutique watchmakers,
which is how I would intuitively think of this class of
craftsmanship.
charcircuit wrote 1 day ago:
A smartwatch is going to be much more complicated than this. Millions
and millions if lines of code is not simple.
umanwizard wrote 1 day ago:
Not what âcomplicatedâ means in this context (having
complications).
charcircuit wrote 1 day ago:
Even with that definition apps can provide more complications than
63.
KaiserPro wrote 1 day ago:
A modern synth can make almost any sound, thatâs old hat now.
A beatboxer canât really do two âvoicesâ at once. When they
do, itâs impressive because itâs hard.
Thatâs the point, making stuff purely mechanical is hard.
charcircuit wrote 1 day ago:
Are you trying to suggest a smartwatch is easier to build? I
think making a smartwatch is much harder to make than a
mechanical one.
KaiserPro wrote 19 hours 52 min ago:
A smartwatch in a 45mm case is now pretty easy to build. it
wonât be fancy, but an esp32 plus screen in a 3d printed
case is something I could make.
A basic mechanical watch movement is something I canât
make. (I have made a case and dial out of aluminium/brass
though.)
But, the point I was trying to make is that adding a
complication to a smart watch is trivial, something that can
be done in a few hours and shipped to everywhere. Adding a
complication to a mechanical movement is a lot harder,
especially as the iteration time is long.
umanwizard wrote 1 day ago:
Itâs harder to build one smartwatch from scratch - it took
decades and trillions of dollars. However, having already
built N of the same smartwatch model, it is much easier to
build the N+1st than to build a mechanical watch.
pests wrote 1 day ago:
But this is a wristwatch not an app.
charcircuit wrote 1 day ago:
A smartwatch isn't an app either. They are both platforms that
support features to be built on top of them.
pests wrote 1 day ago:
Yes but again we are taking about wristwatches, not
smartwatches or apps. The features/complications on
smartwatches and in apps are different than the complications
on wristwatches.
charcircuit wrote 1 day ago:
A smartwatch goes on your wrist.
lvturner wrote 1 day ago:
And while the Apple Watch is objectively better value, it's
destined to be e-waste after a couple of years. Mechanical
watches last far, far longer.
RobertDeNiro wrote 1 day ago:
Are watches going to be tariffed?
rswail wrote 1 day ago:
Not if you wear it on your wrist as you arrive by your private jet to
get the personalized immigration and customs service that whisks you
through the private areas of the airport to your waiting limo.
kjellsbells wrote 1 day ago:
Yes. 31%, at least for now. The administration is...mercurial.
Although one might argue that an additional 31% on a watch that
retails for six figures is not going to make a difference to the kind
of buyer that spends six figures on a watch. Even if a US watchmaker
existed, this kind of buyer seems unlikely to substitute a Vacherin
or a Patek for something made in Cleveland.
HTML [1]: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/workplace-switzerland/adding-up...
umanwizard wrote 1 day ago:
Probably seven figures, actually.
litoE wrote 1 day ago:
I'm impressed, but with my declining eyesight I don't think I could
read most of the dials, even with glasses - I can't even read the date
on my Timex. I would love to see a copy of the User's Guide for this
watch though.
boznz wrote 1 day ago:
They probably just throw a MechEng PhD Professor in for a year as
part of the deal.
dole wrote 1 day ago:
I can nowhere near afford them, but I love most everything about
Vacheron Constantin except for that godawful, cheap, brash font they
use for their logo. The font on this piece is fine, their overall
design and language is great, I'm glad a company like VC pushes the
technological limits and industry forward, but that Helvetica-lookin
font is visual fingernails-on-a-chalkboard.
russelldjimmy wrote 1 day ago:
Not just that, but it also appears to be stretched vertically!
folkrav wrote 1 day ago:
I'll be honest, to me, it looks like every other luxury brand logo
that happens to use a sans-serif font.
nradov wrote 1 day ago:
41 complications and no GPS? How am I supposed to upload my runs to
Strava?
simpaticoder wrote 1 day ago:
I wonder if a mechanical watch could communicate something via radio
with some clever placement of magnets and copper on the movement via
Faraday induction. Imagine movement that encodes a simple BT
handshake. On the more science fiction side, a very tiny Difference
Engine that fits on your wrist (I am reminded of a Young Ladies
Primer from The Diamond Age, where the compute was nano-mechanical).
layer8 wrote 1 day ago:
It does allow you to determine your longitude. So just run East or
West, I guess?
DennisP wrote 1 day ago:
Latitude is easier. Bring along a 5th-century astrolabe and you're
all set.
light_triad wrote 1 day ago:
If you're interested in the functioning of mechanical watches, they're
amazing: [1] Previously on HN in 2022:
HTML [1]: https://ciechanow.ski/mechanical-watch/
HTML [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31261533
LeafItAlone wrote 1 day ago:
That is one of the coolest demonstration sites I have ever seen. What
a neat way to learn about watches. Kudos to whomever created that
page
ecoffey wrote 1 day ago:
Bartosz links to it in the Further Reading section, but wanted to
highlight the Wristwatch Revival YouTube channel[0] as well. Really
great content and very understandable after reading the article!
0:
HTML [1]: https://www.youtube.com/c/WristwatchRevival/videos
thom wrote 1 day ago:
Love this channel, perfect ASMR for nerds. Marshall is of course
also one of the foremost Magic: the Gathering podcasters and
commentators.
ecoffey wrote 1 day ago:
> perfect ASMR for nerds.
Haha yeah I like to have this on it the background when Iâm
doing other things.
dang wrote 1 day ago:
Thanks! Macroexpanded:
Mechanical Watch (2022) - [1] - Dec 2023 (163 comments)
Mechanical Watch - [2] - June 2022 (1 comment)
Mechanical Watch - [3] - May 2022 (413 comments)
HTML [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38591084
HTML [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31749299
HTML [3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31261533
perihelions wrote 1 day ago:
There's also a neat one about the process of making mechanical
watches, [1] ("Masahiro Kikuno, Japanese Independent Watchmaker")
[2] (108 comments) [3] (98 comments)
HTML [1]: https://watchesbysjx.com/2017/05/portrait-masahiro-kikuno-...
HTML [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14610110
HTML [3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19011880
bslalwn wrote 1 day ago:
That strap⦠way to ruin it
nextos wrote 1 day ago:
Given the price tag, it's surely a custom order and I imagine you can
tweak lots of details. That's the case for much cheaper Dornbluth &
Sohn and other small boutique watchmakers.
w-ll wrote 1 day ago:
I kinda agree here, many threads look lose. Even the attach arms look
outta place.
user3939382 wrote 1 day ago:
Still canât tell time accurately over a long period. The ultimate
irony of these collectible expensive watches. I like them anyway out of
respect for the engineering but still.
guax wrote 1 day ago:
This one I believe is not the collectible one. I think is the
marketing one. Is the concept car of watch world. The LaFerrari that
makes people buy the expensive but cheaper Purosangue.
umanwizard wrote 1 day ago:
This is sort of like complaining that an expensive dress isnât very
good at protecting the wearer from the elements.
user3939382 wrote 1 day ago:
I see your point but this still strikes me as a weak analogy. The
purpose of any watch is to accurately tell time more than the
purpose of any dress is to protect from the elements.
rsynnott wrote 5 hours 24 min ago:
These are jewellery, and have been for a long time, really since
quartz watches became practical.
umanwizard wrote 1 day ago:
The purpose of cheap clothing is to protect from the elements
(and to prevent other people from seeing your naked body). The
purpose of a cheap wristwatch is to tell time.
The purpose of expensive versions of both of those is divorced
from their original meaning.
microtherion wrote 1 day ago:
As demonstrated, e.g., by Bianca Censori's outfit at the
Grammys.
DennisP wrote 1 day ago:
Achieving the accuracy they do, with just mechanical parts powered by
a spring, seems reasonably impressive to me.
It's basically the same technology that John Harrison used to win the
Longitude Prize in the 1700s, revolutionizing navigation on the high
seas.
jsheard wrote 1 day ago:
That said, John Harrison didn't have access to Solidworks and
6-axis CNC machines like today's high horology brands do. The final
product may still be fully mechanical but the process of getting
there has advanced a bit.
throw0101d wrote 1 day ago:
> That said, John Harrison didn't have access to Solidworks and
6-axis CNC machines like today's high horology brands do.
When you get into some of these luxury brands they pride
themselves on not using CNC machines. See for example "Machining
a 0.6 mm Screw":
*
HTML [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKVqLTzh_z4
bslalwn wrote 1 day ago:
Quartz canât either :)
jsheard wrote 1 day ago:
I guess it depends on your definition of "long period" but high end
Quartz movements can achieve ±1 second per year by using a high
frequency, thermally compensated oscillator. Movements with atomic
radio control can do even better than that of course, though that's
arguably cheating since the heavy lifting happens in a standards
lab somewhere rather than on your wrist.
KaiserPro wrote 1 day ago:
Only citizen can achieve that. There are some watches that use
external time references to achieve that level of accuracy.
Most are +-5 or 10 seconds a year.
The problem for me is the citizen isnât that pretty to my eyes.
jeffbee wrote 1 day ago:
All electronic oscillator watches are ultimately limited in this
competition by the fact that their batteries will run out.
jsheard wrote 1 day ago:
Unless it's a Citizen Cal.0100, which is good to ±1 second per
year and solar powered. Just don't leave it in a dark drawer
for too long :)
user3939382 wrote 1 day ago:
The solar batteries have a max discharge cycle too though.
defrost wrote 1 day ago:
Is that a year of ideal conditions with little to no movement or
acceration in standard temp. and pressure conditions, or a year
at sea in a barometric rollercoaster with 60 degrees celsius
cycling heating and cooling with 2G+ surges of roll, pitch, and
yaw?
The mechanical marine chronometer challenge is a tough one.
dghlsakjg wrote 1 day ago:
It depends on the maker, not all quartz watches are equal.
However, quartz is typically very stable as an oscillator over
the conditions that humans can survive in. Thatâs why we use
it in watches after all.
That said, I have used a quartz watch (mid level Citizen) for
actual celestial navigation at sea. It is, for all intents and
purposes always going to be more accurate than mechanical (mine
typically is good for ~1 second per month, and always in the
same direction) Certified mechanical watches typically vary
more than that in a day, I believe the standard is 2 seconds
per day. I donât know what a proper marine chronometer is
certified to, but it is worth pointing out that a marine
chronometer is typically not exposed to the conditions you
describe at sea. The official ships chronometer is always kept
down below, protected in what is effectively a gimballed
humidor. For the purposes of navigational measurements, you use
your wrist watch at the time of sighting on deck and add or
subtract the difference between your watch and the chronometer.
To add on to all that, if a ship is rolling and pitching like
you describe your chances of an accurate sight are very low.
Even in perfect conditions, it is hard to call the exact moment
of alignment to within a second.
If I placed my quartz watch in the box with the official
chronometer, I am perfectly willing to argue that if there is a
discrepancy in the times shown, the quartz watch should be
trusted.
defrost wrote 1 day ago:
> To add on to all that, if a ship is rolling and pitching
like you describe your chances of an accurate sight are very
low
You as a human wouldn't shoot a line in those conditions, no.
The point is that mechanical clock mechanisms endure those
conditions .. the rise and fall of tempreture, the rise and
fall of air pressure, the shock of acceleration (even when
sharply reduced by a gimbal mount).
The error bar over months at sea is the tension betwen the
drift effect of all those conditions and normalising
complications - gimbal mounts, the use of bimetallic strips
to counter tempreture change expansions, etc.
In dead calm conditions a mechanical clock at sea carries the
accumulated drift baggage of past storms and heatwaves.
Circling back to quartz oscillators, my question above goes
to prompting others to ask themselves if an electronic
oscillator regulated by a quartz crystal shows any
performance differences over a year when harsh real world
physical usage conditions are compared to ideal controlled
test conditions.
Does temperature affect the oscillator, does humidty, air
pressure, accumulated shock forces, etc.
Addendum:
I cant imagine why an instrument that is ~40x less precise
would offer more precise timekeeping
~ @dghlsakjg
I'm having some difficulty understanding how [..] will have
less of an effect on a fragile mechanical system than a tuned
electronic one.
~ @TheOtherHobbes
I've reread both my comments above and I'm having some
difficulty seeing they can be read to take away a claim that
a mechanical marine clock is more accurate than a quartz
timekeeping mechanism. Both comments address accuracy in
harsh variable conditions versus stable STP lab conditions.
See also: Precision vs. Accuracy -
HTML [1]: https://manoa.hawaii.edu/exploringourfluidearth/phys...
dghlsakjg wrote 1 day ago:
To answer your question directly.
A mechanical timepiece that calls itself a marine
chronometer has to be accurate to +-0.5 seconds per day.
The most accurate quartz wristwatch is certified accurate
to +-5 seconds per year.
My experience, in the exact harsh real world conditions
that you are talking about, is that is a realistic
expectation for quartz watch to accomplish. I cant imagine
why an instrument that is ~40x less precise would offer
more precise timekeeping
jeffbee wrote 1 day ago:
A bit LARPy, I would think. The need for ludicrously accurate
marine chronometers is doubly obsolete because of the somewhat
lessened need for celestial navigation and the fact that the
GNSS systems also disseminate the time (in fact, this is the
only thing they can do). Even for those obligated to practice
celestial navigation, pretty much any old quartz watch will do
the job and you can check/set them by WWVB.
defrost wrote 1 day ago:
It's a genuine question about the conditions under which
error bar performance was claimed (by whomever you quoted).
> A bit LARPy, I would think.
That's all relative - I worked global exploration geophysics
for a decade, worked with folk that developed sapphire
oscillators for use in gravitational wave detection, dabble
with SKA data, etc.
What's role play to some is just a job to others.
TheOtherHobbes wrote 1 day ago:
Even the cheapest quartz watches (0.5s/day) are
significantly more accurate than a typical Rolex (2s/day)
in normal use.
I'm having some difficulty understanding how g shocks,
temperature variations, and barometric changes will have
less of an effect on a fragile mechanical system than a
tuned electronic one.
tmnvix wrote 1 day ago:
Impressive. Here I am struggling to design a decent UI for a screen of
at least 13 inches. I shudder to think how much harder it would be if
the only means of interaction were a scroll wheel.
TimByte wrote 1 day ago:
Imagine spending 8 years on a project where your entire user
interface is literally tiny hands turning a crown the size of a
lentil
pixelpoet wrote 1 day ago:
If only my software were valued by number of complications...
Everything about the high end "movement" scene rubs me the wrong way (I
had a friend into it), but most of all, the pompous terminology.
konart wrote 1 day ago:
I (surely I'm not alone here) know many people who would say the same
thing about software development "scene".
Hell, even _inside_ the software development "scene" you can easily
find similar cases.
Like when web developer who builds (relatevily) simple web apps on
top of Rails earns notably more then someone who works with a complex
hardware.
JumpCrisscross wrote 1 day ago:
> Everything about the high end "movement" scene rubs me the wrong
way (I had a friend into it)
Why? Iâm not a watch guy. But I think the engineering is beautiful.
Itâs also super niche, so there isnât a financing model outside
this to fund it.
guax wrote 1 day ago:
The engineering and craft is beyond reproach, beautiful, involved,
unique.
The market in which it needs to exist is exclusive, arrogant and
elitist. So there is a bittersweet response to it. Makes me think
of Royal arts of the past, made to adorn the palaces and display
wealth. beautiful, but they're better now at museums. I believe
this watch shall too.
milesrout wrote 1 day ago:
You seem to have confused expense with arrogance and elitism.
Honestly it just sounds like you are envious of people that can
afford to spend their money on expensive luxuries.
JumpCrisscross wrote 1 day ago:
> beautiful, but they're better now at museums
Strongly disagree. Pilfered artefacts are usually safer in a
Western museum. But theyâre more beautiful when left in their
natural environment. In any case, if there is one thing sillier
than someone with no respect for fine watches treating them as a
status symbol, itâs getting upset about it as a bystander.
GuB-42 wrote 1 day ago:
> If only my software were valued by number of complications...
If it fits within a size and power budget, then you essentially
described sizecoding. In its extreme form, it is not practical, but
it is an art form.
pixelpoet wrote 1 day ago:
> sizecoding as an artform
See you at Revision next week? :)
GuB-42 wrote 1 day ago:
Yes! I will be there in person.
__loam wrote 1 day ago:
You can get a watch that's more accurate and more complex than one of
these for under $1000 in an Apple watch or a Casio.
For me, this feels like one of the less harmful things rich people
do. Ultimately you're paying a bunch of skilled labor in a developed
state to maintain an artistic craft that uses very little energy and
material, for a device that has worse functionality than one under
$100. The only issue is where you got your money I suppose, and
whether that money would have been better spent elsewhere.
TimByte wrote 1 day ago:
Like yeah, purely from a utility standpoint, a $50 Casio destroys a
mechanical watch in accuracy and durability. But not everything
people value is about utility - sometimes it's about beauty,
craftsmanship, or just the joy of making something wildly
unnecessary really well
microtherion wrote 1 day ago:
There is its own beauty and craftsmanship in cramming billions of
transistors on a 4nm die.
pca006132 wrote 19 hours 7 min ago:
Sadly we don't consider things that are economically efficient
as craftmanship :)
matheusmoreira wrote 1 day ago:
You can get a Casio F-91W and replace the movement with a Sensor
Watch board. The watch then becomes a water resistant temperature
compensated quartz wristwatch. It's a literally world class time
piece. I calibrated mine and now it deviates a few seconds per
year. It's insane how good this thing is. Low power, battery lasts
over a year.
It's a fully programmable ARM microcontroller. You can write "watch
faces" for it. There's a 2nd factor codes face that lets you log in
like you're James Bond on the Nintendo 64. One of the coolest
projects I've ever worked on. I made it possible to calibrate the
pulsometer, a feature I use frequently at work. [1] They even
developed a custom LCD that's even more awesome than the original.
HTML [1]: https://www.sensorwatch.net/
bookofjoe wrote 1 day ago:
Casio F-91W:
HTML [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43636954
TheOtherHobbes wrote 1 day ago:
The point of these is to signal you have money and are enough of an
insider to know the high-status brands - or at least high-status
enough for that particular social group, who use them to reassure
each other they're not in the vulgar Rolex set.
They serve the same function as a designer handbag - although you
can at least put things inside a handbag and carry them around.
KaiserPro wrote 1 day ago:
For a rolex, yeah.
For virtually any other watch, not so much as to the normal
person they are just a watch
CydeWeys wrote 1 day ago:
This is overly cynical. The target demographic for a really
complicated Vacheron Constantin is a rich person who is a HUGE
nerd about watches. Think about people who get into really high
levels of nerd hobbies and acquire super expensive gear. It's not
primarily about showing off.
TheOtherHobbes wrote 1 day ago:
If it was about the nerdery the watches wouldn't be sold with
huge margins through a rarefied dealer network located in
exclusive shopping locations.
This is an item of jewellery, not a high-end custom PC.
euroderf wrote 1 day ago:
What's "hobby" about it? Is the owner going to open the watch
and make modifications as a weekend avocation?
Y-bar wrote 1 day ago:
Just like those collecting stamps, figurines, comic
magazines, paintings and so on the watch hobbyist pretty much
_never_ makes modifications to their items. Why do you
consider it a requirement for it to be a hobby?
ehnto wrote 1 day ago:
Not that I am wealthy enough to participate, but you see the
same thing in cars and the same issue too. Sometimes status
signalling and taste end up in the same product, and people who
don't care about cars end up with the finest of the cars,
almost coincidentally.
mlyle wrote 1 day ago:
I'm not sure buying the super fancy handbag is primarily about
showing off, either, and I think people who consume a lot of
these goods have a lot of brand knowledge.
I mean, I think you're right in that watch nerds usually have
more domain knowledge, but I don't think it's inherently
dissimilar.
petesergeant wrote 1 day ago:
> They serve the same function as a designer handbag
Keeping EU trade imbalances from getting too far out of whack?
__loam wrote 1 day ago:
Switzerland is not part of the EU lol
LeoPanthera wrote 1 day ago:
> If only my software were valued by number of complications...
Amateur radio software would win:
HTML [1]: https://sv1cal.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/image.png
avidiax wrote 1 day ago:
Which part of that interface is unnecessary?
I agree, you could have an Apple-like interface that lets you tune
a single frequency with a particular modulation, but nothing there
seems like it's a constellation viewer that has almost no practical
use.
LeoPanthera wrote 1 day ago:
Where did I say that any of it was unnecessary?
internetter wrote 1 day ago:
At the very least, I think they could change some of the design
elements to make more effective use of space
slt2021 wrote 1 day ago:
in the B2B SAAS world these are called "features" or "integrations".
Software with the most integrations and features is usually ends up
being the most preferred solution
Hamuko wrote 1 day ago:
Yeah, I was just thinking that our B2B SaaS has been trying to
churn out as many features and integrations as possible, with
customers constantly wanting more and more.
pixelpoet wrote 1 day ago:
If you asked someone what a "feature" is, in almost any context,
they will probably give you the answer we all expect.
If you ask someone what a "movement" is, they might well refer to
the poop they had that morning, or Eurythmy (which I had as a
subject at school!), or almost anything.
That's not a statement about how basic language has become, but
rather intentionally lofty vagueness (like "bespoke" instead of
custom) people invent for things perfectly well described by
expressions anyone can use like "high precision timekeeping", but
not-so-subtly signaling a higher price.
milesrout wrote 1 day ago:
This is a baffling criticism. Why would you expect a niche not to
have its own jargon? Not that "bespoke" is (it is an older usage
than "custom" and is used widely).
>people invent for things perfectly well described by expressions
anyone can use like "high precision timekeeping"
What is "high precision"? Why are you using engineering jargon
when you could say something simple like "accurate"? Why are you
using such lofty elitist language?
microtherion wrote 1 day ago:
It's true that niches have their jargon, but I tend to be
suspicious when the jargon makes its way into marketing
pitches.
It's one thing if your software vendor writes the software in
Haskell, but if their pitch to you is that the software has 40
patent protected monads and is entirely dotless and lambda
lifted, you're probably being taken for a ride.
mlyle wrote 1 day ago:
The word "movement" for a watch movement is old. Ditto for
"complication". Or "calibre". They come from the late 1700s and
early 1800s.
They were the normal words for the items described. They only
sound fancy now that they have fallen into disuse.
Actually, ditto for bespoke, now that you mention it.
pixelpoet wrote 1 day ago:
Real perspective shift from your comment, thanks! Reading more
about usage of those terms now, but I still can't help but feel
there's a deliberate "fancypants nonstandard language"
signalling going on in the marketing of these "timepieces".
There's an easy parallel to make with the audiophile industry,
which uses all kinds of colourful but ultimately vacuous
language.
umanwizard wrote 1 day ago:
What else would you call a watch movement? Thatâs just what
itâs called, thereâs no less fancy word for it.
JumpCrisscross wrote 1 day ago:
> can't help but feel there's a deliberate "fancypants
nonstandard language" signalling going on in the marketing of
these "timepieces"
Youâre reverting to your priors despite evidence to the
contrary.
mlyle wrote 23 hours 1 min ago:
> Youâre reverting to your priors despite evidence to the
contrary.
Eh, I don't think what he's saying now is unreasonable.
Certainly no one feels a pressure to use a modern term that
might have less perceived value-- to say "functions" or
"features" instead of "complications."
A big part of the product of a fancy watch, or a bespoke
suit, is the traditions. When tradition or sounding fancy
is opposed to accessibility, the former will win.
JumpCrisscross wrote 20 hours 33 min ago:
> no one feels a pressure to use a modern term that might
have less perceived value-- to say "functions" or
"features" instead of "complications
Methods in OOP. Every term in functional programming.
Rolex does a little bit of the Apple game, renaming
jargon. But the watch industry mostly uses the term the
first person to use it deployed. (âComplicationsâ
makes more sense than âfeaturesâ when working
multilingual across French, German and Italian.)
Iâd also argue that âfeaturesâ is a bit misleading.
Complications arenât about utility. Theyâre about
art. Itâs intentionally overcomplicating something.
mlyle wrote 20 hours 19 min ago:
> Complications arenât about utility. Theyâre
about art. Itâs intentionally overcomplicating
something.
This is not the original usage; "complication" does not
imply "grande complication."
> ..."features"...
None of your criticism applies to "functions" which is
the first term used.
> Methods in OOP. Every term in functional programming.
Yes... I'm saying in a niche, luxury industry based
upon exclusivity and tradition, the marketing pushes
towards old, foreign, and exotic language. All these
things in commodity digital watches are "modules" and
"functions" instead of "calibre" and "complications."
(With Apple, on the high end, choosing "complication"
for some reason ;).
m463 wrote 1 day ago:
software does have tail recursion.
This might be more like wrist recursion.
EDIT: I wonder if a nixie wristwatch would be a middle ground?
bookofjoe wrote 1 day ago:
HTML [1]: https://www.timesticking.com/steve-wozniaks-nixie-watch/
gennarro wrote 1 day ago:
Model name is âThe Veblenâ
rsynnott wrote 5 hours 26 min ago:
I mean, you could say that of the product category as a whole,
really. Mechanical watches have been entirely impractical for some
time now.
walrus01 wrote 1 day ago:
Seems like a Good name
anigbrowl wrote 1 day ago:
[expensive chuckling]
motohagiography wrote 1 day ago:
do timepiece complications have theoretical limits that might originate
from the "7-fold limit" in origami, or huffman's work on folding curves
in origami?
I realize watch complications are stacked disc segments and not folds,
but intuitively if you are dealing with a material in a fixed space you
either run up against limits in the stiffness of parts down to sheets
of atoms, or some theoretical folding limit relative to the thickness
of the case. a watch that expressed the proof might be worth the
indulgence.
pests wrote 1 day ago:
Didnât mythbusters do 8 folds?
ggm wrote 1 day ago:
Mechanical losses in cog and ratchet. At some point, friction won.
internetter wrote 1 day ago:
Did anyone else struggle to read this article? It felt very circulatory
and⦠complicated
defrost wrote 1 day ago:
Wooden works for me:
HTML [1]: https://www.keepthetime.com/blog/valerii-danevych-wooden-wat...
bradfitz wrote 1 day ago:
"most complicated" as if that's something's to be proud of! :)
smugglerFlynn wrote 1 day ago:
This is a word play - in the watch world âcomplicationâ means
âfeatureâ, and this watch has 41 features, which requires tricky
design decisions and high precision to house everything in a case
that is still wearable.
Something to be proud of, for sure.
esafak wrote 1 day ago:
We can play that game in the software world too, but strangely it
does not sell :)
stefs wrote 1 day ago:
Features in the software world do sell, and they're cheap up to a
point. But then complexity and technical debt lead to the hockey
stick explosion of cost.
umanwizard wrote 1 day ago:
Itâs not even word play. Complicated is just a term of art
meaning having complications.
pests wrote 1 day ago:
I donât see how it isnât word play? If watch features
werenât called complications then Iâd agree with you.
BalinKing wrote 1 day ago:
I think would depend on whether the author of the article title
was intentionally going for the more common meaning or not. But
given that this seems to be a watch news site, I feel like
thereâs a decent chance the headline is only referring to the
term of art (but I donât know anything about watches, so this
is pure speculation).
umanwizard wrote 1 day ago:
The author is definitely not going for the more common
meaning. It wouldnât even occur to someone who reads watch
publications that this could have been some kind of double
entendre or word play.
mahkeiro wrote 1 day ago:
Itâs not a word of play as it literally means complicated
things added to the normal watch function. The word with that
watch making meaning is coming directly from French (most
famous watch makers are coming from the speaking part of
Switzerland).
pests wrote 1 day ago:
So then isn't using "complicated" normally, in an
attention-grabbing headline, referring to the watches
complications, in a round-a-bout way?
umanwizard wrote 1 day ago:
But theyâre not using it with its normal meaning in the
headline. Theyâre using it only with the âterm of
artâ meaning. Youâre insisting on seeing a double
entendre that just isnât there.
JumpCrisscross wrote 1 day ago:
No, itâs a term of art. This discussion is sort of like
someone complaining about the term computer being used to
refer to both the electronic device and mid-century math
whizzes.
jsheard wrote 1 day ago:
No price given. Needless to say, if you have to ask...
brikym wrote 1 day ago:
I don't think it looks very nice. But the whole point of it is for
someone to show they have so much excess wealth they can
thoughtlessly spend it on something useless and ugly.
boomboomsubban wrote 1 day ago:
A quick look at their website suggests it's probably several hundred
thousand dollars.
edit a look at their Wikipedia article, tens of millions seems more
likely, if they even sell one.
devin wrote 1 day ago:
They are indeed selling this one, and have indicated if there are
buyers they will make them.
TheOtherHobbes wrote 1 day ago:
The millions are for vintage/antique watches with an interesting
provenance/history.
I'd guess this model is somewhere in the $250k to $500k range.
devin wrote 1 day ago:
You are quite incorrect. This is a wearable 1/1 and took 8 years
to develop and build. The rumor from the Hodinkee folks is around
4 million.
rpozarickij wrote 21 hours 39 min ago:
I haven't heard about Hodinkee before, but their website [0]
has a tasteful little detail in the top-left corner. It shows
the current date and more details are brought up after clicking
on the icon/image next to it.
[0]
HTML [1]: https://www.hodinkee.com/
boomboomsubban wrote 1 day ago:
Their 260th anniversary watch never had the price officially
revealed, and they supposedly only sold one, but that is
estimated to have gone for over $10 million. [1] That one was a
pocket watch, but I doubt their wristwatch would be that much
cheaper. Maybe I'm wrong.
edit the 250th anniversary watch was a wristwatch and went for a
million at the time.
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reference_57260
DIR <- back to front page