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I love my dumb watches

gary.onl

81–90 of 98 posts

Re: I love my dumb watches

#81

Here is my recommendation for a watch that is somewhere between a dumb watch and a smart watch. https://www.casio.com/us/watches/gshock/product.GW-9400-1/ Casio Rangeman GW-9400 Series It is solar powered and has a lot of passive sensors including a thermometer, barometer, altimeter, and compass. It sets the time from a radio signal. It is everything-proof. This is my "zombie apocalypse" watch.

That's the ugliest, gaudiest watch I've ever seen.

Re: I love my dumb watches

#82
post #35

Great, but I like my Apple Watch for its one killer features: not tell time, but tap to pay. I gave up wearing my Tissot watch for this. This genuinely saves me time and adds fluidity to my day. Tap for subway. Tap to for vending machine. Tap for restaurant bill. Tap for shop purchase. I genuinely don't look at my phone not much, so it's always deep in my winter coat pocket. Fishing it out takes 2-3 seconds each time…

I sometimes feel I got tricked by Apple though, as the main reason I got a watch was because the phones got too big to easily pull in and out of my pocket. Go back to a iPhone 4 sized phone and I'd probably go back to using it instead.

Re: I love my dumb watches

#83
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 delet…

I see where you're coming from and I'm glad you've had a successful career, but $52,000 for a watch is absolutely cartoonish money lol. It is definitely a cool piece though, no question.

Re: I love my dumb watches

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"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-...

It's just a subjective perception of what makes something "cartoonishly expensive".

These types of watches are interesting, clearly making things hard for the sake of being hard. 60 years ago the quest for accuracy got pretty extreme but there was theoretically a practical goal. After quartz movement, that pretence disappeared. I'm in the mindset that up to several hundred bucks, you're paying for something in a watch - accuracy, options, durability, style, whatever it may be. At some point afterwards, and certainly at 50k, you're paying price for sake of paying the price. I don't see the problem that watch is trying to solve, I see it as what can we do for 50k. And that's cool and all, some of them are interesting, but for me, definitely in the cartoonishly expensive category :-)

Re: I love my dumb watches

#85
post #81

Here is my recommendation for a watch that is somewhere between a dumb watch and a smart watch. https://www.casio.com/us/watches/gshock/product.GW-9400-1/ Casio Rangeman GW-9400 Series It is solar powered and has a lot of passive sensors including a thermometer, barometer, altimeter, and compass. It sets the time from a radio signal. It is everything-proof. This is my "zombie apocalypse" watch.

That's the ugliest, gaudiest watch I've ever seen.

It's indestructible! It could save your life!

Re: I love my dumb watches

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"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-...

They are both cartoonishly expensive. This kind of watch culture to me is even more unpalatable than country club culture. At least those people are getting quite a lot of service for what they’re paying.

Re: I love my dumb watches

#87

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 also find the reasoning in "Why track your sleep at all? If you’ve had a crap night, you’ll wake up tired." weird. That's the equivalent of saying "Why track your blood pressure at all? If you've had a problem with high blood pressure, you'll wake up with a stroke." Not that the sleep tracking on smartwatches seems to be worth much but I just don't agree with the logic. Equating tracking sleep to tracking a diagn…

> He learned in the end that he learned nothing new worth knowing.

A valuable data point for me though!

Re: I love my dumb watches

#88
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

They are both cartoonishly expensive. This kind of watch culture to me is even more unpalatable than country club culture. At least those people are getting quite a lot of service for what they’re paying.

I think if there's ever a day I prefer country club culture to the result of an industrial designer deciding to spend a decade coming up with all the engineering hacks to make something that cool work, I'm just going to walk out into the blizzard.

Re: I love my dumb watches

#89
post #35

Great, but I like my Apple Watch for its one killer features: not tell time, but tap to pay. I gave up wearing my Tissot watch for this. This genuinely saves me time and adds fluidity to my day. Tap for subway. Tap to for vending machine. Tap for restaurant bill. Tap for shop purchase. I genuinely don't look at my phone not much, so it's always deep in my winter coat pocket. Fishing it out takes 2-3 seconds each time…

Interesting, I’m the opposite. My phone is always easily accessible, whereas the watch is under my long sleeve shirt which is under a couple layers of coats, so it’s more of a hassle to make it available to tap.

Re: I love my dumb watches

#90
I have a Tag Heuer I bought back in 2005 that I wore almost daily until I got my first Apple Watch (second gen). Since then it’s been collecting dust except the ultra rare occasion I have to dress up.

I recently bought a cheap G Shock on a whim thinking I might wear it. It’s also collecting dust. I probably have even less reason to wear it than the Tag.

My wife wants to buy me a Rolex as a belated wedding gift but I keep on insisting no because I feel it’s also going to join the Tag in the dustbin.

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