How to Read Time on Apple Watch Ultra

[Wackery]

I’m going to sound really dumb, but how do you read the minute increments on the Wayfinder watchface?

As in, between 0 and 0:05, what exactly is the small lines dividing the minutes?

I wish there was a digital wayfinder watchface, the ‘analog’ one just seems so imprecise

 

[Night Spring]

Yes, there was another thread about that somewhere, I can't remember what the thread title was.

But having grown up with analog watches, I almost never bothered to tell time to the precise minute. Oh, it's somewhere between 3:05 and 3:10, was good enough for most purposes.

 

[pup]

If you use the hour marks, then the slightly bigger tiks mark seconds and the smaller ones in between, half seconds. Also minutes, but the minute hand covers them up too much imo to be useful. If you display minutes, though, the space is divided into 6, which means they're entirely decorative. Quality control under Tim Cook.

They need to fix the spacing, point the ends of the watch hands so that they don't cover the tiks, and then any mark between seconds/minutes should be much smaller or better yet not even exist.

 

[risenphoenixkai]

For whatever reason, they don't appear to actually be using minute markers when the Wayfinder face style is set to minutes instead of hours on the dial.

For example, there are five tall marks between 00 and 05 when the face style is set to minutes. If these were really representing minutes on the hour (or seconds on the minute), there should only be four tall marks here (for example, 1, 2, 3, 4 between 00 and 05).

I think what they're really showing here in the minutes style — rather counterintuitively — is degree markers. If you tap the dial and switch it to the compass, you'll see the same marker setup: five tall marks between each of the 12 listed degree divisions. For example, five markers between 0 degrees North and 30 degrees, which is correct — markers for 5, 15, 20, 25 degrees.

When the face style is set to hours, there are 9 alternating short and tall marks between 12 and 1, and those represent half-minutes and full minutes (or half-seconds and full seconds).

TL;DR, if you want to be more easily able to tell what the precise minute on the hour is, use the "hour" face style rather than "minute".

I don't know enough about navigation conventions to be able to tell if the way Apple has set up the "minute" style is correct or not, but as a layman it definitely seems weird.

 

[Wackery]

For whatever reason, they don't appear to actually be using minute markers when the Wayfinder face style is set to minutes instead of hours on the dial.

For example, there are five tall marks between 00 and 05 when the face style is set to minutes. If these were really representing minutes on the hour (or seconds on the minute), there should only be four tall marks here (for example, 1, 2, 3, 4 between 00 and 05).

I think what they're really showing here in the minutes style — rather counterintuitively — is degree markers. If you tap the dial and switch it to the compass, you'll see the same marker setup: five tall marks between each of the 12 listed degree divisions. For example, five markers between 0 degrees North and 30 degrees, which is correct — markers for 5, 15, 20, 25 degrees.

When the face style is set to hours, there are 9 alternating short and tall marks between 12 and 1, and those represent half-minutes and full minutes (or half-seconds and full seconds).

TL;DR, if you want to be more easily able to tell what the precise minute on the hour is, use the "hour" face style rather than "minute".

I don't know enough about navigation conventions to be able to tell if the way Apple has set up the "minute" style is correct or not, but as a layman it definitely seems weird.

Thanks, I was feeling really dumb

 

[CharlesShaw]

I would prefer fewer ticks between numbers on my favorite face, Infograph. Both Wayfinder and Infograph have the option of displating digital time in the sub-dial Top complication, if that helps.

 

[Wackery]

I would prefer fewer ticks between numbers on my favorite face, Infograph. Both Wayfinder and Infograph have the option of displating digital time in the sub-dial Top complication, if that helps.

The problem is the fat dials block the digital time