Multicore
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Jewel count was the SINAD of wrist watches. What happened to that?
Yikes! What's the biggest?At 44mm it is about the smallest size I wear these days.
Jewel count was the SINAD of wrist watches. What happened to that?
Yikes! What's the biggest?At 44mm it is about the smallest size I wear these days.
Jewel count was the SINAD of wrist watches. What happened to that?
Yikes! What's the biggest?
It's a great example of the "Starbucks Effect" which I just think is fascinating. Starbucks' meteoric rise in the 90s obviously put a lot of coffee shops out of business. But, paradoxically, the net result was.... way more coffee shops not owned by Starbucks, because they expanded the overall market with the overall number of coffee shops growing from "1,650 in 1991, to a remarkable 21,400 shops by 2005"[1] because the expanded the overall market and redefined it as a premium good worth paying premium money for.What have the intelligent watches (Apple, Fitbit, Garmin, etc.) done to the watch market? Have they raised the average watch price while devastating the low end (Casio, Timex, no-name) brands? Have these intelligent products also hurt the mid to high-end products like Rolex and Tag?
I've heard all this many times.It's a great example of the "Starbucks Effect" which I just think is fascinating. Starbucks' meteoric rise in the 90s obviously put a lot of coffee shops out of business. But, paradoxically, the net result was.... way more coffee shops not owned by Starbucks, because they expanded the overall market with the overall number of coffee shops growing from "1,650 in 1991, to a remarkable 21,400 shops by 2005"[1] because the expanded the overall market and redefined it as a premium good worth paying premium money for.
[1] https://medium.com/@jmays4/expanding-coffee-industry-the-starbucks-effect-c83f253d50f9
Non-smart watches will never be as popular and ubiquitous as they were from ~1950-2000. In those days, most people needed to know what time it was, and most people wore watches. But from ~2000-2015 cellphones replaced watches for many/most people. They told time better, and you took your cellphone without everywhere anyway. A watch was functionally superfluous.
Then came smartwatches, which got people wearing watches again, and there has been an explosion of microbrands in the last ~10 years. Casio, Timex, Seiko, et al seem to be doing quite well, or at least well enough to stay in business cranking out new models. Haven't really heard of any brands going out of business or getting bought out. The price of new Rolexes has gone way up so they must be doing okay.
There seems to have been some shakeout in the low end. Seiko moved upmarket a bit. Casio remains dedicated to selling $15 watches (god bless them, and I don't mean that in the passive-aggressive Southern way) but also sells a lot of more premium $100+ and even $1000+ models.
I've heard all this many times...
As a watch guy I 100% agree with everything you said.As for cell phones rendering watches obsolete,
Amen. I look at a mechanical wristwatch and I think about how many thousands of years it took humankind to progress from sundials to a mechanical watch that anybody can afford and I am filled with awe.And people also forget that mechanical watches have never really been about the mere function of telling time. They are a tribute to craftsmanship, to quality. A smartphone has zero lasting value in any way.
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Although it does have to be said: as far as pure timekeeping goes, a cellphone does outperform a wristwatch. If you're on a network it always has the correct time with no additional effort required by the user. By extension, so do smartwatches that sync with a mobile phone. That's not a small benefit.
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I do the same and I've actually decided I don't care what time/date my mechanical watch says. It's not there to tell time so I don't bother to set it.I can't speak for larger market in general, but to me personally, these are two different applications for two different purposes. If I'm tracking my steps or doing some other exercise, I'll wear my smart watch. BTW, I mostly use it as a semi-dumb watch. This way the battery lasts me 1 month between recharges.
Now, if I'm going out and dressing up a bit, I will wear one of my mechanicals. This is akin to wearing jewelry, so it can't really be replaced by a typical smart watch with its hi-tech looks.
Smart watches created a brand new niche/market - a lot of people who wear them never really wore a traditional watch before. And the main reason they want a smart watch is because it's an extension of their smartphone and not necessarily to tell time. On the other hand, those who appreciate the craftsmanship of their mechanicals will probably not be able to replace it with a smart watch. However, those folks may still buy a smart watch as a second watch for all the benefits/convenience that it provides. It's almost like vinyl vs MP3/streaming.![]()
Thanks for the vote of agreement, but I'm afraid I cannot fully reciprocate. Perhaps I just remember different things than you do, but clearly in my memory wristwatches were already on the way out before people started carrying cell phones. I think blaming cell phones for the trend may be a bit of ex-post-facto reconstruction, though the phones become an easy target for watch nuts. Digital time displays were ubiquitous in our lives before cell phones. My first cell phone (a Motorola bag phone) didn't even have a time display.As a watch guy I 100% agree with everything you said.A wristwatch is a more convenient way to check the time than the phone in your pocket - and more polite to boot, which is a severely underrated aspect. Unfortunately.
But, yours and my opinions aside... for better or worse... cell phones really did render watches obsolete in the eyes of many/most people. I don't really agree but it's what happened.
Although it does have to be said: as far as pure timekeeping goes, a cellphone does outperform a wristwatch. If you're on a network it always has the correct time with no additional effort required by the user. By extension, so do smartwatches that sync with a mobile phone. That's not a small benefit.
A watch (like the G-Shock I'm wearing now) with radio time sync gets you close, but not quite. Syncs can be finicky depending on distance from the transmitter. And a cellphone can automagically grab the correct time as soon as soon as your plane lands in a new time zone.
I concur. We gave my daughter a wristwatch when she was 8 years old and she wore it for years until the day she got her first cell phone. At that point she said she didn't need the watch anymore because she would always have the phone with her and it has a clock. I asked her the usual questions: what if your phone battery dies, what if it has a software crash, what if it falls out of her pocket and breaks, or gets immersed in water, etc. She acknowledged the possibilities but didn't care. I admire her pragmatism, minimizing the stuff she carries around every day. Many young people share her perspective. But I still wear a wrist watch for many of the reasons already stated in this thread.As a watch guy I 100% agree with everything you said.A wristwatch is a more convenient way to check the time than the phone in your pocket - and more polite to boot, which is a severely underrated aspect. Unfortunately.
But, yours and my opinions aside... for better or worse... cell phones really did render watches obsolete in the eyes of many/most people. I don't really agree but it's what happened.
My local Stammtisch buddies are also into watches, so the evening always includes a wrist check.To me a smartphone is a productivity tool during the day, and a reading device on the go. I spent enough time in front of computer screens. The 50% German in me likes to (1) always be on time, and (2) keep a weekly "Stammtisch" with my closest 3-4 buddies.
On (1): my watches are always set 2 minutes ahead. I want to set my own time. Try that with a radio time sync.It actually annoys me how often people with -supposedly- utterly accurate ways to tell the time are a few minutes late to stuff.
On (2): A Stammtisch means that there's a designated place where you meet once a week at a designated time. It's rare everybody shows up, but one regularly also invites other acquaintances to it. And there are rules to it - and a key one to ours is that smartphones are turned off and put away or at the center of the table. A rule I also enforce on date nights with my GF, who is addicted to hers (she's also an avid mechanical watch collector herself).
Smartphones are great, but they are also a curse when it comes to true social interaction. When discussing a topic with friends, I don't like the other person boosting their argument by looking up something online (unless we both deem it necessary). As to telling time, I truly never ever use my smartphone for that. I know when it vibrates one way or the other or gently chimes it is either a text from my GF, my family, my boss or a meeting reminder.
Nice! I have an old Ball 999B from similar era. After some cleaning and careful adjustment on the timegrapher, it tracks to 1-2 seconds per day. I find it amazing that a mechanical device retains such precision after so many years.... I also have a railroad-approved Hamilton 992B pocket watch from 1946 that was inspected weekly for accuracy ...
Mine would need a bit more than that to run that well, but perhaps my watchmaking skills will develop to the point where I'd be willing to tackle that watch.Nice! I have an old Ball 999B from similar era. After some cleaning and careful adjustment on the timegrapher, it tracks to 1-2 seconds per day. I find it amazing that a mechanical device retains such precision after so many years.
Funny you mention that. It reminds me of manually setting clocks to receive satellite data, and I vaguely remembered posting that story before. Here's the link: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...atches-in-the-21st-century.30246/post-1063905... But I did design, operate, and manage systems that demanded precision time-of-day reference, and have specified everything from WWV clocks to Cesium-61 atomic clocks for the systems I designed. In those systems, power-line frequency, which is usually accurate enough for even high-accuracy use cases, wasn't good enough. Nobody used manual retiming from a wristwatch for those systems, ever. ...
I was thinking less of the (extremely small) drift on quartz watches (which had almost entirely supplanted mechanical by the time cell phones became ubiquitous) and more about the error involved in setting the watch in the first place. You either had to wait for the hourly tone on the radio, or (more commonly) people set it based on some *other* clock in their house, which was itself a few minutes off, etc.And as far as accuracy goes, who cares? Very few people need accuracy--if it's within a minute it's plenty accurate enough and I can hardly get people to show up on time for meetings within ten minutes, cell phones notwithstanding.
All that was needed was dialing 844-(any 4 #s) and there would be a recording announcing the time in 10 second increments.I You either had to wait for the hourly tone on the radio, or (more commonly) people set it based on some *other* clock in their house, which was itself a few minutes off, etc.
Hah! I never knew that. Thank you for the knowledge. My parents always set their clocks by the radio so that was a good enough "sync" for me. By the time I was living on my own I just used The Internets.All that was needed was dialing 844-(any 4 #s) and there would be a recording announcing the time in 10 second increments.
"At the tone the time will be ... Four thirty-one, and 20 seconds.... ...BEEEEEEEEP"