I think a lot of techie types might not realize what an engineering marvel a mechanical watch movement is. I'm sure you all realize there are a lot of teeny tiny gears.
But does the HN crowd realize there are 24 precious gems (lab-grown rubies and sapphires!!!!) inside the NH38 movement, serving as bearings and such?
While the Apple Watch is in some ways orders of magnitude more advanced than a mechanical watch movement, in some ways the mechanical watch movement is more impressive. It could be argued that while the Apple Watch is the sum of roughly 100 years of electrical engineering, the mechanical watch is the sum of several thousands of years of mechanical engineering. It took mankind an incredible number of years to really master timekeeping to that level.
(Not that the two are mutually exclusive. I find that the more I understand electronic timekeeping, the more I appreciate mechanical timekeeping, and vice-versa)
> I think a lot of techie types might not realize what an engineering marvel a mechanical watch movement is. I'm sure you all realize there are a lot of teeny tiny gears.
For those who want to learn more about it, this is an awesome interactive explanation of the functioning of mechanical watches:
https://ciechanow.ski/mechanical-watch/
Excellent points! I'd like to add that while your Apple watch might last you 5-10 years, a mechanical watch well looked-after can last several lifetimes. I'm currently daily-driving an automatic watch from the mid-60s that still somehow looks pristine and keeps excellent time (for a mechanical, that is). I expect this watch to outlive me.
Did that watch survive from the 60s without service? If you need to have a vintage watch like that serviced it would cost about the same as buying a new apple watch.
Some of these old watches can also become a bit of a ship of theseus. It's a 60's watch with a new crystal,mainspring and rotor.
I kinda screwed it up taking it apart. Didnt have any oil to add back and rusted one of the gears a bit. Goal is still longer than 5 years and probably an easy 10-20
Sundials emphasize our reliance on the sun as a source of light and energy. They remind us of the fundamental role the sun plays in sustaining life on Earth and providing us with light and warmth. This dependency gives sundials a sense of harmony with the natural world and instills a sense of wonder and appreciation for the celestial bodies.
The gods confound the man who first found out
how to distinguish hours! Confound him, too,
who in this place set up a sundial,
to cut and hack my days so wretchedly
into small portions!
I wear an automatic Tag Heuer. I have been asked by many people why I still wear a mechanical watch. My answer is, battery powered watches (including smart watches and quartz movements) might have a life, but a mechanical watch ticking incessantly has a soul.
Yeah. A mechanical watch is almost like a companion.
It only "lives" when you wear or wind it. It's only a few seconds of active "work" on your part per day but I find myself feeling kind of paternal toward them, or like I'm caring for a little mechanical pet buddy or something.
Quartz watches and computers in general are also miracles to me, as well!
But mechanical watches are their own special sort of miracle that I really appreciate.
It is a tiny loss to my life that my mechanical watch lies in a cupboard while a Garmin brandishes my skin, but entertains my need for self-data. A measurement only ankle bracelet would be a perfect solution. Who cares about exact time when you have thousands of gears giving you a few seconds drift per day.
I really like my Casio LCW-M100TSE [1]. It's a (mostly) analog watch with a solar cell, radio receiver and led backlight. Keeps perfect time (radio sync), never needs charging, battery changing or winding, has a titanium case and titanium band so is incredible light but nearly indestructable, and looks good without being overly pretentious or a statement of wealth. And most importantly, doesn't interrupt me with notifications when I'm trying to concentrate. As watches go, I think it's as close to perfect as any watch I've had. Never would have thought that as I got older and wealthier, I'd end up back with Casio 40 years after having Casio watches as a teenager, but there you are.
They are different kinds of marvels to me, and I deeply appreciate them! I'm a big G-Shock fan in particular.
I am (among many other things!) a computing enthusiast, a quartz watch enthusiast, and a mechanical watch enthusiast. I find that appreciating each one of those things enhances my appreciation for the others.
Many maybe don’t, but also many of the techie types I know tinker with mechanical watches, bicycles, combustion engines, etc. And I think more than the average!
I seem to recall that hijacking the back button goes back to the 1990's. I suspect some of the ways in which it was done (like with naive redirects) probably don't work today, but the annoying effect has been there for eons.
That's why I just middle click to open everything on a new tab nowadays. Back button still works 90% of the times, but when it's hijacked it's incredibly annoying, and I have plenty of monitor width for the tabs.
Another dark pattern is hijacking back to move you to the 'front page' of the site. Like twitter, get linked to a tweet and then the back button takes you to your feed, which absolutely nobody requested.
I'm surprised to see this from Instructables (Autodesk). If you right-click the back button you'll see that it did four redirects and you can click the 5th to get back.
I love watches but don't think I'll ever wear an Apple Watch. It just doesn't feel like a Watch. It's very much a wrist computer. I would love if they made an Apple Watchband, as in a computer-powered wristband of some kind that does all the great things Apple Watch does (pedometer, heart monitoring, gps, notifs) but replaces the watch band of my Actual Watch. Now that'd be something I would wear.
I'd hazard to guess watch enthusiasts would be less likely to like smart watches because they don't really provide the same value/draw. I have an Apple Watch because it's basically just an excuse to touch my phone less. I don't need to take it out when I get a notification, or when I'm listening to music and want to skip a track. I don't wear it as a fashion statement or with hopes I can pass it down for generations. It's just a phone accessory.
I'm a "watch person" and I wear watches 95% for fashion reasons. It's occasionally convenient for actually telling the time when I wear one, but it's not my default action because I only wear one 1/3 of the time when I leave the house and never at home.
I have no interest in wearing a smart watch because I'd never have it without also having my phone, and my phone has maybe a few notifications per day at most when not actively using it - I massively filter my email via aliases, my work notifications go only to my work laptop, and texting with friends usually happens on my laptop. I don't care about the health features.
I also love mechanical watches and own a handful. But I also love the convenience to pay with my apple watch. The way I solved it: I wear my apple watch on the right arm and a "real" watch on the left.
I wear a nice mechanical watch every day, but I do own an Apple Watch to use if I have to be reachable while doing something where getting at a phone would be inconvenient. It's pretty great for that purpose.
> Alert readers will notice that Moser managed, in one paragraph, to dismiss the efforts of all three major luxury watch groups – Richemont, Swatch, and LVMH – as somewhat lacking in intestinal fortitude
The paragraph they are referring to is the press release further up the page.
They are basically saying none of the major manufacturers had done anything serious in the realm of smart watches.
The reason it’s a “dangerous game” is because the watch industry was disrupted once before by the quartz crisis (cheap quartz watches flooding the market) and many manufacturers went out of business or had to merge with others to form larger groups to survive. So the danger is that smart watches will do the same.
Watches had a rough time for a while after quartz became a thing in the 80’s.
Now they are seen a jewellery more because every has a smart phone for time telling. But watch collecting as a hobby is making a comeback in the 2010’s to now with the internet and hype generating content like YouTube, instagram, Hodinkee, and consumers are keeping a multi billion dollar market afloat with products from million dollar Patek phillipe to 5 dollar casios.
Through posting on Reddit I learnt that Moser wasn't the only one either. Apparently Ciga Designs did some similar watches and even Casio has one, the MTP-M305
The Tag Heuer Connected first generation offered a "connected to eternity" program where after the guarantee (2 years?) you where able to convert the watch to an analog movement but it was another $1500... I am not sure if they still do it, they seem to offer a trade in program to get the newest version instead now.
This is incredible... hats off to the maker. That being said I really wish that the Chinese ETA 2824-2 clone that is the PT5000 would see more action in place of Seiko movements. It's more accurate, runs at 4Hz, and isn't too far off in terms of cost (last I checked - I could be wrong as regards bulk orders). Then again I don't know whether it can be modded to be "open heart" a la the NH38 so it might not have been appropriate for this project in particular.
Damn yeah, you guys are all on the money. I was thinking of an ETA clone or Sellita. As well as the Miyota 90S5 which was a really odd pick from
ghostganz because I don't think its that popular of a movement. But I was looking at it as I had 0.5mm less height than Seiko's recommended minimum height within the case, and the 90S5 was much thinner. Ended up with the NH38 anyway because I was really REALLY unsure if I could even get this to work so it was a lower monetary investment. And, the stem shape worked for the weirdo linkages I made, because the linkage I made is technically within the footprint of all those movements.
And had to be open heart 1. because I liked how the mockup I did looked with an open heart and 2. because any more stem positions for different complication settings would have made my life a lot harder with getting the button/crown to work
I was thinking that about the movement too -- or you could go for a Miyota/Citizen, the high-beat (28800) movements were around $70-80 on ebay the last time I checked.
Very, very nice. I have been trying to figure out how to replace the battery on my Apple Watch in a country with limited hardware support options, and although this won’t help, it is another reminder that Apple these days designs for disposability rather than long-term ownership…
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I think a lot of techie types might not realize what an engineering marvel a mechanical watch movement is. I'm sure you all realize there are a lot of teeny tiny gears.
But does the HN crowd realize there are 24 precious gems (lab-grown rubies and sapphires!!!!) inside the NH38 movement, serving as bearings and such?
While the Apple Watch is in some ways orders of magnitude more advanced than a mechanical watch movement, in some ways the mechanical watch movement is more impressive. It could be argued that while the Apple Watch is the sum of roughly 100 years of electrical engineering, the mechanical watch is the sum of several thousands of years of mechanical engineering. It took mankind an incredible number of years to really master timekeeping to that level.
(Not that the two are mutually exclusive. I find that the more I understand electronic timekeeping, the more I appreciate mechanical timekeeping, and vice-versa)
For those who want to learn more about it, this is an awesome interactive explanation of the functioning of mechanical watches: https://ciechanow.ski/mechanical-watch/
Tiny ass battery + daily full charge discharge = toast well before 10 years
If they actually cared about sustainability the screen and battery would be user replaceable
Mechanical watches are diamonds for men.
— Plautus (c.254-184 BC)
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30047352>
It only "lives" when you wear or wind it. It's only a few seconds of active "work" on your part per day but I find myself feeling kind of paternal toward them, or like I'm caring for a little mechanical pet buddy or something.
Quartz watches and computers in general are also miracles to me, as well!
But mechanical watches are their own special sort of miracle that I really appreciate.
https://youtube.com/@WristwatchRevival
Which I only knew about through Marshall’s Magic: the Gathering links, but the watch stuff is surprisingly soothing.
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https://community.carbide3d.com/t/watchmaking-on-the-nomad/4...
and I found an animated overview:
https://ciechanow.ski/mechanical-watch/
[1] https://www.casio-europe.com/euro/products/watches/radio-con...
They are different kinds of marvels to me, and I deeply appreciate them! I'm a big G-Shock fan in particular.
I am (among many other things!) a computing enthusiast, a quartz watch enthusiast, and a mechanical watch enthusiast. I find that appreciating each one of those things enhances my appreciation for the others.
https://youtu.be/B2h5WwrkJFg
I enjoyed it immensely.
I highly doubt this is effective at anything.
Autodesk as a company are known for shitty behaviour, so it doesn't surprise me they made it worse.
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I have no interest in wearing a smart watch because I'd never have it without also having my phone, and my phone has maybe a few notifications per day at most when not actively using it - I massively filter my email via aliases, my work notifications go only to my work laptop, and texting with friends usually happens on my laptop. I don't care about the health features.
I even tried wearing the Apple Watch upside down on my dominant hand, but very easy to damage the watch that way
Deleted Comment
https://www.ablogtowatch.com/h-moser-cie-swiss-alp-watch-fin...
> Alert readers will notice that Moser managed, in one paragraph, to dismiss the efforts of all three major luxury watch groups – Richemont, Swatch, and LVMH – as somewhat lacking in intestinal fortitude
They are basically saying none of the major manufacturers had done anything serious in the realm of smart watches.
The reason it’s a “dangerous game” is because the watch industry was disrupted once before by the quartz crisis (cheap quartz watches flooding the market) and many manufacturers went out of business or had to merge with others to form larger groups to survive. So the danger is that smart watches will do the same.
Watches had a rough time for a while after quartz became a thing in the 80’s.
Now they are seen a jewellery more because every has a smart phone for time telling. But watch collecting as a hobby is making a comeback in the 2010’s to now with the internet and hype generating content like YouTube, instagram, Hodinkee, and consumers are keeping a multi billion dollar market afloat with products from million dollar Patek phillipe to 5 dollar casios.
[1] https://forum.watchlounge.com/index.php?thread/240000-was-wu...