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Japanese and Swiss Watchmakers Scoff At Smartwatches
jfruh (300774) writes "With rumors swirling about Apple entering the wearable space with an iWatch, you'd think that the Japanese and Swiss companies that have dominated high-end watchmaking for more than a century would be scrambling to catch up. But there were virtually no smartwatches on display at the Baselworld trade fair, and the watchmaking giants had no plans to produce any. Company representatives seemed sure that people in practice would be uninterested in constantly recharging their watches and downloading software updates just to tell time."
...how that attitude worked out for them.
10 years from now there won't be watches without some sort of connectivity except for specialty pieces designed from the outset to satisfy luddites.
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They will not be wearing them just to tell time. They are taking the spot that use to be used just to tell time.
And as soon as there is a god app for it everyone will want.
I already can't grok why anyone wants a "smart" phone that freezes and crashes all the time, acts like the NSA in your pocket, has no usable keys or keyboard, a screen that's like reading the internet through a straw, and generally has nothing but irritating "features." I certainly do not want a digital watch with no buttons.
Corded phones didn't cost $350 - $500 either.
Company representatives seemed sure that people in practice would be uninterested in constantly recharging their watches and downloading software updates just to tell time.
I think that for most users they are right for now. But when a smart-watch can be charged weekly or have battery changes annually it will be a different story,
There are two markets:
One -- served by commodity electronics -- watches that do something useful.
The other -- served by high-end, hand-made jewellery that don't actually function all that well as watches. For richarses with more dollars than sense, who want to show off.
This is like comparing apples and oranges.
I think for a lot of people, they would prefer a normal watch if their only task was telling the time. I think for some others, they might see the utility of a "smart" watch.
I personally like the general concept of a smart watch though none have really impressed me. 95% of the time, I am happy with my normal watch and the other 5%, I still have my smart phone which does any extra functionality I need.
Is the real purpose of the smart watch to tell time? i contend that the purpose is more so a less obtrusive way of viewing smartphone notifications than for telling time. Just my two cents.
--- I was far from home, and the spell of the Eastern sea was upon me. -Lovecraft-
Im waiting for the 1k year battery that will power my smart watch long past my death. Is probably in the glove-box of my flying car.
K
--- I was far from home, and the spell of the Eastern sea was upon me. -Lovecraft-
Because a smartwatch was already tried, the Fossil Abacus. I owned one, and while it was cool it does indeed get pretty tiring to make sure it was recharged every night. Things may indeed change, but wristwatch companies have far more to fear from smartphones than smart watches.
I want my Moller Skycar now!
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I'm new to Smart Watches and I got it because of a few features..
It's usable in full, bright midday sun, I get 5 days to a week per charge, it's quite waterproof and oh yes.. It happens to make a rather nice watch if my phone is not around!
I've already got a 'smart' device with all the bells and whistles in my pocket/bag, I really wouldn't want a 'watch' that can do much more than the pebble, it gives me a remote display so I don't need to take my phone out of my pocket to check simple things like GPS navigation direction and at the end of the day, it's just a watch that I can have fun with different watchfaces on..
And I know people who have continued to use their Pebbles even while they were without their smartphones for weeks at a time, just as a nice watch.
To me, it's turning out to be a handy extension of the phone, but it's not meant to 'take over' any functions..
And they didn't need to be linked to another expensive device to be of any real use either.
As opposed to my wife's $1500 bi-yearly Rolex overhaul.
You should definitely add some sarcasm mark to that, or people might take you seriously.
The problem with that assumption is that a watch isn't a timepiece. At least upscale watches aren't timepieces, exactly. They're principally jewelry. And much like Rolex never made a calculator watch, don't expect them to make a smart watch either. In any event, I don't see much advantage to being an early adopter in this space. Their customers aren't banging down the door asking for a smart watch. The people I know who have smart watches so far are not your typical watch customer.
I wear a watch 1) to tell time and 2) as a piece of jewelry. Besides a wedding ring it's about the only piece of jewelry a guy can wear, and if you buy something nice (I have an Ebel Brasilia) it'll last forever, retain its value, and you can pass it on to your kids as a family heirloom.
That's the target market for luxury watchmakers. A smart watch is never going to compete with watches worn as jewelry.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
But there were virtually no smartwatches on display at the Baselworld trade fair.
The objects we call "smartwatches" are actually "wristheld"(tm) computers, not watches.
It's like comparing a "traditional TV set" with a modern "smart TV". Those things are too smart to be just things!
did a little googling - turns out that people actually used to pay money for a single-purpose device that was advertised as keeping time but had no ntp support & left a tan line! they were apparently popular when it was fashionable to navigate with floating magnets, capture images with chemically coated strips of plastic and listen to music stored on removable media.
But there were virtually no smartwatches on display at the Baselworld trade fair, and the watchmaking giants had no plans to produce any.
That's because they understand that good taste never goes out of style.
You mean like an iPhone? I agee. That'll never work.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
What's more useful:
- A watch you have to install software updates onto and have to charge every 8 hours
or
- A mechanical automatic watch that continues to work as long as you wear it every day
I prefer the latter, and am currently wearing one now. Much less maintenance.
Just as there are certain types of "Audiophiles" (for better or worse and they do not all exhibit the same amount of ...), there are also Watchphiles too. They hang out at sites like http://www.watchismo.com/ . Watches are highly individualistic time peices. I see lots of people foregoing the watch because their smartphone has the time. There will be some culling of the lower tier watches that don't adapt but their will always be room for the "classic time piece" e.g. there's still a market for pocket watches.
Beware of those who profit off the docile and persecute the unbelievers.
Make the software update automatic. Use the watch as simple status update device with rudimentary controls. As one who has used Timex+Microsoft datalink watches which downloaded contact lists by the flashing bars of a CRT display back in 1996, I tell you, there is a market for a well designed smart watch designed smartly.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Like many people, I don't wear a watch of any sort. It is a hassle and I can get the time from my phone anyhow.
Why would i need a watch linked to my phone?
Garmin has the most useful "smart" watches out there. The Garmin Forerunner is full of useful features such as waypoints, virtual trainers, virtual racer, workouts, cadence sensors, etc. It is light weight and I don't have to carry a phone. They even have Garmin GPS watches for golfing, swimming, marine use, and pilots. The Fenix2 is next on my list.. it will cover running, swimming and biking as well as hiking. It has the most complete set of features. For reviews of the various Garmin sports watches (among others) check out the DC Rainmaker website. http://www.dcrainmaker.com/
...how that attitude worked out for them.
Not the most observant person, are we? Next time you're in a brick-and-mortar establishment, take a second to look around at just what kind of phones they have on the various desks, kiosks, checkouts, et. al.
FYI, the "corded phone manufacturers" are doing just fine; hell, they sell me (or rather, my clients) thousands of phones and replacement parts every single year.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
expensive watches are all about status, not function. the hypothetical iWatch will not fall into the "expensive" category though it will certainly be more than run of the mill stuff.
It is hard to underestimate the iDrones and their propensity to own iAnything. But in an age where fewer young adults (and even older ones) are wearing a watch it better be something uber special. Is being a "fitness" monitor enough? Does the couch potato culture need that (looking at eBay fitness monitor lists, apparently not)? If a person is not now wearing a watch what is going to make them want to wear an iWatch?
Of the people who still use watches, they do it precisely because they want just the time with batteries that go on forever or even don't use batteries at all, or consider the device as more an art piece or fashion statement than a practical tool.
Sure, some may go to smartwatches, but I'm wagering the vast majority of the opportunity for smartwatches are people who don't bother with a watch anymore because they've already gone to 'just phones'. In other words, the extent to which the 'non-luddite' market erodes the wristwatch industry has already happened.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Why invest milions of dollars into a platform that only a handful of people are going to use?
Omega Smartwatch: No apps because the few hundred people who have them aren't really enough of a market to bother developing for. Especially not when [whatever smartwatch platform ends up winning in the end, if any] has two or three orders of magnitude more users.
Far more likely scenario: Let the Pebbles and the Samsungs and the rest duke it out for marketshare, then partner with them. What do you bet Pebble would jump at the change to make the "Rolex Smartwatch based on the Pebble platform?"
While I agree that watches have their own niche, I don't think any of them believe that their timepieces are more accurate than other devices, so audiophiles are probably not the best point of comparison.
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How much smart device redundancy do you need on your person at any given time? I think my phone is enough, especially given Its huge screen and larger battery. No reason to compromise my watch with a battery life hundreds of times shorter just to have it do crap my phone already does.
People are looking for something solid and analog. Fragile unreliable smartwatches aren't what most people who are buying watches are looking for.
Like an expensive watch.
The long-term question isn't whether people want a watch or something more generalized, it's more a question of whether your wrist is a viable place to wear something useful. Traditional watches and the plethora of UP/Fuel/FitBit bands seem to say "sure."
Any disruptive technology starts out less effective than the thing it's disrupting. Early cell phones were big, clunky, and had short battery life; early smart phones had clunky keyboards and low bandwidth; early SSD drives were (are) more expensive and smaller than HDDs, etc. Early smart watches have and will continue to suck at being watches, but that's not the point. When battery life is no longer an issue, when clunky tiny interfaces stop trying to replace bigger interfaces and focus on things that work well at that size, *then* the disruption will begin in earnest.
Various posters are correct that a Rolex is a fashion statement and that its time-telling ability is incidental. However, there is such a thing as fashionable technology, so for the luxury watchmakers to think that they're completely immune to disruption looks short-sighted to me.
Software Shouldn't Suck
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The quartz watch was invented by the Swiss watch manufactures. But they decided that people wouldn't like them and kept with the mechanical models. The Japanese took the quartz idea and ran with it, and in a few years, the Swiss watch makers to relegated to a niche market. Somehow, I suspect we're going to be seeing a repeat of history.
Consider a pocket watch. Actually, a watch chain would be a useful accessoire for a smartphone. That's how people cut down on theft and cracked glass centuries ago, and guess what: it worked. It would also be so much more stylish to pull your smartphone out of your vest that way in order to look at the time and/or messages.
F-91W. It does everything I need a watch to do.
Have gnu, will travel.
Well.. if the big folks aren't interest, and it can be understood as it doesn't necessarily meet their product's image, there's at least one startup that's working on a nicely designed smart watch from their Geneva office. http://www.hyetis.com
athletic info - heart rate monitor, track over time etc., altimeter, temp barometer readings over time. Also think bi-directional. What info can the phone deliver to my watch. e.g. only forward sms from significant other during outing and display on watch.
Beware of those who profit off the docile and persecute the unbelievers.
It's far easier for a computer company to create computers that strap to your wrist than it is for a watch company to create watches with computer functionality. Besides there's no real risk of being "locked out" of the market. Plenty of cross-licensing/design/development opportunities will be available if smartwatches ever become a thing.
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Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
to have a smartwatch, if it only demonstrates 1) you spent a fortune just to learn the time and 2) you need a smarter watch just to tell the time? I guess I just need to run out and cash out my retirement plan so I can buy one.
You mean like the CO phone exchange? :-)
Ezekiel 23:20
Bullshit. Not everybody wants a smart watch. That doesn't make you a luddite ... you may in fact be a fan of time pieces.
I have a couple of skeleton watches, meaning you can see through the watch face to the actual gears and mechanical bits of the watch.
The aesthetics of the watch itself is the point. Just because someone doesn't feel the need to use every shiny bauble and gew gaw the tech industry comes up with doesn't make them a luddite.
I'm completely surrounded by electronics and technology already, and I don't see a smart watch as being something I'm particularly interested in. In fact, it's something I can't see the point of for me ... I don't text enough to need to have it constantly attached to me, any more than I can't be away from my phone (which I refuse to buy a data plan for, because wifi covers my needs). I also don't need Apple (or whoever) to be able to track every little I thing I do throughout my day.
If you think the big name watch makers all need to get on board with this or die, you're overly fetishizing technology. There will always be a market for mechanical watches. You really think suddenly nobody is going to want to own a Rolex because there exist smartwatches? If you do, you don't know anything about people who buy watches.
Some people still have plain old-fashioned analog sex too, and haven't embraced teledildonics. And, thankfully, most of us never will.
For many of us, technology is a tool, but not the be all and end all of our existence. Knowing when to draw the line and walk away from it doesn't make you a luddite, it means you have a better perspective on shit that really matters.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Same with fountain pens. People by fountain pens because it is a sign of class and status, same is with watches.
Would that be the same way there aren't any mechanical watches available today, decades after digital and electronic watches came on the market?
leave no truth left uncovered
I really think 'it depends.' I'm Gen-X and have an Omega Seamaster on my wrist. I've worn it nearly every day for nearly a decade (don't wear it when I'm travelling to some destinations - Then it's my Timex.) I like wearing a nice analog watch, but then I iron my shirts and don't wear runners outside of the gym either. I think there will always be a market for people like me, the question is whether that market will die off as my generation dies off...
I think the low end watches where already culled by the mobile phones in general. All watches that remain are basically some form or other an accessory, that is used to show off.
For my 40th birthday, my wife gave me a Tag Heuer chronograph (day, date, with stopwatch indicators for seconds, minutes and hours). I had been a long-time wearer of a digital watch, in fact I still wore the same Timex digital watch I bought at at Target in 1986 when I got this watch.
I'm not sure what "don't function all that well" means. About the only timekeeping weaknesses this watch has is that it is prone to run a little slow, needing to be moved ahead a minute or so every month, the date needs to be set when leaving a month with less than 31 days and of course DST adjustments.
Beyond that, it's a great timepiece. It's self-winding, so it never needs batteries. Waterproof to 300 meters. The sapphire crystal is totally clear and free of scratches. The stopwatch is handy for cooking or whatever simple timing needs I have.
Now, serious watch people tell me this really isn't a "serious" watch from a jewelry perspective, but it was $2300 when I got it and I don't think I'd want a more "serious" watch than this for the kind of money those sorts of watches go for.
Watches aren' t to tell time. They are man jewlery.
It's not the same thing at all.
These are the companies that still make mechanical analog watches. More than anything they're jewelry with barely enough functionality that men can rationalize wearing them as "practical" and not "vain"/"girly" (every important mane has to know how long he's making his subordinates wait for him after all).
A smartwatch is primarily an IO terminal for a phone. The only reason to get one is expanding the utility of said phone, and it's likely that they'll be percieved as "geeky" by the general public.
Luxury smatwathes may be a thing someday, but first smartwatches have to prove themselves useful. Once most people have one then the luxury models made form gold and platinum and styled to look like grate-grandfater's pocket watch (yes that does deafet the purpose but the target market won't care) will start showing up.
Why do you buy a high-end watch. You can get something that tells time for $5. So again, why do you buy a high-end watch?
Its a statement. A style item. The statement you make with a smartwatch is very different from the one you make with a high end watch.
Watch makers don't compete with smart watches. They compete with jewelry.
The number one use of watches is to attract women by being manly and/or expensive.
The Apple fag watch won't help with that. It will compete with the iPhone more than with the old style watches.
Corded phones didn't cost $350 - $500 either.
$350-$500 puts you into the range of cheap trash and knock-off timepieces. Try adding a zero. Or two.
I'm a geek, and I've got a Pebble that I wear fairly regularly. But the watch I wear when I want to dress up a bit (or when I get tired of the cheesy plastic smart watch) is a Tag Heurer with an automatic movement. The Pebble is neat, and has IMHO the right balance of features and price. But it has no soul.
The question is, for how long? Granted I have a phone at my desk, but I think this is more about organisational inertia. I very rarely use the phone, if I ever have voice communication with colleagues, it almost always is some form of VOIP. Granted we may see some "corded" VOIP phones turn up, but the POTS is going to die some time around. My guess is along 10-20 years.
For those who like Swiss watches - or even high end Japanese watches (Seiko Spring drives..), a smart watch is not necessarily an 'upgrade'. I choose to wear a mechanical watch because I like mechanical watches.
Sure, I have a G-Shock for when I'm going somewhere a Swiss timepiece isn't a good idea, but for the most part, I wear a Swiss automatic - usually a stainless Rolex GMT Master II. (pepsi bezel, baybee!) Why? Because I like the way it looks, and it's about as close to jewelry as I'll ever get.
A smart watch with an LCD/OLED display just isn't going to rival the look of a decent mechanical watch...
If I want a smart device, that is why I have a Galaxy S4.
In the immortal words of Socrates, who said; 'I drank what?'
There's still people out there with ordinary watches?
Give it time and Smart Watches will last much longer than a few hours. Charging it once a day when you go to sleep, through wireless charging, is perfectly fine, take it off, put it on your bedside desk that has a wireless charger on it, put your phone, watches and all that on it, sleep.
Same with fountain pens. People by fountain pens because it is a sign of class and status, same is with watches.
I don't care about class or status, I wear a wristwatch for 2 reasons:
1) I've always worn one, and I feel kind of naked without it
2) "remove phone from pocket/turn on screen/twist body to shield screen from sun/read time" seems like a huge waste of time and effort, compared to "twist wrist/read time"
OK, 3 reasons:
3) my kinetic (ie self-winding) windup watch will always be able to tell the time, so long as I keep it wound and don't break it.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
While I agree that watches have their own niche, I don't think any of them believe that their timepieces are more accurate than other devices, so audiophiles are probably not the best point of comparison.
At least, not until Monster starts making oxygen-free watch bodies with 24k gold connectors.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
... and because they are very nice tools when writing. Mine has a plastic handle, cost somewhere between 10 and 20 € and does not look like much, but it does help making my handwriting somewhat legible, and enables me to keep writing for a while without fatigue.
Sure you can get super-expensive fancy fontain pens which are 90% status symbols - as you can with phones, cars, clothes, and practically everything else - but that doesn't mean that all fountain pens are just status symbols.
Unless you are in a meeting or at lunch with somebody. Close your eyes and picture the person across from you constantly looking at their watch. It screams boredom.
So get a FitBit (or whatever).
Actually, if they'd stick a simple digital time readout into the FitBit, and not charge an arm and a leg, that's something I might actually be willing to consider as a replacement for my faithful ol' analog watch.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Company representatives seemed sure that people in practice would be uninterested in constantly recharging their watches and downloading software updates just to tell time.
That's short sighted. Smartwatches serve as much to tell time as smartphones serve to make calls, i.e. it's one of the basic functions, but it does so much more that the original use is not even the main one any more.
Nobody will charge their watch every night just to tell the time, but they may do it if they think it's worth the hassle for the extra functionality.
Of course, there's still the argument to be made whether those extra functions are something people will actually want, but it just seems these companies aren't even asking themselves the right questions, and may be setting themselves up to a very big surprise.
Yeah, biggest change is that today they're attached to the ethernet port instead of needing their own cable system, and has access to the company phonebook via LDAP etc. They have also become quite complicated - when I got the phone on my desk, it came with a little folder instructing me how to install the operating system. That think literally has more buttons than my laptop...
Yet you can't even spell Tag Heuer properly.
If you spend $50,000 or more for your watch, you laugh at Apple fanbois while you bang their girlfriends. You don't need a fucking toy connected to the internet to do things - that's what your people are for.
Apple produces crap toys for low-rent trailer trash compared to the market really high-end watchmakers aim for.
>It has no soul
Oh boy here we go with the weasely marketing words. In the world of synthesizers people peddling obsolete technology have been using the same kind of tricks to get rich chumps to buy their old crap. Digital synths "have no soul" while analog synths are "warm". Ask an engineer to define what the technical definition of "warm" is? A marketing word. That is all.
I don't believe most people will want technology in their watches. They wear them for time telling and fashion, not connectivity. Thinks about G-Force watches. How many people do you see wearing those these days? Same goes for eyeglasses. They won't be a big seller because people simply don't want to walk around with a heads-up screen in front of their face. Having that technology in your pocket is good enough. I have all the latest technology in my home, but I wear a Swiss watch because of its fine craftsmanship, great looks, and because it's one of the few things around me NOT dependent on the WWW.
"Japanese and Swiss companies that have dominated high-end watchmaking" Um.. yeah - no high-end Japanese or Swiss company sells a high-end watch for $350-$500. Add a zero and you're entering the market. A good digital watch and a paired device will set you back far less than any 'high-end' watch.
I agree. When I write anything of significant length which, I'll have to admit, doesn't happen as much as it used to, I prefer one of my fountain pens. They're attractive and different, but mostly I just like the way they write. Neither one of them was very expensive.
A watch that requires daily charging is utterly worthless. I'll stick with my trusty Citizens and Seikos, thanks.
> my kinetic (ie self-winding) windup watch will always be able to tell the time, so long as I keep it wound and don't break it.
And, it will always be correct at least twice a day!
Having a phone showing the time means you don't need a watch.
I've not wore a watch the past 30 years and feel much better for it.
Today, having a mobile phone with you, there's very little need for watches anyway.
"Smart watches" will only push more people into accepting "smart mobiles" as a viable solution, as "smart watches" will soon feel crippled and cumbersome, bordering on the unusable (especially when the battery becomes old).
I may be wrong though, but I still don't need a watch.
people in practice would be uninterested in constantly recharging their watches and downloading software updates just to tell time
I use my phone to tell time.
I don't want any type of watch.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Or even 3-4 zeros.
Watches stopped being about telling time a while ago. Devices that tell time are ubiquitous; from phones to microwaves. Watches, especially high-end watches, are fashion accessories. Many are hard to read but it doesn't matter because they aren't really used as time pieces. Calling the new devices "watches" simple because they are designed to be worn on the wrist is a mistake. Telling time is the least of their functionality but so easy to include; why not?
Competition Good, Monopoly Bad.
Yeah, biggest change is that today they're attached to the ethernet port instead of needing their own cable system, and has access to the company phonebook via LDAP etc. They have also become quite complicated - when I got the phone on my desk, it came with a little folder instructing me how to install the operating system. That think literally has more buttons than my laptop...
Sometimes, yes. Usually in corporate offices, though, not in the actual retail locations.
But a lot of the time (more often than you think), they're connected to Cat3, which is subsequently wired into a key system, pulling dial tone from POTS lines. I know, because I coordinate their installations every single day (and yes, it kills me to have a brand new, VoIP capable system installed, just to have the client use it as a POTS key system).
We're talking 150 - 200 system installs a year, 10-20 phones per install, and that's just me - there are 10 other people here doing the same thing. That's a lot of corded phones.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
...how that attitude worked out for them.
10 years from now there won't be watches without some sort of connectivity except for specialty pieces designed from the outset to satisfy luddites.
I wouldn't be entirely sanguine about the future of watches in the 'just a basic quartz oscillator; but dressed up to the 50-100 range' sector; but why would the $2 expendables and the $$$ pointlessly-mechanical-man-jewelry sector worry? The former will always be cheaper than watches with additional parts, and the latter 'should' have been wiped out by superior quartz oscillator technology; but obviously wasn't.
Corded phones didn't cost $350 - $500 either.
Never bought a Cisco or NEC IP phone, have you?
They can get pricey.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Well, IMO this would be a very small market segment. Currently Windows 8 on the desktop is faltering because everyone uses a smart phone and/or tablet so there is no need for the metro UI on the desktop. Honestly I don't know anyone using the metro UI; only the standard UI. The same logic applies to smart watches. IMO only people who don't have their phone or tablet with them would be the target market. Runners and campers?!?? Really? lol
> my kinetic (ie self-winding) windup watch will always be able to tell the time, so long as I keep it wound and don't break it.
And, it will always be correct at least twice a day!
Only if you forget to wind it.
If you're that worried/forgetful, you could just go get yourself one of these.
No winding necessary.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I don't think I will be interested in buying a smart watch until they can go at least a year or two on one charge.
This is high end. You guys aren't adding enough zeroes to your estimates of prices either.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi...
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi...
Must be embedded under the skin.
And ...the GP said -
It's self-winding, so it never needs batteries. Waterproof to 300 meters. The sapphire crystal is totally clear and free of scratches. The stopwatch is handy for cooking or whatever simple timing needs I have.
I have a solar Timex watch that I got for $20 that does all that and more.
I only wear it when I'm playing tennis because every other place, there are some sort of chronograph.
Like, I have a chronograph built into my TV, microwave, car dash, there are chronographs on walls, bank signs, the visual output from chronographs are broadcast on radio and TV.
I have stopped buying new phones every other year. It's insane. Everyone needs to stop doing it. Something needs to change.
Actually I think they are right. I don't wear a watch anymore as I have my smartphone. However if I was going to start wearing a watch it would be more like jewelry and fancy-schmancy.
BTW I still have a corded phone. Works well in a power outage/minor disaster (aka ice storm 99/Eastcoast blackout). I rarely use it but better to have and not need than to need and not have.
I think the low end watches where already culled by the mobile phones in general. All watches that remain are basically some form or other an accessory, that is used to show off.
Nah, walk up to the jewelry counter of almost any department store, they still have tables loaded with $10 - 20 el cheapo watches. Good for kids and anyone who just needs/wants a general idea of the time, but doesn't need/want super-precise timekeeping.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Granted we may see some "corded" VOIP phones turn up
The corded phones businesses use have almost always been "corded" VOIP phones. No large business uses POTS.
Agree, my Casio with ten year battery life is all the wristwatch I need, it has non zero odds of outliving me.
I might buy a smartphone one day, though the lousy battery life has put me off so far.
I see the Sony Xperia T2 Ultra Dual claims a 46 day standby time now and even an iPhone is up to 10 days.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
Granted we may see some "corded" VOIP phones turn up, but the POTS is going to die some time around. My guess is along 10-20 years.
You'll see the death of POTS in your lifetime, but not because of lack of need or use; rather, it will go away as soon as the companies who own the infrastructure complete their mission of convincing the government to stop forcing them to install/upgrade POTS infrastructure (while keeping the tax incentives, of course).
AT&T and Verizon are already heading down that road.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
The current version of the FitBit does include a time display. They recalled them all due to the band being toxic to skin, but I expect that they're releasing a fixed version.
Another option of a FitBit type device with a watch is the Basis smartwatch. It's a bit bulky, and I'm not having a great time with the software, but some people are happy with it.
I currently have a FitBit on my right wrist and a Basis on my left as I evaluate the Basis as a possible replacement for the FitBit. One thing stopping my transition is that the Basis completely lacks alarm functionality.
Because temp and barometer readings are things I need readily available so i should wear a small brick on my arm and recharge it daily?
Could be just me, but the "smart watch" seems to be about pushing tech for tech sake.
So, there are two types of people out there: those that wear watches and those that don't. I fall into the latter category. As someone who doesn't wear jewelry, I've never felt the need to accessorise with time (save for that brief period in 7th grade where I had a few Swatches... ;) ). The other reason for a watch would be practical. But here's the thing: I always know within a few minutes what time it is. If you don't wear a watch, you get pretty good at knowing the time. And, in most cases, you realise that it doesn't matter that much. Is it early? Have breakfast. Is it late? Have a cocktail. Am I at work? I have clocks surrounding me that are more accurate than any watch I'd wear.
Having played around with the "quantified self" gadgets, I can also say that they didn't give me much more than I could get through just general self awareness and a scale (or a more precise measuring device for whatever it is I'm quantifying). So, a smartwatch for me would just be a connected device for email, Web, and phone calls. My smartphone is great for that and I don't have to wear it on my wrist (see above: I don't wear jewelry). I can also set my phone aside and easily walk away from it when I need to be disconnected, which is key for long term sanity.
I know I'm only a portion of the market, but when it comes to smart watches, the manufacturers are already dealing with a segmented market. The luxury manufacturers are right to focus on what their bread and butter is: high end, mechanical jewelry (which, imho, is way cooler than a smart watch from an engineering perspective). The smartwatch space will need to focus on the intersection of smartphone users who wear watches for practical reasons and want to move away from their phone. They'll likely never capture the smartphone users who don't like to wear watches.
-Chris
Good grief. $1.75Million and they didn't even waterproof it?!?
When you an have that connectivity without making it less convenient to use as a watch, sure. Daily recharges are inconvenient. A watch powered by battery should not ever need to be recharged and should require no more than an annual battery replacement (which takes less time than a recharge) that can easily be performed by an end user with a common battery type such as CR2032. If they cannot get the power that they need to sustain that kind of life from such a common cell, then simply put, tech needs to improve before it is practical.
Simply put, we're not there yet.... And won't be for the foreseeable future. Maybe someday, perhaps... Even likely, I'd dare say. But not soon. Not without an unprecedented breakthrough in power consumption, anyways
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Yeah, I have a friend who's into classic diver watches; he's always happy if he can get one tuned so it only loses or gains 10-20 sec a day. He's fully aware that any $20 Casio will tell the time better.
While there were a few brands, corded phones were mostly the domain of smaller manufacturers and were pretty much a bland commodity product. This gathering is of high end brands and manufacturers. Apples and the thing most unlike apples that you can think of.
Asking how it worked out for corded phone manufacturers is like asking high end steakhouse owners if they are "threatened" by a fast food hamburger chain that serves an entirely different demographic.
You could buy a watch that doesn't require a battery for less than £ 50 with a design made in the '60s. The main advantage of a watch is that the power compsumtion is very low compared to a smartwatch, the functions are limited to keep the time and there's non need to have connectivity or software updates.
I use a fountain pen because it contains no "ball" and is easier to control (I have terrible handwriting and it somewhat helps).
You can get pretty decent quality ones in China for not a lot of money as they are still fairly common there.
If you try to find one in "the west" they want a small fortune for the pen, and another for the ink.
I can't tell the difference from my $22 German Lamey (+$6 for the refill adapter) vs my $10 "Hero" (no adapter needed). In fact, I prefer the Hero as it snaps closed tighter and is less damage if i lose it.
I guess when you get to expensive "brand names" they become status symbols, but Montblanc makes expensive ball point pens as well.
I don't know about that. I'm sure a lot of people who would otherwise wear a watch don't because a cellphone fills that functionality, but then again plenty of those same people wouldn't have ever worn a watch anyways.
I wear a ~$80 watch which puts it in neither the cheap nor super expensive category. Appearance is/was absolutely a factor in choosing it, but ultimately it just comes down to being a reliable and easy way to tell time for not hundreds of dollars that can survive my modestly active outdoor life. I suspect I use it to tell time far more than anyone notices it as a piece of jewelry.
Inevitably 'smart' watches that can provide the same or better performance at the same sort of price and durability will appear. Till then, I think there's still a market for 'active' watches that are neither walmart cheap nor 5th avenue expensive and just look like a watch. They're just handy.
Retail Price $1,450,000.00
Our Price $1,750,000.00
Huh... I guess when you're rich, paying *more* is a selling point?
already culled by the mobile phones in general
Not really. It is still a thing you put on. I many of us are still used to turning your arm slightly to see the time, instead taking something out of your pocket.
It's dead right that expensive watch makers aren't in fight with smartwatches - that fight was lost to quartz watches in the 1970s
Rolex (and any mechanical watch, no matter how more-than-a-brand-new-car expensive) is measurably less accurate than your £25 Casio. That's why they stopped selling Swiss watches on accuracy when quartz arrived. Expensive watches are jewellery - a way to show off that you are wealthy, and part of a group that has a particular kind of taste.
Claiming that a mechanical watch is better is like claiming an antique table is better at being a table. It doesn't hold things off the floor any better, it just cost a great deal more.
Or not http://yro.slashdot.org/story/...
It is a trade show for the watch and jewelry industry. If you take the expectation of what a luxury watch should be, the skill set it takes to create one and the labor costs in countries where the industry thrives (e.g., Germany, Switzerland, Japan), you will clearly see that the show is not about a mass market or mass appeal.
A true watch from a well respected manufacturer will start at around $10K. It will tell time with acceptable tolerance and it will last for years. If something happens to the watch, you can get it repaired 20-30 years from now with no issues. Some manufacturers, like Patek Philippe, will be able to fix your watch regardless of its age, as the company keeps all the blueprints of all the parts. And most importantly, a good timepiece will keep most, if not all, of its value over time.
How do smart watches stand up to that? For $400 you get a piece of electronic junk that will destroy the looks of any respectable suit. Then it will end up on a landfill within a couple of years.
"Company representatives seemed sure that people in practice would be uninterested in constantly recharging their watches and downloading software updates just to tell time"
They are absolutely right- no one would go to all that trouble just to tell time. But people who wear smartwatches don't use them just to tell time. Of course, calculator watches have been around for years and those haven't taken any business from Swiss watchmakers, so I can't imagine smartwatches will do so either.
I think the Swiss are saying they're not interested in the smartwatch market, not that there won't be a market for smartwatches. I'd bet their bankers will be happy to stash the money made from smartwatches.
Company representatives seemed sure that people in practice would be uninterested in constantly recharging their watches and downloading software updates just to tell time.
It's been over 40 years since UTC shifted from elastic seconds to leap seconds. Terrestrial radio (nevermind GNSS!) synchronization signals include more warning about those leap seconds than they do about summer time shifts. And yet these watchmakers still can't sell me a watch that can properly handle leap seconds.
So yeah: I agree that I'm not thrilled about having to push software to my watch just to tell time, but I'm also not thrilled that being able to reprogram my watch is the only hope I have of getting a timepiece that actually tells time properly without having to get my own cesium oscillator.
Not that that's much hope, since I have yet to figure out how to get my GPS-enabled Android tablet to tell me what the Delta-AT is...
I'd love to be able to see limited information like notifications on my watch (when my cell is in my pocket). Nothing more annoying than having to fish out your cell when you're in the middle of something only to find it was just a spam sent to your work email. That could be done simply with inexpensive hardware upgrades and a cheap display.
No need to get crazy with watches. But, watches are also jewelry, so if you can't pull it off without maintaining the aesthetic it won't work for consumers.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
The current version of the FitBit does include a time display. They recalled them all due to the band being toxic to skin, but I expect that they're releasing a fixed version.
Cool.
Hopefully they'll have the new ones out before the end of next month; I was considering giving my wife one for her birthday.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Digital synths are cool but analog synths overheat, hence the "warm" sound?
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
The only tripe I hear out of smartwatch fanboys is that I can do the things my cellphone can do, but on a watch!!!!!!!!!!11111111111oneoneone
In a world where smartphones are receiving ever-expanding screen sizes... Yeah, uh, good luck with that.
I suppose it might be useful for people who insist on jogging in skin-tight flabroll showcases without pockets, but that's a pretty numerically negligible market for this sort of tech.
Corded phones didn't cost $350 - $500 either.
$350-$500 puts you into the range of cheap trash and knock-off timepieces. Try adding a zero. Or two.
I'm a geek, and I've got a Pebble that I wear fairly regularly. But the watch I wear when I want to dress up a bit (or when I get tired of the cheesy plastic smart watch) is a Tag Heurer with an automatic movement. The Pebble is neat, and has IMHO the right balance of features and price. But it has no soul.
For $500 you will get a very good mechanical watch - just because you and others like to waste money on something that isn't even that interesting in order to show off how rich you are doesn't change that _fact_.
Heck, one can buy extremely expensive mechanical watches that have the same precision as a $100 one - but the later is cheap trash, right? For some makes one way to identify forgeries are to check the precision - if the watch is tragically bad it's genuine, if it's reasonable precise it's a forgery.
Stuff like that wouldn't bother me so much if the reporting was voluntary, and the person generating all this lucrative data actually got compensated for it.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
The thing the swiss may have missed is that the affluent professionals who currently have prestige swiss watches have just one left wrist. If smartwatches become sufficiently compelling and, well, smart looking then they may begin to displace traditional fine watches.
Showing off is using an expensive iPhone as a watch. There are loads of cheap watches that could not possibly be used to show off, unless you happen to live with a tribe that had no contact with civilization.
To me, the idea of 'wearables' is anathema. I really don't want to have a load of extraneous shite strapped to me, no matter how light. My ex used to buy me watches - don't know why really - not much about that cunt makes any sense - but as soon as I got a cellphone I never wore a watch again. Who wants a thing strapped to their wrist? Interferes with so many things.
iWatch is not really a timepiece. It's a collection of highly sophisticated sensors that "watch" your vitals. All these other companies (Samsung etc) assumed that iWatch was just another smart watch: a watch with few apps on it. But from all the leaks and reports weâ(TM)ve seen so far (if they were to believed), iWatch is none of those things.
Yes, it will probably tell time as well but iWatch will be much more than that.
Close your eyes and picture the person across from you constantly looking at their watch. It screams boredom.
c/f taking out their smartphone every 5 minutes to check incoming texts?
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
There is a warmth to the time on an analog time piece.
Remember Nokia? Blackberry? Motorola? They waited too long and got left behind.
As jewelry an expensive watch will have a niche for a long time to come, but wearable electronics is the future, and if something like a smartwatch or google glass can give you the time plus all the information you would ever need, who needs to carry an additional mechanical piece on the left wrist?
And phones will be relegated to history soon enough too. Who wants to carry a brick around?
You doing it wrong. My Pebble watch is a substrate to run my custom watch face, which I need because my body runs a bespoke circadian rhythm. The equity here lies in the software, not in the physical object shackled to my wrist. Like every technology we've barely figured out how to build at all, it will shed some baby teeth before the permanent molars grow in.
If only the timer on my kitchen stove allowed me to reprogram it to mesh with my cooking practice. Once it goes off, it figures it needs to shriek at me once a minute until kingdom come, or thirty minutes, whichever comes first. I set it when I'm preheating the oven, then a call comes in and I'm tied to my desk, and it's off in the kitchen having a minute by minute hissy fit. Other times I have it set so that it's not more than two minutes ahead of the smoke detector. But the dumb thing doesn't know the difference, because in fine minimalist design tradition, one size fits all.
I suppose could use the timer on my wrist, but then anyone else who wanders into the kitchen is operating blind. A public timer works better in a shared kitchen. The real problem here is that the embedded stove timer is the wrong implementation of the right solution.
If the damn thing would shriek at first activation, then once every five minutes, and on the minutes != 0 mod 5 it would gently warble, we'd have the best of both worlds. Unfortunately, it's a fixed-function non-reprogrammable device, which will probably outlive my tenancy in this abode.
Physical permanence is overrated.
If I paid that much money for something it would sit in a fully-alarmed display case where water could never get near it. Of course if I were stupid enough to pay that much for a watch I would probably be stupid enough to wear it while snorkeling on my private island, so never mind.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
10 years from now there won't be watches without some sort of connectivity except for specialty pieces designed from the outset to satisfy luddites.
ROFL!!
Japanese and Swiss Watchmakers Scoff At Smartwatches
So does Dick Tracy
People will rapidly figure out that the screen is too way small to do anything effectively and will resort to their phones. These things are a joke waiting to fail. They are a perfect example of "just because you can doesn't mean you should".
I am so looking forward to never needing one.
"But a lot of the time (more often than you think), they're connected to Cat3, which is subsequently wired into a key system, pulling dial tone from POTS lines. I know, because I coordinate their installations every single day"
You must be in the USoA, the rest of the world has been using (proprietary) 2-wire digital endpoints for a couple of decades (except for faxes and cordless handsets).
Don't be deluded by your naive assumption that everybody is a man-child. Real watches, mechanical ones with superb mechanical engineering to add a complication (feature) that a couple lines of code can add to the electronic toys you and your class will be wearing, will always exist; their price range will offend you, their design will bore you, and you will mock their users (of which you know no one personally) for paying so much more for those Pateks and Jaegers that are completely unable to play the latest angrybirds, or get email. But for those who know and care, they'll remain the symbol of social and maturity status that they have been long before quartz was used to keep time.
Hello fellow fountain pen heads! I don't like to write with a ball point - too much resistance on the page.
http://www.engadget.com/2006/11/21/palms-ed-colligan-laughs-off-iphone/
"We've learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone, PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They're not going to just walk in."
How did that work out?
Actually, that is sometimes the case.
I hate printers.
I think your "compensation" is assumed to be that the ads you get are now more targeted and pertinent to what they think are your interests. Hell of a reward.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
"Always" for values of 'always' that are less than eight years. I think I can safely assume you're under 30 years old. Nine years ago the VOIP people tried to convince my employer to go for IP telephony, and my boss asked the execs, "What happens to this business when the phones are down? How much downtime has our analog phone system had over the last year? Three and a half minutes for a firmware upgrade on a weekend evening. How much downtime has our Internet connection had over the last year? Thirty nine hours, thirty of them during normal business hours. You just need to decide if the VOIP savings are worth that much downtime."
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
My wrist watch is mechanical, self winding, accurate to about 5 minutes per day and that's the way I like it...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
It's only fair, since most people use their phones to check the time.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Wireless recharging might get over that hurdle. I always take my watch off and put it in the same place (I'm not awake and functional enough in the morning to find it or probably even to remember it otherwise). If there were a recharger pad or something that I could put in that spot I might consider a smart watch if I had a use for the extra functionality.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Cool. My mechanical watch gains about 5 minutes per day, so it must be the real deal then. BTW, I always know exactly what time it is. It is my subordinates that are always late for my meetings. The bloody slackers...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Is it some kind of poor man's cell phone?
Nobody I know uses watches anymore.
Except really old people.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Every where I look - there is the time..
My computer, phone, tablet, TV - etc.
Actually analog synths go out of tune if it's too cold or hot. this is a horrible problem but now they turned it from a bug a to a feature! hey, if your synth is cold from being in a van driving to the gig or the club is 110 degrees because the promoter is too cheap to air condition the venue you instrument can go horribly out of tune! CLICK HERE TO BUY NOW! can you imagine a guitar or piano maker bragging about how their instrument will randomly go out of tune depending on the temperature? they wouldn't sell one instrument, but with "analog" suddenly having a shitty out of tune instrument is a sign of "soul"!
Not really... you would still *have* to take it off every day, which you do not have to do with a conventional watch. Some people might, which is fine... but not everyone does. For myself, I wear my watch almost 24/7. The only time I take my watch off is when I'm having a shower.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Considering it is Apple, who put more than a little effort into design, I think they should be worried. Perhaps not right away, but eventually when the technology matures. Look at the old style cell phones and trendy flip phones of yore. How long did they last when Apple came out with its shiny new pretty iPhone.
Once they figure out the hurdles of battery and charging issues, and if they focus on the core of the item, and make it look all sleek and pretty, it will be a piece of jewelry, as well as a phone and a watch. If they try to be all things to all people and jam everything and the kitchen sink in there right away before it is ready, and be a big ugly chunk on your wrist, then it isn't going to do well. However if they keep in minimalist, and pretty, then traditional watch makers may be in for a surprise.
Really however Apple just has to make certain it doesn't release anything prior to figuring out some of the shortfalls, as people will sour on the idea. However as to not wanting to charge their watch, how many people wear their watch at night? How many people are now VERY accustom to plugging in their phone device every night anyway? If they can make something that is functional and that looks good, they will do well. However I doubt the watch market is even a threat really only a potential casualty. The real market that will compete will be that of smart phone sales, as you are not really going to ever realistically play games or surf the web, watch youtube, etc... using your watch. Baring some holograph technology, or perhaps in combination with wireless eye ware such as Google Glass. Then again maybe that will be Apple's next step...
I hear about these "targeted ads" a lot, yet regardless of which device and account I'm using, I still get the same "You bought X? Then you might want to buy X!" ads as always. Amazon seems the worst offender in this regard.
I just bought a new pair of Pumas - try to sell me shoe laces, or a FitBit or something other than another new pair of Pumas!
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I never really got the drive behind smart watches. If you want time, you get a $9.99 Walmart special. If you want some bling that also tells time, spend more.
I do not see how they intend to make a watch that could provide much more function that a calculator watch.
You can only use one hand to operate it, unless you have very dextrous wrists.
The display should be readable from about 12"-16" away so you don't have to hold it up in front of your nose to read it.
Even if it could display a whole tweet, you still need to pull out your phone to respond, re-tweet, etc.
You need to have your phone with you anyway, unless it is 100% stand alone AND small enough.
The iWatch idea with a lot of biometrics is a much better fit, with wider applications. Nursing homes could strap one to every guest and track vitals, monitor for other health risks and provide basic location reporting. Marathon runners would love a better / lighter tracker / pedometer that also tracks vitals and pace statistics.
I did own a calculator watch, it was handy but could not do much more than the basics. A full blown scientific calculation would be better, but again, size / weight is an issue.
Never mind what happens the first time someone dies / kills while playing with it behind the wheel. Look at phones and driving, major problem for some and law enforcement hammered it down pretty fast. Wait until its a 'watch' that can play movies/text/e-mail.
If anyone out there has a viable function for a device like this I would love to hear it, so far, no one I have talked to has come up with more that the MSP430 for pressing 'next' on slideshows.
https://www.google.ca/search?q...
They kinda taste like tasty wheat . . . . kinda . . .
Their targeting doesn't seem to work for me at all. If I just bought a new pair of shoes they'll generally try to sell me something like fertilizer or romance novels.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
You might just be joking around but the day I attribute a level of soul to an inanimate object is the day I start looking for mine.
BS, newer systems may (or may not) be VOIP but there are still many systems that use a mixture of analog phones and digital but not IP (not sure if there is a standard for these or if they are vendor specific) phones in use.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Righto. In the same way as nobody reads books and papers anymore or listens to records or the radio.
Isn't rewinding the same as having to charge batteries?
Of course there is a distinction between "POTs as infrastructure" and "POTs as an interface".
The former is likely to slowly go away in many places as maintaining paralell infrastructure for phones and data doesn't really make much sense.
The latter I don't see going away any time soon. Even when fixed phone service is delivered over fiber, coax or even cellular (some unlucky americans have been having their POTS lines replaced with fixed cellular services, YUCK) the end user interface is nearly always a POTs port. It's just that the digitisation happens at the customer premsis rather than at the telephone exchange.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
An acceptable digital or analog watch with no paired device will cost you even less. Some of us just want to know what time it is.
Lots of you are missing part of the picture by chalking expensive watches up to mere jewelry. It's more than that for a large class of us. We like them because they are works of art or, at a minimum, superbly-crafted artisanal items.
I don't wear my Frederique Constant and Nomos watches as a symbol of my wealth and status. It's only upwardly-mobile middle class strivers who engage in conspicuous consumption who do that (and they go for some mass-produced Rolex anyway because that's the quick way to signal wealth among their similarly-minded upwardly-mobile middle class friends). I wear them because they are exciting young brands who design their own movements (a rarity these days). It's like buying the work of young artists. You look for good work that pleases you and buy it.
Buying a Rolex is like buying a Warhol for your living room. It's expensive and immediately recognizable as expensive.
Audiophiles don't use low-grade stuff like Monster cables. They use stuff like Audioquest at the low end (eg http://www.amazon.com/AudioQuest-Cobra-Audio-interconnect-cables/dp/B000F1Z81U) and more expensive stuff. Yes, >$300 for a 2m pair of XLR cables is on the low end. Monster is below the low-end of the Audiophile range.
Of course they don't actually work any better in a normal environment, and no one puts their stereos in a place where corrosion-resistant connectors matter. If that sort of thing is important the internals of the (unsealed) equipment will corrode first anyway. It's purely a status symbol based on appearance.
Not a sentence!
Maybe its just me, but not only do I not really want a smart watch, I'm losing interest in my smart phone as well.
Give me a vintage chronograph with a Lemania 5100, Lemania 1341, Poljot 3133 or any Valjoux movement and I'll be happy. Nothing is cooler than a mechanical watch with an analog face.
Do you actually like synths, or are you just using this as an excuse for an anti-analogue rant? Yes, I agree that much analogue festishism is just as tedious, smug and wrongheaded as the early "digital is always better" hype it was reacting against, but anyone who actually likes synth music could tell you that analogue and digital synths sounded different, at least until "analogue-modelling" ones came along (*).
That's not to say that digital synths don't have their advantages- that's why they were very popular when the first came out in the mid-80s until the early-90s. They can generate sounds that analogue synths couldn't, and have a very "clean" feel.
Analogue synths made a comeback when it turned out that digital ones (or at least the first generation) couldn't entirely replicate the sound and fluidity of analogue ones either, and that polished-bordering-on-clinical late-80s production (all crystalline digital synths, fake piano and digital recording) started to go out of fashion.
(*) The whole point there being that people *did* want the sound and fluidity of analogue synths that the early digital synths couldn't provide- so they intentionally mimicked the way analogue synths worked, with increasing degrees of success. Fact remains that they were trying to mimic analogue because it *did* sound different to (e.g.) FM and "ROMpler" digital synths.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
> Only if you forget to wind it.
For the record, self-winding, automatic, or ecodrive (solar) watches means you don't actually have to remember to do anything other than just wear it.
I like a simple, analog, mechanical watch that i can use to tell time and navigate with. Anything by Sinn, old Certina DS-2 Chronolympic's with Valjoux 23's, Porsche Orfina Lemania 5100's, and Seiko 6105's are my favorites.
Smart functions will simply consume too much power to make the watch useful, and god forbid it gets as hot as my phone does when used.
Actually analog synths go out of tune if it's too cold or hot. this is a horrible problem but now they turned it from a bug a to a feature! hey, if your synth is cold from being in a van driving to the gig or the club is 110 degrees because the promoter is too cheap to air condition the venue you instrument can go horribly out of tune! CLICK HERE TO BUY NOW! can you imagine a guitar or piano maker bragging about how their instrument will randomly go out of tune depending on the temperature? they wouldn't sell one instrument, but with "analog" suddenly having a shitty out of tune instrument is a sign of "soul"!
Nice strawman you're constructing there. While I've heard many musicians extolling the virtues of how analogue synths *sound*, I can't recall any of them *ever* having claimed that the reliability issues that some vintage models undoubtedly suffer from were A Good Thing, as opposed to something that had to be tolerated and lived with if you enjoyed those synths and the sound they produced.
The only person I can imagine claiming that this is a virtue (I've never actually heard this argument made) might be the sort of hipster who buys old equipment for its retro-cachet and overstates its flaws as a virtue as a reaction against more modern technology (*() and doesn't actually produce anything of note with it.
(*) A la Lomography a few years back, people buying overmarketed low-quality point-and-shooters at a premium price and taking photos with intentionally wonky "analogue" colours and contrast. I assume that this *must* be passe now, as the underground cachet of such photographs was probably blown to bits when Instagram took that whole aesthetic mass-market (ironically via entirely digital means on the ultimate manifestation of digital technology, smartphones on the Internet). And even Instagram must surely have peaked by now? - something which I assume is passe since Instagram took that whole "crappy old photo" aesthetic mass-market, ironically via all-digital-means
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
That is simply because a watch or clock really does not need to be more than +-30 seconds for most people.
Pilots and others that do navigation are a special case but I doubt that any of those people use a watch for countdown timers today.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Hello fellow fountain pen heads! I don't like to write with a ball point - too much resistance on the page.
When I was at university (just over ten years ago) I used to do quite a lot of my writing with a cheap cartridge-based fountain pen I got out of Woolworths for something like £1 or £2. I can't remember why I got into the habit, I just found them nicer to write with than a ballpoint (biro). (Nothing to do with snobbery or credibility when the pen itself was clear luminous yellow plastic!)
I don't use them much nowadays, but that's probably because I don't do remotely as much handwriting full stop, mainly just short notes, and it's easier to just to grab a ballpoint. I have a lot of respect for the ballpoint, as it's a good example of the benefits of mass production, and very convenient, but I do agree with the "resistance" bit above... well, maybe it's not so much "resistance" unless you're using one of the fine-lined ballpoints, so much as the cartridge/fountain pen just felt more fluid and pleasant for extended use.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Of course there is a distinction between "POTs as infrastructure" and "POTs as an interface".
The former is likely to slowly go away in many places as maintaining paralell infrastructure for phones and data doesn't really make much sense.
The latter I don't see going away any time soon. Even when fixed phone service is delivered over fiber, coax or even cellular (some unlucky americans have been having their POTS lines replaced with fixed cellular services, YUCK) the end user interface is nearly always a POTs port. It's just that the digitisation happens at the customer premsis rather than at the telephone exchange.
One of my major clients is planning on getting away from POTS infrastructure in the next couple of years, with the intention of having a single carrier for phone and data service over a T1.
They also purchase a ton of top-of-the-line VoIP capable systems to go along with the new T1 service... and they're making me configure them as key systems that don't use any of the VoIP features... sigh...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I still wear and use Casio Data Bank (DB) 150 watch since I don't use or want a smartphone and mobile phone (subscriptions are lame too). I did try a 1G iPod Touch, but it was too big, heavy, and annoying. I want something tiny and light for a smartwatch. Do any exist? Casio doesn't make DBs anymore. :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
They are man jewlery.
Right, because women don't wear watches.
Agreed entirely. I paid more than I wanted, and I'm not proud of it, for my Omega Speedmaster.
It was the cheapest automatic mechanical watch with aesthetics I was happy with that was available in titanium (case and bracelet) when I bought it.
It's mechanical genius. If I could afford it I'd buy an Urwerk because they're even greater mechanical genius.
My phone is cutting edge electronics mastery. I admire that. I love its smooth clean neat aesthetics too. It just can't compete with the precision and technical prowess of a complicated mechanical movement.
A smart watch has the same issue. It just isn't quite as awesome at that level.
3) my kinetic (ie self-winding) windup watch will always be able to tell the time, so long as I keep it wound and don't break it.
Are you sure about this? It may sound stupid, but at least the Seiko Kinetic *does* contain a small battery (why not a super-capacitor?) that needs to be changed every 8 to 10 years or so and is a PITA to do it...
If you want technology the top end of the watch market is where you should be looking.
http://www.urwerk.com/en/colle... contains new alloys created specifically because the existing materials lacked the properties needed to even build the thing. The design is innovative, the implementation pristine.
The price tag sadly around the same level as my house.
But it's technology at a wearable scale and it's as cutting edge as a smartwatch.
Yea, mine is an el-cheapo model, no battery to be found. That's actually part of the reason I chose it, along with the cool see-through casement, and the fact that I'm too rough on watches to regularly wear expensive ones, awesome though they may be. I break 1 or 2 of them every year.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Same here, I like the lack of resistance the pen offers, again its a pretty cheap pen but has been serving me well. Heck, im left handed so one could say its a extra hurdle.
> That's because they understand that good taste never goes out of style.
Monacles.
Indeed. Even Chinese mechanical watches with real tourbillons will set you back a grand or two.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
Warmth in audio almost always refers to the sound characteristics of tube amps: soft clipping when overdriven, and harmonic distortion concentrated mostly in low order even harmonics.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
Sorry, but an Access Virus digital synth smokes the fuck out of any overpriced analog cack. Sick of dumbass rocker dudes who are mad that the music world passed them by trying to blame it on FM synthesis. Most of the analog synth companies went out of business in the 80s because they were run by retards who may have been good engineers but didn't know dick about running a company meanwhile the Japs knew how to make a good product and make money.
"Wearables" will have no impact on the several thousand dollar watch market - either those for fashion or for love of the intricate mechanics. IMO, the analogies are digital cameras and GPS devices. The iPhone 5s at al had no impact on $10,000 camera systems with Zeiss lenses. But it is getting tougher and tougher to sell a $200 digital camera.
You thought of buying a phone with a better screen? i.e. one you can read in sunlight
It's a sign of more money than sense. A sucker.
And these people make excellent targets for whatever fad or thing you want to try and sell them.
As a bonus you're not even ripping them off really. They will never miss it. So scam away.
$350-$500 puts you into the range of cheap trash and knock-off timepieces.
Well, the watch I'm wearing right now is a Seiko automatic that cost well below that price range; yet it has a fully in-house movement (right down to Seiko's own oil formulations) and it's accurate to within half a second a day (technically it loses 8 secs every 30 days on average, after regulating it myself). As you may be aware, Seiko's movements are so good that Tag Heuer famously used one of them as the basis of their own "100% in house" movement several years ago :)
Getting back to topic, though, I agree that real watchmakers aren't in any danger from smartwatches. Mechanical watches are highly fashionable elite items that are valued because they are rare, handmade works of art. It's like suggesting that oil paintings will be threatened by digital photo frames -- the markets for the two products are pretty much non-overlapping.
A culture of complacency never ends well for a company...
Quote from a 2012 Forbes article... "There are few corporate blunders as staggering as Kodak’s missed opportunities in digital photography, a technology that it invented. This strategic failure was the direct cause of Kodak’s decades-long decline as digital photography destroyed its film-based business model."
Similar reference from a 2012 article in The Economist... "Kodak, along with many a great company before it, appears simply to have run its course. After 132 years it is poised, like an old photo, to fade away."
Nope, they can go for 400 pounds or the cheaper version for 270 pounds. http://www.ablogtowatch.com/aa...
The price of vanity has never been cheap.
Smart watches (with the exception of the Pebbles, IMO) are completely ridiculous and tasteless at this stage. I don't know how smart watch companies are getting it so wrong. Also, where are the smart watches tailored for women?
> . Company representatives seemed sure that people in practice would be uninterested in constantly recharging their watches and downloading software updates just to tell time.
Nobody has watches to tell time anymore, that's what phones do. They wear watches to make a statement. And wearing a smart watch makes a statement too.
Citizen EcoDrive analogues are solar powered with a battery for backup. after a while without light (for instance, under your sleeve) the seconds hand movement stops until it sees light again and then quickly updates. in cases of very low battery, it will only move the minute hand every 2-5min or so. ive had my 8700 for about five years now. its a tank, was only $350 new (likely cheaper now), looks nice, and i've never had to care about swapping the battery. itll probably make it a few weeks after my death, at least.
The point is that tech advances and as you yourself admit, quartz is better.
The function of a time piece is to keep the time as accurate as possible and you admit that cheaper quartz watches do a better job then this particular mechanical watch. There are mechanical time pieces that do much better. So this time piece in question has no other function then being an expensive bit of jewelry.
There are some very good mechanical watches, Tag Heuer is not amongst them, it is a hipster thingy, more about flash (look at how much I cost) then actual value for money.
Wear what you like but please don't pretend that 1 minute out of date in a month is anything then mediocre.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The top watches tend to be good (unless they are laden with diamonds) but the 1k-5k range is riddled with rather crap watches, often with mass produced innards from far cheaper models. This range you don't pay for the craftman ship, you pay for the brand name.
Even in the high end you got to check what you are buying, name, jewels or mechanics.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Watches are jewelry.
I'm never going to impress someone (especially a girl) with my shiny Futurama wrist-computer like I do with my Hublot's gears and springs.
Give me a break.
Men's watches are jewelry. We get a watch, a ring, a tie clip, a money clip and a car. Those are a mans adornments. They don't have to be worth a fortune, but they do have to say "I've got my shit together enough that I could comfortably afford these small, once in a lifetime expense niceties without having to compromise.
If you don't get it, you don't get it.
I'm surprised one that cheap has become available this quickly. Hopefully we'll get a decent price on an auto-winding one as well in the coming months.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
I just bought a Seiko 5 that is accurate to +1 sec a day, and I love it. $50 on Amazon. It's a special feeling to wear a mechanical watch.
Me fail English? That's unpossible!
Don't argue with rich idiots. Nod, agree, compliment them on their excellent taste, and sell them some ridiculously overpriced shiny crap. You'll make better use of their money than they do.
Yup. And the cheap ballpoints have a habbit of making it hard to change the direction of the stroke, making my handwriting look like runes (mostly straight angles).
Well I work for a global company and we still have POTS, but then again I never use it.
Then again it isn't POST really anyway. In the "developed world" even if you have a POTS line it will probably me digitized and handled over ATM or similar. The backbone infrastructure isn't analog since at latest the 90s. I think this is only a question until the last mile also gets ATM or similar technologies.
Then again, you all beat the average at the fact that you probably do allot of handwriting. Like precision watches that are actually used by skilled professionals and there they are needed. Although I own an awesome fountain pen, the actual use of the pen declined significantly since I graduated. If you write allot, it is true that fountain pens are better, but in recent years you can split the spectrum in luxury items and writing tools. While the wiring tools tend to become cheaper as demand declines the luxury items rise as they become more and more a status symbol.
Except that the iPhone pales in comparison to watches that the TFA refers to.
I was thinking more along the lines of simple protection from rain or spilled wine. Phones/etc you can put relatively securely into your pocket. Watches tend to stay at the exposed end of your upper-most limb with nothing more than a few inches of fabric to protect them.
Do you use a shared computer? Perhaps your son/daughter is into something dangerous and your wife is feeling too neglected to deal with it herself.
The wristwatch is a man's jewelry. Think about it. It doesn't have to be expensive ($100-200). It's the same reason women wear necklaces. It's the same reason some people go to art markets or galleries and buy original art ($500-$1,000) vs. a poster print at walmart ($15). You don't have to be a richarse just to be able to afford nice things from Sotherby's or the like.
Petty and superficial? Yes. But it's also a talking piece if you host events or have important people over.
Smartphones are subsidized. They would have stayed very nitch if not for that fact. People are willing to pay ~400$ for a tablet, because it has comparable functionality to a laptop or something like that. Smart watches? I'm not sure I see the usefulness of them.
Oh Lah-de Dah, the peacocks are on display...
What a crock all this fashion watch stuff is.
They lack precision and are just latter day monuments to antiquity...
My watch is a Seiko, powered with a silver oxide battery. I have it 20+ years. Once every seven years I replace the battery. And perhaps I was lucky in the purchase, but the accuracy is around one second per month. It is a gear train watch, with day and date.
If I were to replace it, I would buy the newer model which includes photocells and a lithium ion battery. Ordinary room lighting is sufficient to charge the battery. Even if the watch is put in a dark closed drawer, and removed a few months later, it continued to work. How do I know? My brother-in-law went on a 180 day winter visit to Israel. He forgot the watch and was pleased when he returned to see the time correct within 10 seconds. Yes, the watch was 3 days off, as the calendar does not know about February or Months with 30 days.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
I think the obsolete technology argument here is out of place. Swiss and (some) Japanese watchmakers cater to a "prestigous" niche market. When quartsz watches came out in the late 70's, everyone thought the Swiss watch industry would be completely obliterated by the so-called Quartz Holocaust. I think anyone who's ever been to a department store can see that Swiss watch companies are alive and well. Movement makers like ETA have been growing steadily for years, in fact. You can compare this to a lit of luxury items sold out there. For example, do you think that Budweiser, with their cheaper production techniques can drive the medieval-like trappist beer out of the luxury market? Not likely.
I don't really buy the "it's just jewelry" argument. You brag about the precision, it's self winding, solar powered, tells time in different time zones - crap like that. As men, we want it to serve a purpose, more than women do. We want a cool peice of gear, as well as a peice of jewelry (or a status symbol, if you're insecure).
It may actually be true that their customers have no interest in smartwatches, or at least anything that can be manufactured with current technology. But I think there is also a significant population that stopped wearing watches but would be interested in a smartwatch; a lot of the Pebble adopters are in that group. When smartwatch technology is a bit more refined it may be possible to build something that will appeal to non-geeks; at that point, the traditional watchmakers had better be in the game or else they risk losing a significant part of their customer base. (The part that actively wants non-electronic retro tech is safe.)
Smartphones are subsidized in the US. Not so in many other countries, and people shell out $600 - $900 for iPhones and other high smart phones.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
I don't really buy the "it's just jewelry" argument. You brag about the precision, it's self winding, solar powered, tells time in different time zones - crap like that. As men, we want it to serve a purpose, more than women do. We want a cool peice of gear, as well as a peice of jewelry (or a status symbol, if you're insecure).
No, really, we don't. It's 100% about timeless style, not about being useful beyond telling you what time it is. Tools and gear are great, but there's not a single smart watch concept that has ever been released that I'd wear on a night out. They look ridiculous. Maybe you could sell them to younger people who like wearing loud obnoxious crap to attract attention, if you got the price down to their range, but the guy wearing a high precision German timepiece is not going to switch for the sake of utility.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Hailing from a country where subsidized phones are unheard of and most people are on pay as you go sims, the number of people with samsung galaxy s3s and samsung galaxy s4s is surprisingly high...the second most common phones are from a chinese smartphone manufacturer with mediatek processors, upto 1gb of ram (mostly 512mb), upto 1080x1920 screen resolution (mostly 480x854), upto android 4.3 os (mostly android 4.2.2), wifi and edge/2g connectivity with a decent sprinkling of iphones, sony, nokia and htc smartphones collectively in third place...tablets are so far considered novelty products and while theres a lot of interest in them, they haven't carved out a market from themselves...dumb phones/feature phones are almost exclusively owned by older folk who don't want to use the internet anyway...so yeh, you are completely wrong :-)...smartphones would have been successful even without contracts, they might not have improved as much as they have in an environment without contracts but they would have been successful...(i use my s4 with cyanogenmod 11 for all my social-media related activities (and when i say all, i mean all, i changed the hosts file on both my laptops to point to a local page so that facebook/g+ tell me to get some work done instead of wasting my time ;-) ), some blogging and some gaming...)
Jewellery should also be a work or art, or at a minimum superbly-crafted artisanal items, there's nothing "mere" about it.
Sorry, but an Access Virus digital synth smokes the fuck out of any overpriced analog cack.
The whole point of an analogue-modelling digital synth like that is that it's designed to replicate the sound of an analogue synth by mimicking its operation! If people want to buy digital synths that imitate classic analogue models (without their unreliability!), I'd say that proves that most buyers think there's a clear difference in sound between analogue and "classic" digital (FM/wavetable) synths that the latter can't entirely bridge. And vice versa, but that wasn't the point.
The original complaint was that analogue synths were allegedly preferred purely because they were "analogue" and their "warmth" was spurious romanticism. Well, "warmth" and preference for sounds is in the eye of the beholder, but it's pretty obvious that the two types sound different!
Most of the analog synth companies went out of business in the 80s because they were run by retards who may have been good engineers but didn't know dick about running a company
Whether that's true or not, it says bugger all about the quality of the synths they made and/or whether analogue was better than digital, which is what was being discussed.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
I second you. I'm still using my father's Swiss ETERNA-MATIC CENTENAIRE 61 which is about 60 years old now. No need for batteries while it is automatic self winding.
Most guys just wear a $20 Timex or Casio that keep accurate time, are extremely durable and have battery lives measured in decades. I would hardly call those "bling".
I'm left-handed and basically can't use any ink-based pen when writing, you insensitive clod!
Nope, and no kids, and my wife has her own laptop she uses.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
The whole reason for scoffing at Smart Watches is that this is not an original idea, but it is idea that has been tried many times over the last 50(!) years and has always been Epic Fail.
Just a few examples: the HP-01, Texas Instruments, etc.
Basically the repeatedly demonstrated recipe for Epic Fail includes: Tech company comes out of a watch with the latest technology presuming they are God's Gift to Humanity by originating the latest "big thing" into an old and mature technology. Like clockwork, said Tech company is brought back to Earth and reality when:
This has specifically happened with watches enough times (dozens) that the pattern and end-game is already well known. Simply announcing a tech-hyped watch foretells the inevitable result. Basically "tech companies" and "watches" in the same breath are a recipe for Fail.
Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Corded phones are much more reliable than cellphones, unless you never have any interference on your cell phone. Modern corded phones do not "drop out" or loose connection, and a bad connection does not look good for you or your company.
After all, cellphones are basically a "walkie-talkie" like the kids used to play with. Twin channels for full duplex and a tower to relay, but still...
And the digital packet modulation does not prevent noise, it just stops you hearing it.
I use cellphones for portability, but a corded phone when at my desk. And I try not to call customers from the cellphone.
K. S. Kyosuke: You've been called out (for tossing names) & you ran "forrest" from a fair challenge http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
I think this is only a question until the last mile also gets ATM or similar technologies.
Afaict ATM is falling out of favour with Ethernet, IP and related protocols/technologies (MPLS, L2TP, PPPoE, SIP etc) being the technology of choice for new networks.
Not sure exactly what you mean by "similar technologies", if you mean voice being delivered digitally to the home then that is already happening in some places. As I hinted in my previous post I suspect we will see more of it though I also suspect that many areas will end up stuck on POTS+DSL for years to come. I also suspect that the interface the end user plugs their phone into will continue to be analog POTs.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register