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I love my dumb watches

gary.onl

71–80 of 98 posts

Re: I love my dumb watches

#71
I like my Apple Watch loads. Yes, it tells me the time and the date. And the weather. It has a timer. (It can't make a call by itself.) It will tell me if I have AFIB. I'm getting older -- it will detect a fall, or a car wreck. And I only have to charge it up once every day and a half or so...or for about 15 minutes to get me through a night of sleep monitoring.

Watches of all sorts are cool. I often have watch envy.

Re: I love my dumb watches

#72

I love that everybody can enjoy watches differently :-). There are people thay get a rolex. And good on them and they certainly send a message O:-) There are people who like obscure Soviet watches, or hyper expensive ridiculously over complicated modern marvels, or just a few solid units from citizen and Seiko, etc etc. I have a nice citizen blue angels navihawk with a tremendously useful ;) circular slide rule - but…

Everyone enjoys watches differently, but for the "spirit watch" of modern HN, I'd nominate the Ressence Type 3: https://ressencewatches.com/products/type-3-black https://youtu.be/HtQ2pRMZUGE?t=212 An half-air/half-oil filled watch that looks like a smartwatch, but is fully mechanical. No bling, somewhat understated, but still quite visually interesting with a modernist design. And all kinds of interesting technical q…

Is that USD? Fifty two thousand dollars for a watch? You can buy two Chevy Bolts for that.

Re: I love my dumb watches

#73

I love that everybody can enjoy watches differently :-). There are people thay get a rolex. And good on them and they certainly send a message O:-) There are people who like obscure Soviet watches, or hyper expensive ridiculously over complicated modern marvels, or just a few solid units from citizen and Seiko, etc etc. I have a nice citizen blue angels navihawk with a tremendously useful ;) circular slide rule - but…

Everyone enjoys watches differently, but for the "spirit watch" of modern HN, I'd nominate the Ressence Type 3: https://ressencewatches.com/products/type-3-black https://youtu.be/HtQ2pRMZUGE?t=212 An half-air/half-oil filled watch that looks like a smartwatch, but is fully mechanical. No bling, somewhat understated, but still quite visually interesting with a modernist design. And all kinds of interesting technical q…

>"It's very expensive, but not cartoonishly expensive."

When I click the link it said about fifty thousand dollars.

Re: I love my dumb watches

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone enjoys watches differently, but for the "spirit watch" of modern HN, I'd nominate the Ressence Type 3: https://ressencewatches.com/products/type-3-black https://youtu.be/HtQ2pRMZUGE?t=212 An half-air/half-oil filled watch that looks like a smartwatch, but is fully mechanical. No bling, somewhat understated, but still quite visually interesting with a modernist design. And all kinds of interesting technical q…

>"It's very expensive, but not cartoonishly expensive." When I click the link it said about fifty thousand dollars.

That's not $50,000 of small-scale engineering and manufacturing to you?

Especially in an industry that runs off fuzzy stuff like "pedigree" to sell 50 year old designs for as much used: https://subdial.com/listing/audemars-piguet-royal-oak-extra-...

Re: I love my dumb watches

#75
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone enjoys watches differently, but for the "spirit watch" of modern HN, I'd nominate the Ressence Type 3: https://ressencewatches.com/products/type-3-black https://youtu.be/HtQ2pRMZUGE?t=212 An half-air/half-oil filled watch that looks like a smartwatch, but is fully mechanical. No bling, somewhat understated, but still quite visually interesting with a modernist design. And all kinds of interesting technical q…

Is that USD? Fifty two thousand dollars for a watch? You can buy two Chevy Bolts for that.

One of the top stories on HN yesterday was about a company that paid 4-5 average people's wages per person for a team that sat on their butts 8 hours a day and wrote meeting scheduling software for a decade. This was done so they could then sell, not even the software, but... the right to their institutional knowledge for an additional few thousand years worth of average wages.

And of course they're permanently deleting the fruits of that decade's worth of work with 1 week's notice.

And this is the 2nd time the team's leaders have run this play, with the same buyer paying each time: seemingly they can just leave again and keep doing this ad nauseum. (Clockwise)

If you put the value we assign to software engineering in terms of other things it really doesn't make sense either. At least what these people did is something mechanically interesting, unique, and enduring vs the average CRUD app.

Re: I love my dumb watches

#76

"a few seconds a day" why is that accuracy even needed? Sure, if you work with computers (that can tell time too), or are a mariner without GPS. But otherwise, just live with it.

few seconds a day is literally a minute per month or 12 minutes per year, that's a lot, even cheap Casio clone from skmei I bought for daughter has much higher accuracy like 15 seconds per 2-3 months which seems fine considering I set time twice a year anyway

if you tolerate minutes inaccuracy from watch, then there is no point in wearing them at all

Re: I love my dumb watches

#77
I love my (now third) Amazfit Bip watch with MIP display I wear since 2018 when my new phone lost LED notification indicator.

I charge it ONCE A MONTH, it has perfectly readable display in sunlight (more sun the better, opposite of AMOLED), at same time it tracks my sleep (bonus feature, not really necessary) and I can see incoming notifications on my wrist without taking it the phone, and of course it has much more accurate time than any dumb watch.

Author is some iphone addict who chose poorly apple watch and makes his opinion based on them.

Nobody force you to use smart features if you don't want, but they are there if you need and used Bip cost me like 20$, is thinner than any smart watch in market and saves me lot of time from looking at phone.

Re: I love my dumb watches

#78

Citizen makes great dumb watches. They're built well, reasonably priced, and completely solar powered. Promaster is maybe the best dumb watch you can get for that price point, you just need to put a sapphire glass in it. I wish they'd do a "Promaster Pro" model though, with a higher frequency quartz crystal and magnetic resistance. That would be asymptotic with perfection.

I work at a watch repair shop and wish I could fund public service announcements that the eco drives will not last forever if kept in the dark, ie stored in a jewelry box or a drawer longer than a few months. They use capacitors that become ineffective if allowed to die all the way. You need to keep them exposed to light, and even then ~15 years is the optimistic end of the capacitor’s lifetime. IMO you’re better off…

I appreciate the heads up. I tend to keep mine by a sunny window when I'm not wearing it...letting a watch's movement come to a halt just feels wrong somehow.

Re: I love my dumb watches

#79
post #11

Not sure he researched his options well enough. The Garmin watches that use a MIP display only require a charge about once a month, probably even less if you turn off the Bluetooth, which gives him the other thing he wants, no distracting messages relayed from the phone. Battery life is potentially even longer for the models with solar charging. I also find the reasoning in " Why track your sleep at all? If you’ve ha…

I love digital watches and have a few Casios, including a protrek like the G-Shock he mentions at the end, that syncs to a radio signal and has solar charging. I switched to a Garmin with oled screen for running, sleep, and Garmin pay. I liked the functionality but hated having to charge it every few days. Especially coming from Casios that you never need to take off your wrist. And I hated having to choose between b…

You might really like the solar or non solar ones with MIP and full topo maps - still have insane battery life with the right settings.

Then again I still love my dumb watches for lightweight or style

Re: I love my dumb watches

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a watch. It's an item that literally has one single job: tell the time accurately. It goes without saying that it should do a pretty good job at this and be accurate.

Watches are jewelry. Telling time isn't even their main purpose, nevermind telling it accurately. Of course, maintaining accuracy is part of what makes them cool to the people who like them, but even if they lost several minutes a day, I suspect my watch wearing brethren would continue to wear them.

That’s only the case for expensive watches. I use my cheap watch to tell the time.
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