Swiss try to wind up Apple with $25k dumb-watch A Swiss watchmaker is poking fun at Apple, and getting quite a bit of publicity, with a US$25,000 mechanical tribute to the Apple Watch. The Swiss Alp Watch from H. Moser & Cie features a nearly identical look to the Jony Ive-designed Apple smartwatch, with absolutely none of the digital technology. The flash mechanical …
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dumb adjective
temporarily unable or unwilling to speak.
"she stood dumb while he poured out a stream of abuse"
synonyms: mute, unable to speak, without the power of speech; speechless, tongue-tied, wordless, silent, at a loss for words, voiceless, inarticulate, taciturn, uncommunicative, untalkative, tight-lipped, close-mouthed, saying nothing; informalmum; technicalaphasic, aphonic
"he was born deaf and dumb"
I think it probably IS dumb! (I say this as a fan of real, mechanical watches.)
Looks like a watch, tells time like a watch and in all probability sounds like a very quiet watch, so it is a watch. Nothing else to say except that it also looks like a decent watch though I was not sure about the strap, I tend to rot leather.
The great thing is that in ten, 20 years time (or even longer) it will still have all the above attributes while other trendy stuff will have been forgotten as you will not be able to get the !"£$%^&*() batteries by then.
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Yes, you're right - but then you could say the same thing about so much other stuff.
There is something special about watches. Should you have Netflix to hand have a look at "The Watchmaker's apprentice". They might be worn by the status-hungry, but the watches themselves are stunning.
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On the basis of logic you would think that, however...
A quartz watch is pretty predicatable in that it will gain or lose a certain amout of time over a certain time period. For instance my quartz Argos special that I bought nearly 8 years ago consistently and without fail gains 6 seconds a month.
My expensive mechanical watch can gain 6 seconds a day if left in one orientation, or it can lose 6 seconds a day if left in another orientation - that's pretty shit if you compare it to a quartz watch, right?
Well actually when the mechanical watch is on your wrist it's exposed to all those orientations during the day and the net result is that maybe one day it'll be a few seconds ahead, and on another day it'll be a few seconds behind, so the whole thing averages out.
Overall, over time, the mechanical watch is actually closer to the real time than the quartz watch is. I haven't reset the time on either of my watches in over 4 years and the end result is that the quartz watch is now around 4 and a half minutes fast, but the mechanical watch is just 32 seconds slow. Now you tell me which is the most accurate.
A perfectly acceptable digital watch costs less than $20 and requires absolutely no attention for several years, your mechanical watch costs thousands of dollars and require attention every few days, very little admittedly but time nonetheless. Are those 4 1/2 minutes really worth thousands of dollars? Especially considering the cumulative time spent winding which most definitely exceeded 4 1/2 minutes, assuming you never took it off for any extended period of time or simply neglected to wind the thing and had to reset the time anyway. There's absolutely no shame in admitting you wear something flashy to flaunt your wealth, quite the opposite in fact as many, myself included, cannot afford such luxuriant items, but quit pretending that time keeping is the primary job of a high end watch.
“Now you tell me which is the most accurate.”
You can improve on that. If you don’t wind the mechanical watch, and remove the battery from the quartz watch, they’ll both be right twice a day, which is better than most watches.
With apologies to Lewis Carrol, and to a small extent, Spike Milligan
He's gone down in my estimations from "shameless wanker" to "incompetent twat".
He quite obviously has no idea why people buy mechanical watches, which displays an almost total lack of style or appreciation of design[1]. Bit of a career issue that, given his job.
[1] Then again, I've often thought that iDesign is best characterised as "chav Ikea".
>I've always thought that Ive's comment about Swiss watchmakers was tongue-in-cheek. Did I give him too much credit?
It was tongue-in-cheek, and reported anomalously by someone near to his team. Who here hasn't joked around with colleagues during a drawn out project?
Jony Ive's not competing with the luxury watch market, since the Apple Watch is in the $500 - $1000 range - that's about the same as a steel and sapphire Tag Heuer with a quartz movement. The gold edition watch was a bit of fun for publicity's sake.
Ive understands the luxury watch market better than you think - at least he knows the ultra-rich don't just have one watch, they have several. At he conference last summer he said:
“I don’t see how we can compare these wonderful mechanical watches that we own and a product that has such a comprehensive functionality and capability that will grow and change beyond our imagining,”
The only area fit for comparison is the fit and finish of the watches, which even watch nerds agree is impeccable on the Apple watch. Of course Ive is 'cheating', by using ultra-high tolerance mass-production methods (such as lasers and Renishaw CMM probes) that Apple use in their previous products.
Of course, the Apple watch is a typically compromised MK I Apple product (like the first iPod, iPhone and and iPad) that is intended to be a placeholder in the market place until the technology catches up.
Jony Ive is actually a bit of a fan of mechanical watches, having designed a watch for Jaeger-LeCoultre with his colleague Marc Newson. Newson himself had his own mechanical watch brand - the Ikepod Manatee is an obvious forebear to the Apple watch.
If Sir Jony had a total lack of style or appreciation of design, he wouldn't own a black Bentley Mulsanne and an Aston Martin DB4.
I'm afraid neither beat my Hamilton 992.
If i'm going to pull something out of your pocket to tell the time anyway you may as well make it easier to hold in the hand and fit in the pocket, my massive oneplus one in thick armour case wasn't quite as convenient for the same purpose..
You'd hope so, but it's no guarantee. I've been through a fair few decent watches in my time, and the only brand I've found that keeps to acceptable levels of accuracy is Rolex. Your mileage will definitely vary.
Another little secret of the Swiss watch industry is that firms fill their watches from a very small selection of off-the-shelf movements, do very little with them apart from give them a new calibre number and maybe a small polish, yet charge wildly different prices: Google for ETA, Valjoux and Selita to see what I mean. Another hint of this is when large watches have their date windows or chronograph dials far away from the edge of the dial, visibly hugging the centre of the watch: that's a small standard off-the-shelf (and usually cheap) movement placed in large case.
But I do like the Swiss Alp Watch. Even the name is a fine piss-take. Your move, Apple.
Yup. Remember seeing that on a watch dedicated shopping channel once. They always make a point of it, i.e. the ETA movement in this £600 watch is exactly the same that goes into brand x,y,z at £10k.
The latter might have a few more sparkly bits of course. :-)
Will it bend if I put it in my back pocket and sit on it?
That is a criteria that has of yet escaped me for any of the watches that I have. I do have a preference for water resistant watches, but that's mainly because otherwise the poor thing won't survive being attached to me :).
I mainly buy watches because I like the look of them or because they do something weird, like Quinting where a stubborn designer decided to make a really transparent watch and kept at it until it actually worked. My favourite watch is one of the earlier Rado ceramics, which I bought because it does both analogue and digital time, but is quartz driven (I'm not fascinated enough by watch mechanics) - not a bad buy, because it still looks as new, despite being close to two decades old and being worn a *lot*.
Otherwise I like my mechanics a bit bigger, as -for instance- that which can be found in the Kew Bridge Steam Museum, also because that doesn't require reading glasses :).
Indeed, considering that ETA have a near-monopoly on fancy watch movements (although yes you can get Asian 'compatibles' for ~£15), all of the value-add is in the case. Mill your own and draw a face with sharpie if you want truly original - the glass, strap, movement, etc., are kit parts.
The price reflects it bling for oligarchs status value.
If you want a watch to tell the time accurately then Citizen wins every time whether it's pure mechanical, pure electronic or a hybrid.
I will get one of their solar powered GPS regulated watches when they make them a little smaller.
"A shameless rip off of the Apple Watch to help this no-name so-called "luxury" brand boost sales."
I know you're being ironic, but then the case of the Apple watch resembles to me a women's watch from, I think, the late 18th century, in a collection owned by a friend of my father's. Alternatively it is like a slightly Dali-ised version of the Tank watch.
Ive could not come up with anything new.
>Casio? Doesn't that make you a terrorist?
Worse - it makes you a hipster!
There is a weird phenomena of "I have a trust fund but I am wearing a £6 watch because I don't want you to hate me - but hey I've been travelling to exotic locations where one doesn't wear something I might get mugged for".
I can’t help thinking that Swiss Made is to watches what Apple Made is to computers. There may be very good reasons for choosing a Swiss watch (just as there may be very good reasons for choosing an Apple computer), but one size does not fit all and it seems to me that most purchases are made for reasons of fashion - and not because the merits of the device have been carefully considered by the purchaser.
Besides, if you want the very best, the apogee of damned expensive mechanical watch fashion then you need to buy English (http://www.robertloomes.com/robin-gents-watch/). I’ve considered the merits and decided instead to have a house and an old Seiko.
> Surely the apogee of English watch-making was George Daniels?
John Harrison, inventor of the chronometer watch, solving the problem of determining longitude at sea.
An achievement in an entirely different scale any Swiss watchmaker, or American consumer electronics designer, for that matter, could ever hope for.
"...I've been through a fair few decent watches in my time, and the only brand I've found that keeps to acceptable levels of accuracy is Rolex..."
I'm struggling to think of a real world scenario whereby one watch being a second or two more accurate than another watch, over the course of several days [or even weeks] justifies it costing tens or hundreds of times as much —and wondering in what circumstances such outlay is necessary in order to have "acceptable" accuracy.
Do you combine very precise appointment making: "I'll meet you at 23 seconds past twelve forty-one, next Tuesday" with very impatient friends: "C'mon. Let's go. It's 24 seconds past twelve forty-one. He's obviously not coming! "?
Anyone who works with servers, especially in the City, appreciates knowing what the time is to the nearest second. Looking at logs and knowing if something happened just now or ten seconds ago can make a difference.
This doesn't justify spending wanker money on a shiny arm bracelet. But it does justify radio-controlled or NTP-compatible timepieces of all kinds.
Well yeah, you choose that watch that suits you. Sounds like you want a radio-controlled, clear dialled watch, and that's grand. A diver will choose an appropriate watch, a lumberjack might use a G-Shock. Rolex made watches for physicists (Milguas), and others have incorporated slide-rules around the dial.
@Colin Wilson 2
The G-Shock radio controlled (60 kHz signal) watch was in the $100 price class when we bought one as a gift for someone. It wasn't even close to a grand.
Your link: my iPhone seems to rely on cellular network time, and it can be up to 15 seconds off (by comparison to WWV, CHU, GPS, and NTP - which all agree). I've installed an NTP app on my phone which I can use to determine the accurate time.
>Colin Wilson 2
You misquoted me, you naughty man you!
I wrote "and that's grand" (meaning 'that's good and I respect your point of view'), whereas you misquoted me as writing "and that's a grand" (meaning around £1,000).
Feel free to use square brackets to indicate added text!
Cheers!
@ Quortney Fortensplibe
I tend to use my phone for accurate(ish) timekeeping with the advantage that it reminds me where I am supposed to be and what I'm supposed to be doing a little in advance of when I have to be there and doing it. I feel no real need for that functionality to be duplicated in a less flexible way on a device on my wrist as yet.
I rather like the idea of one of those wrist watches with one hand and a dial that has 24 hours to a revolution. You can sort of associate the left hand middle side with getting up, the pointing-to-the-top bit as noon/lunch and the right hand middle-ish side as time for wine/dinner. I'd fancy that when I retire and no longer have to track things to better than half an hour-ish.
Like the first actual clocks it tracks the Sun.
That's a nice looking watch and a nice piss take of Apple, I fully appreciate what they are trying to say (and accomplish quite well I think).
I have, and am currently wearing, a Swiss made mechanical wrist watch in a silver casing hallmarked for 1916. It still works perfectly and keeps perfect time and is one of the watches I wear on a regular basis.
I have no doubt that other than a interesting curiosity the Apple watch will be all but forgotten in 100 years time and there will be no such thing as a working model.
I am not an IT Luddite, I am usually and early adapter of all things digital, but to me there is something magical about a clockwork watch, no matter what the cost cheap or expensive.
There's a wonderful scene in "Mostly Harmless" where Arthur Dent is trying to explain his mechanical wrist watch to his daughter, Random. If memory serves me correctly she has dismantled it to try and find the software. Worth a read if you have not done so already.
That "dumb" watch will still work for many years after you bought it.
Even if your Apple watch lasts five years before the battery dies, it will eventually end up on The List Of Stuff That's No Longer Shiny. If it's listed on that page and it breaks, game over - no soup^H^H^H^Hhardware support for you. Let's not even get started on software/firmware.
Oh, and have you seen how much they charge to replace the battery if you're not in warranty ? Ouch.
But i don't have the loot to throw at them for one (either one). I'll just keep wearing my old 21 jewel russian watch. wind it up, it works. Read somewhere long ago that 17 was the best fit for jewels in reducing friction points and that less was cheap (more wear and tear) and more was just showing off. don't know, not an expert.
That Swiss thing is pretty tired sauce. For 25K one would hope for a nice real thing, not just a sub-thing with attached polemical notions. Apple charges somewhat too much, but they do seem to be trying to offer a real thing. All it would take is commercialization of one of the exotic new battery technologies and another step in miniaturization and Apple could dispense with the tiresome recharge burden and the iPhone. Mr. Cook ?
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