Ultra-flat timepiece, the RM UP-01 Ferrari, is 1.75 millimetres thick watch

I'm disappointed to see this merger of art and engineering received so poorly here.

This pushes the envelope of the possible, something I consider beautiful. It's roughly as impractical, expensive, and awkward looking, as a human-propelled airplane.

I don't think any of the many commenters here who panned this watch would have anything bad to say about a human-propelled airplane. It's a pity that they can't appreciate this object in that spirit.

If we'd started to replace airplanes with affordable $200 flying saucers, and somebody came up with a $1.8M human-propelled airplane as "innovation", I bet it wouldn't have been liked as much.

William Gibson wrote a piece for Wired back in the day about his obsession with mechanical watches.[1] He puts it thus:

``` Mechanical watches are so brilliantly unnecessary.

Any Swatch or Casio keeps better time, and high-end contemporary Swiss watches are priced like small cars. But mechanical watches partake of what my friend John Clute calls the Tamagotchi Gesture. They're pointless in a peculiarly needful way; they're comforting precisely because they require tending.

And vintage mechanical watches are among the very finest fossils of the pre-digital age. Each one is a miniature world unto itself, a tiny functioning mechanism, a congeries of minute and mysterious moving parts. Moving parts! And consequently these watches are, in a sense, alive. They have heartbeats. They seem to respond, Tamagotchi-like, to "love," in the form, usually, of the expensive ministrations of specialist technicians. Like ancient steam-tractors or Vincent motorcycles, they can be painstakingly restored from virtually any stage of ruin. ```

(1): Seems to be pay-walled now but you can find the whole thing in Distrust that Particular Flavor

The typography really threw me off. Obviously this is subjective, but it gives me a really cheap vibe, like something you'd find in one of those travel gadget stores at the airport. It looks like they just didn't give a shit.

I don't mind the form so much. Obviously it's not a very practical piece, but very expensive limited-run watches rarely are.

the light that burns twice as bright burns half as long, or so its said. I'm thrilled to see the envelope pushed but I find seventeen jewel Chinese movements and old soviet designs so much more enriching. they tell a story that isn't just a bourgeois expression of the craft. luch, Vostok, sturmanskie, sugess and shanghai diamond all paint a rich tapestry that bridges history and modern craft, and are refreshingly approachable.