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

richardmille.com

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

#81

Post by polio »

staplung wrote: post #55

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; t…

They're beautiful and impressive, but I find the amount of money that flows into "high horology" to be an sum with an egregious opportunity cost to society, made even worse by the fact that all that complexity goes towards a movement that is worse at keeping time than a rudimentary quartz. If people want Tamagotchis, they can get a Tamagotchi. I wish people would flex their donations to effective charities instead and find simpler luxuries.

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

#82

Post by adhesive_wombat »

sedatk wrote: post #69
samatman wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why compare with flying saucers, why not bikes? It's the bike industry existing which makes enormous gossamer human-powered craft possible, after all. Most art has little reason to exist, kind of by definition, and is seriously expensive at the high end. This is engineering art, where most expensive wristwatches are just art, specifically jewelry. I wouldn't expect the latest Hublot limited to end up on the front pag…

Because that's just a lightweight version of an old technology. No new value is being added here. Had this watch provided, say, some smartwatch features mechanically (such as an analog heart monitor, or an analog altimeter etc) I might have found it interesting despite the technology still being old. This feels like just a flex on contemporary manufacturing capabilities. They just spent more money than everyone else.

Indeed, it's a bit like finding it hard to get all that hyped up about the latest Intel i9 whatever-K. Sure it's objectively a monstrous amount of processing on a sliver of matter (just like the one before it), but it's "just" throwing more transistors and fab at the same thing as the [whatever-1]-K.

And then this is basically just an "if you know, you know" flex for a rich person. At least the incremental CPU "tick" or "tock" was somewhat useful, even if the -K variant is not especially useful in the general case.

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

#83

Post by adhesive_wombat »

throwamon wrote: post #64
EB-Barrington wrote: post #11

Price: $1,888,000 US dollars.

Apparently that's also how much you have to pay to get a device that won't choke on their website.

It's impressive that they've actually managed to make the websites for these products as overwrought and unnecessary as the products themselves.

There must be a very happy web design team somewhere in there world that's been told "you don't need to care about any kind of optimisation, our clients will always have the tippest-top computers and phones and so that you get it right we're going to buy one for each of you too, just in case you accidentally do something that makes it work on a pleb-grade device".

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

#85

Post by huhtenberg »

staplung wrote: post #55

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; t…

> Any Swatch or Casio keeps better time

... and that's my cue to pimp one of the most practical watch of all time - Casio Oceanus, the 100 series.

  * Analog watch face.
  * Quartz, radio auto-sync, solar-powered.
  * Sapphire glass, titanium body and bracelet. Waterproof.
  * Clean design. Under $500.
https://www.google.com/search?q=OCW-S100-1AJF&tbm=isch

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

#87

Post by LeoPanthera »

huhtenberg wrote: post #85
staplung wrote: post #55

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; t…

> Any Swatch or Casio keeps better time ... and that's my cue to pimp one of the most practical watch of all time - Casio Oceanus, the 100 series. * Analog watch face. * Quartz, radio auto-sync, solar-powered. * Sapphire glass, titanium body and bracelet. Waterproof. * Clean design. Under $500. https://www.google.com/search?q=OCW-S100-1AJF&tbm=isch

In my opinion, its successor, the S200, has a cleaner design.

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

#88

Post by lgvld »

sedatk wrote: post #69
samatman wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why compare with flying saucers, why not bikes? It's the bike industry existing which makes enormous gossamer human-powered craft possible, after all. Most art has little reason to exist, kind of by definition, and is seriously expensive at the high end. This is engineering art, where most expensive wristwatches are just art, specifically jewelry. I wouldn't expect the latest Hublot limited to end up on the front pag…

Because that's just a lightweight version of an old technology. No new value is being added here. Had this watch provided, say, some smartwatch features mechanically (such as an analog heart monitor, or an analog altimeter etc) I might have found it interesting despite the technology still being old. This feels like just a flex on contemporary manufacturing capabilities. They just spent more money than everyone else.

Maybe we shouldn’t be pushig that hard towards reducing the size of processors/transistors?

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

#89

Post by pwillia7 »

caconym_ wrote: post #57
sriram_malhar wrote: post #17

Awful looking, terrible typography, form chases away function .... Hugely impressive piece of machinery though.

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.

Is that not just their logo's font?

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

#90

Post by technothrasher »

jansan wrote: post #56

Slightly offtopic: If anyone missed Bartosz Ciechanowski's website explaining how mechanical watsches work, you sold at least look at it once. It is a piece of art. https://ciechanow.ski/mechanical-watch/

You can learn a lot about how a watch works by getting a few old inexpensive pocket watch movements off eBay and playing with them. They’re bigger movements than a wrist watch, and thus easier to work with, but most of the concepts are the same.

I did just this a couple years ago and got hooked on horology, although I actually moved the other direction and now have a big collection of 18th and 19th century clocks.

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