StyxMaker
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I'm glad your mechanical watch makes you feel all manly, I've never depended on a watch for that feeling.
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Apple Watch First Impressions From Watch Experts, Fashion Sites
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I'm glad your mechanical watch makes you feel all manly, I've never depended on a watch for that feeling.
There are fashion and design schools. But, hey, laugh it up!
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How long does your Garmin watch lasts will GPS turned on and collecting data? From other people I heard, not long at all.
So, those things cannot really be called watches. For devices that can be worn all day and work, GPS is too much of a battery sucker. Its even a battery sucker on a phone which has a 6-7 times bigger battery.
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You can absolutely mass produce a mechanical watch. If there was a market for it; you'd see much much lower prices and much bigger volumes.
It would be all assembled by robots of course.
There's nothing exceptionally hard about producing a watch; precise automated casting, machining has existed for awhile.
grahamperrin
macrumors 601
LOL. Everything today is thoroughly modern
Apple Watch as a gift
Rewind nine years. With an iPod Nano, " You can do it all without looking. ".
I'm not yet convinced that for its intended/imagined purposes, Apple Watch can be so intuitive. There's a faint odour of "we're doing it because we can"; not because a wristwatch is the ideal device for all of those purposes.
Before we leave 2005: did Madonna sit on a drawing pin?
Yeah, I'd prefer something that's not so limited when it's without an iPhone.
I'm unashamedly ignorant of fashion trends. When I love the appearance of something, I don't over-analyse the reasons for that love; the thing is rarely trendy.
In the 1980s, probably before I cycled down through France, I got myself a Seiko 5 automatic with the days either in French, or alternating French/English. Similar or identical to a 7009-3100:
I loved it but after around two decades of terribly rough treatment by me I don't know what I did, but parts of the case looked as if they had been struck with hammers parts began separating from the dial. The movement remained perfect but eventually, after a clumsy attempt to fix the dial, I had to throw it away. To find a matching photograph took maybe three hours (most of which was spent looking for the wrong brand Sekonda (Russian)).
Nowadays just occasionally I wear an old Timemaster. An online image was almost impossible to find until I discovered that Timemaster was a Fritz Wolf brand there was one on eBay a few months ago, probably this
the photograph doesn't do justice to the style, so imagine the Seiko below but with a winder, a date, magnifying crystal above the date, and more discreet hour markings:
If I were to choose something now, it would probably be this Vulcain Centenary automatic:
minimalist.
😎
Attachments
You can roboticized mechanical watches but you won't get the detailing. There are cheap mechanical watches. Seiko at $80-$150. Full automatic.
I'm not knocking Seiko but it doesn't have the craft. It sure beats the $500 Michael Kors quartz. But the higher finish watch require detailign by hand. the polished circular details.
See the zig-zag. That is done by hands.
The circular sand, polish. Again by hands
Also, robotic assembly would not be able to place the microscopic balance screws. If it could, FoxConn wouldn't need manual labours to assemble iPhones.
Many Swiss cases and certain parts are machine made but requires human assembly and tuning.
It works alone, it runs apps, collects data from sensors, resync this data (and data you entered) back to the phone, its just more usefull with a phone. I can also take notes, play music, look at photos and probably play videos all by itself.
It is for its communication functions that it needs the phone (and for the GPS).
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Still, it doesn't matter. Say 90% robot assembled with 10% in a Foxcon like factory. The end result would be mass assembly anyway. If there was a market for that many mechanical watches, they would be made.
AppleScruff1
macrumors G4
grahamperrin
macrumors 601
That'll be the Seiko that I wrote about a few seconds before your post 😀
I deeply appreciate, but never expect to afford, the craftsmanship that you describe.
BBC News - The man who makes £100,000 watches (2013-09-25)
A Chip is usually C-A-D. Computer assisted. They're not designed by a single person. They require software, engineers, groups,etc. Yes, it is an engineering feat.
But there are some watches that are simply mind-blowing to build. You have a single guy with no computers, putting together a bunch of rotors, balances, screws, to make a movement that can run 200 years; tell you the date/time. Phases of the moons. It handles the leap years, the calendar dates accounting for February 28 and. It knows when it was a full moon phase in the year 2322 or 1999. It will tell you if it was a saturday or tuesday on March 31, 1999 or April 5th in the year 2567 and the moon all at the same time. Oh, what Chinese lunar year was in there too!
Can an Intel engineer do that with just a bunch of wheels, microscopic screws, and rotors? If you say yes, then I see your point. It isn't that easy to design and then assemble.
The INTEL engineer would need to know how to balance the wheels, align them. In fact, he would need to know how to actually fabricate a 1mm circular wheel with teeths by hand. Apply the right pressure of the balances and springs so it doesn't run to slow or to fast. It would have to be +/- 1 sec accurate out of 8,640 a day. Do all this with no dremel or modern tools.
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The Foxconn assembly person won't have the skills to assemble. It isn't that easy for a 19 year old kid to work on a microscopic level. I can't event hold a saw the size of a pen and move it 1 mm in circular fashion. Can you? IT takes years for some Swiss employee to move up the rank and gain the skills from cleaning rotors, to hand winding springs.
Some mechanical watches take as long as 2 years to build by hands.
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Not really? I don't see any other tech sites reviewing fashion products... do you?
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Ion implant.
They blast the glass with charged particles to modify it. It usually only applies to the top few microns of the glass, and with enough energy you can bury the ions below a thin layer of glass as it shoots through the glass.
And to be honest i'm surprised Apple did this. This process is usually reserved for chip manufacturing and is expensive.
AppleScruff1
macrumors G4
lincolntran
macrumors 6502a
This style was always there. Because stereotypically rounded, easy to use and fun is seen as "female; not sure why exactly. Same cultural stereotype is what keeps women out of STEM fields.
Apple is obviously, and always has been, a women 🙂.
Things that have painful edges, are ornery to use and make you look like you eat concrete for lunch and are as much fun as a colonoscopy are obviously masculine.
They should put razor blades around the edges of the watch to make it more masculine ;-).
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The core of Apple is not tech, it is design; tech that adapts to life not the other way around.
There's always has been a personal aspect about Apple, how it fits the person is important to its identity.
They had the colour computers while everyone else had the beige towers. That should tell you something.
You obviously haven't seen the woman on those assembly lines at work (not just at apple). In the early 1960s, woman were cabling integrated circuits by hand at TI (before they adopted the Fairchild process); that's very very small detail work.
But hey, think whatever you will. Doesn't matter anyway. Mechanical watches are a niche. Interesting, but not for most people.
cocacolakid
macrumors 65816
It reminds me of the first iPhone. Revolutionary, but it took a while until it's full potential was realized.
you know you've hit bottom when u find urself arguing which company has the best smartwatch. if this is the priority then we live n a sad, boring and aimless world. maybe time for apple to retire, guessmtheyve seen and done it all, nothing left to see here..
Whoa. It is HUGE. And that band. I thought it looked nice from a bare front picture.
az431
Suspended
nofear1az
macrumors 6502
Omgosh, you are hilarious and so right on the money... and yes I am victim to it too. hahaha
I think it is needlessly to thick and "chunky". The thickness is almost 1/3rd of the length.
Apple missed an obvious opportunity to place the battery inside the wristband. Why not use a flexible battery of even a thicker buckle to hide a battery
Apple missed an obvious opportunity to place the battery inside the wristband. Why not use a flexible battery of even a thicker buckle to hide a battery
Cheap?
Producing a "chip" requires a fab line containing several billion dollars worth of semiconductor processing equipment.
The mask set (tooling) to produce a chip for any design today costs many millions of dollars. Make a mistake, and it may cost another multi-million dollar mask set. A bit more expensive than dropping a watch gear wheel.
And that's after 2 to 5 years of chip design, often involving a building full of PhDs for the design and the tools, and before the chips are tested and assembled into any product.
Not easy.
nofear1az
macrumors 6502
I guess I just can't wrap my head around that. I mean IMHO only I feel like I get the same if not a very similar looking watch for like $100 - $200 at Kohls. In fact I've seen some very beautiful watches for even less than $100. Tempting but I don't wear 'em anymore just simply can't take the weight of 'em, tightness around my wrist, and how hot it gets around there being wrapped so closely to my skin. Just not my thing anymore.
Watches were the iPhone in the pre-21st Century. Everyone had to have them. I just don't understand why today except for fashion but even your cheap watches look good as a fashion statement. Again my humble opinion, not knocking you if you believe otherwise. Seriously, I don't care that much.
Not more than the iPad - just because you need a late model iPhone to use it. I know lots of people with iPads who don't own iPhones.
Nope. The one listed first, the one that's not made of specialized components, is the first one.
They're all durable unless they hit something hard enough to stop being durable. 😉
I'm not interested in anyone's opinion of hemlines at any time of the year... but as an Apple fan and stockholder I'm sure interested in the opinion of reviewers of their products.
Not sure how you define businessman, but I can think of a lot who will.
Such a device, plus the
WATCH functionality, including full day battery, would not fit into a watch right now.Gorilla glass.