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Comment by Mainan_Tagonist | Hacker News Reader

I happen to work in this industry, and just a word for those that compare this with an Apple Watch or a Casio, this Vacheron-Constantin will likely be around 200 years from now, it will still be a testimony of the refinement and engineering of a fine craft that few can achieve, a highly valued item with specialist technicians marvelling on the talent of its builders, just as is the case today with 200 year old timepieces.

you'll be very lucky if your Casio can last as long. Your mass commoditised Apple watch will likely be worthless.

Personaly, I like the IWC on my wrist as much as I like my Casio G-Shock, both are wonderful in their own way.

The Apple watch on my wife's wrist is a fine computer i guess, but at some point, it will have the same "quaint charm" as the IBM Thinkpad she owned 23 years ago.

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>I happen to work in this industry, and just a word for those that compare this with an Apple Watch or a Casio, this Vacheron-Constantin will likely be around 200 years from now, it will still be a testimony of the refinement and engineering of a fine craft that few can achieve, a highly valued item [...] The Apple watch on my wife's wrist is a fine computer i guess,

My friend does not work in the watch industry so maybe that's why she came to the opposite conclusion from yours. She has several high-end watches Omega, Ebel, Cartier ... and when she got the Apple Watch almost 10 years ago, it instantly demoted all her expensive jewelry watches to the drawer.

The cheaper "disposable" Apple Watch instantly cured her from wanting any new expensive jewelry watches. She let the batteries die off in the old watches and has never replaced them. Instead, she just loves having the weather, timers, task notifications, etc on her Apple Watch. Sure, the classic watches have "diamond encrusted bezel, gold wristband, Swiss mechanical movement yada yada yada..." but all that is negated by the useful features of the smart watch.

It's a rare situation where a cheap product completely replaces an expensive product.

I had a a similar evolution in thinking when technology made me re-evaluate products I once coveted. When I was young before the internet existed, I drooled over this Geochron illuminated framed wall map $4000 : https://www.geochron.com/clocks/boardroom/

A lot of expensive offices had that and I thought I had to have it too. But then I bought cheap atomic clocks you never had to set and the web had dynamic maps I could explore. Even the new Geochron units don't automatically set to the radio signal from atomic clocks. New technology completely cured me of wanting to buy a Geochron. People used to want tall grandfather clocks in the house foyer as an elegant piece of accent furniture. Now you can't even give away those clocks for free on craigslist. Everybody has clocks on their smartphones so buying a grandfather clock for the house isn't a priority anymore. Even if we romanticize grandfather clocks with descriptions about "heirloom furniture craftsmanship, intricate wood carvings, etc", it still won't entice most people today to want one.

I have somewhat different store.

Moved to Garmin (for sports and outdoor activities) and Mido as an everyday watch from Apple Watch (had 3 and 7 versions). Can't really imagine going back.

I guess I was sold the idea that I neeed notifications, weather and all this bullshit on my wrist all the time.

At some point I realized I've disabled notifications completely and basically the only thing I was using my Apple watch was paranoidal heart rate monitoring.

>Swiss mechanical movement yada yada yada...

Most swiss mechanical movements cost 50-100$ though.

>I guess I was sold the idea that I neeed notifications, weather and all this bullshit on my wrist all the time.

I understand your viewpoint but people are different. My friend is almost 80 years old and wasn't drawn to smart watches because of FOMO fear-of-missing-out on some Instagram notification or hustle culture to constantly check emails. Instead, she's always worried about "forgetting something" and the Apple Watch has reminders for medicine, upcoming appointments, etc. It was a total quality-of-life improvement. It caused a total rethink about the old mechanical watches that didn't assist her in that way.

If a mechanical watch that will be "admired 200 years from now instead of being in a landfill" -- doesn't help her take pills -- then she's not going to be attached to the romanticism of it like a watch collector enthusiast.

>Most swiss mechanical movements cost 50-100$ though.

Your clarification means you misinterpreted my comment. I was not insulting mechanical watches such as your Mido or gp's expensive IWC. My point was that it's rare and counterintuitive when a cheap disposable product causes a total rethink of previously valuable items regardless of the older item's "timeless qualities" (e.g. "200 year heirloom").

How sad. That wall map is a nice object and a good conversation piece to boot.

I guess you haven’t actually tried to buy a grandfather clock. Quality ones are in the thousands at least, if not tens of thousands. Even cheap ones are hundreds of dollars.

To my mind an apple watch is a fundamentally different product from a watch. They just both happen to be worn on the wrist.

>How sad. That wall map is a nice object and a good conversation piece to boot.

It shouldn't be sad to avoid adding another artifact of consumerism to one's life. I'm at a stage in my life where I've gotten rid of most of my "conversation pieces". E.g. I once had an expensive antique warship in my office as decoration. (https://www.google.com/search?q=hms+bounty+model&tbm=isch). I thought it looked really nice. But one day as I was cleaning the dust off of every crevice with an art brush to keep it from looking like a junked up antique, I realized it was an example of a possession making me its slave. I got rid of it and don't regret it. I dodged a bullet by not getting the Geochron and saving $4000 but my journey of enlightenment wasn't complete so I still got suckered into the wooden warship.

>I guess you haven’t actually tried to buy a grandfather clock. Quality ones are in the thousands at least, if not tens of thousands.

Yes, I agree that grandfather clocks are expensive and that's why I used it as a parallel example to the expensive wristwatches.

How can it be true that they're really expensive and you can't even give them away for free on Craigslist?

Probably if you want a good one it's expensive and nobody wants bad ones.

>How can it be true that they're really expensive and you can't even give them away for free on Craigslist?

I tried to give away an 30+ year old Ethan Allen grandfather clock (cost about $2500 new) on Craigslist. Nobody was interested in picking it up. To most young people, grandfather clocks are "dated" and it's only something they see at their grandparents house. It used to be a rite of passage to buy a grandfather clock to the house but that trend is gone now. Like expensive china cabinets, it's just not something a lot of people desire these days.

I suppose if I had left the grandfather clock on Craigslist for a year instead of a month, and if I offered to deliver it instead of requiring pick it up, eventually somebody would have wanted it.

The only way I finally got rid of it was bundling it with an old curio cabinets I was selling. Taking the grandfather clock as a complete package was a condition of the sale. Maybe like vinyl records, grandfather clocks are making a comeback and I got rid of it too early.

> Nobody was interested in picking it up.

When you’re one rent hike away from packing up and moving, this type of thing is not very appealing

A 30 year old Ethan Allen was probably a quartz movement with a fake pendulum? Yeah that’s not interesting. Or was it still a real mechanical clock with weights or a spring you had to wind?

Easy. Think specialist equipment: a nice high-speed factory machine to put caps on bottles may be more than $100K new, but I doubt you can give it away for free on craigslist. It is huge, heavy, and has no practical value outside of soft drink factory.

The old clocks are getting the same status: it's specialist equipment for very rare circumstances.

Damn you HN, I went down the rabbit hole on Geochron. No, I don't need this. Yes, I want it, but not the old version - this one: https://www.geochron.com/product/geochron-digital-atlas-2/

Certainly someone has hacked/recreated this with a Raspberry Pi. I must now go waste a weekend...

I want one, but not with that terrible projection! I’d prefer one inverted at least.

I'm having trouble wrapping my head around the price on this. $500 up front, _plus_ a subscription, and it doesn't even include the display. What are you getting for that cost? It _feels_ like something you could install as software on an RPi or any other computer.

Corporate money - if all you have is software engineers getting $250_000/year , the company likely pays ~$250/hour with all the overhead. So you are not paying "$500", you are paying 2 FTE hours. This is pretty small, corporate-wise: a single 1 hour meeting with 10 people in it is 10 FTE hours, and most managers won't think twice before organizing it.

Even DIY solution might not be more economic: sure, if you are familiar with RPi and have one on hand, and someone already wrote the software, you can do it in under 2 hours. But a single problem, like a defective SD card, and the pre-paid solution is now cheaper. Same goes for subscription: $80/year, or 20 FTE minutes. Yes, you can find those layers for free. Will this take you >20 minutes per year to setup and maintain? Probably not.

I was at my first job when I discovered "corporate money" and this was a real eye-opener... That $2000 tool that can only do one super-specific operation? Pays for itself if you can have two fewer defective assemblies.

Sorry, I didn't ask my question well.

Your answer seems to speak to the idea of "we need this in order for our offices to be able to function, what's the most cost effective way acquire it. I can't imagine _any_ office that would need such a thing. It seems to be purely decorative in nature. And the (quality of the) monitor (which isn't part of that cost) is the majority of the decorative part.

I was asking more from the individual perspective; why someone would spend $500 + subscription on something like this, when it should be relatively trivial to just run software that does something like it yourself. Given that it doesn't come with the display, picking a nice display and hooking it up seems like the majority of the work involved.

Offices don't only spend money "to be able to function" - there are all sort of expenses which are entirely optional. Workers' morale, manager's morale, "prestige", etc.. Have you ever heard about management ordering pizza for workers when something goes well? Do you know how much this costs? It's $50 in pizza + 10 people x 1 hour = $2500 in wages, for total $2550 for that pizza party. A totally optional spend, which is not required for offices to be able to function. And yet it happens all the time in many many offices. And don't get me started on cost of all-hands meetings.

And that's why most offices won't think twice about buying that $500 box. A random manager, or even a senior programmer wants it? Sure, get it, no need to even get any approval since it is under $1000. There are exceptions, but that's the thought in many US-based software organizations.

From individual perspective, you are right it makes no sense. If this was my house, I'd do it all myself. But this is not marketed to individuals, it is marketed to people working in companies.

Found a $1.99 app for Apple TV that's pretty good. Now "screen saver" for downstairs television. Will play around with a spare Pi when time permits. There appear to be several options out there. A fun waste of an hour.

I think of my watch the same way a lot of people think of jewelry, or suits, or things like that. While it does serve a purpose (telling time), the primary reason I wear it is because I like it. It's functional, but mostly decorative.

I inherited my watch from my father, and I almost certainly wouldn't spend thousands to buy one myself; but I wear it every time I go out to dinner for anything fancier than that.

I wouldn't say that's the opposite conclusion. Plenty of people have switched from mechanical or quartz watches to Apple watches for their daily wear. But a decade from now the watches in the jewelry drawer will have retained their value more than the watch that's on her wrist today.

Of course there's nothing wrong with wearing a smart watch. For practical purposes they are better in every way. They just have a different lifetime. It's a similar situation with cars. Some like the constant maintenance that a 60 year old car requires, others want a Toyota that will reliably get them to work, and others want a sports car with engine that can go three times as fast as they'll ever drive.

Also, I think the cheap product winning is pretty typical. CDs replaced vinyl records and were then replaced by music streaming. Few people buy cameras now that smartphones exist. And these mechanical watches were already replaced for the most part decades ago by quartz watches.

Despite the existence of more practical alternatives, there are people who still like to buy grandfather clocks, vinyl records and mechanical watches. They are certainly in the minority and you won't find a grandfather clock or record player in every home, but there is a market there.

(I kind of hate to be that guy, but if there were batteries inside, those weren't Swiss mechanical movements)

>, but if there were batteries inside, those weren't Swiss mechanical movements

Yes. The Cartier Tank watch is mechanical. I just lumped in the other nice jewelry watches with batteries to talk about them as a group because they've all been eliminated from her mindset.

>Also, I think the cheap product winning is pretty typical.

When I wrote "replace", I didn't mean in terms of sales. It was more about the cheaper product replacing the previous thinking in the mind about the old product.

For example, she used to color-coordinate the different jewelry watches with different outfits... If it's a blue outfit, wear the stainless steel watch ... if it's this other dress, wear the gold watch with black face. If the shirt has starfish, wear the seashell theme watch. That whole ritual is eliminated. (I guess one could also change watch bands on Apple Watches for different occasions but she doesn't bother with it. Maybe because arthritis makes it hard to squeeze the band's release mechanism.)

The new Apple Watch alters the psychological relationship with the previous jewelry watches so thoroughly that it makes her impervious to gp's praise such as, "Vacheron-Constantin [...], it will still be a testimony of the refinement and engineering of a fine craft that few can achieve, [...] you'll be very lucky if your Casio can last as long. Your mass commoditised Apple watch will likely be worthless."

Her comeback to the gp's "timeless" qualities is that she likes lifting the Apple Watch to her face and asking, "Hey Siri, how many inches is 5 centimeters? (when sewing clothes) ... Or how many cups in a liter? (when cooking from a recipe with metric quantities)." She thinks it's a miracle that a little watch can understand her voice and give her answers. Yes, everybody at HN is jaded and we all know Apple's Siri is the worst voice assistant technology out there but yet she loves it. If that means it's wearing a mass-produced watch that nobody cares about in 200 years after she's buried in the ground, that doesn't matter at all. Her "dressy watches" phase is over.

That's the type of rare product replacement situation I'm talking about. Usually, the opposite happens: we all get on some hedonistic treadmill with various consumer products and the next better thing we desire is more expensive. In the 1980s, CDs were actually 2x more expensive than vinyl records and cassette tapes. Vinyl was about $6.99. CDs were $15.99+. It took over 10 years for CDs to gradually lower in price such that Walmart was selling them for less than $10. The new CD players themselves were about $1000 in 1980s. Record players were $100.

Perhaps we're reading gp's comment differently. I don't think he's telling your friend she should be wearing this Vacheron Constantin (or any luxury watch) instead of her Apple watch. He's rather defending its achievement in engineering and craftsmanship despite everything it does being trivial for a smart watch. I read it as appreciation rather than a sales pitch.

For practical purposes they are better in every way

Mostly agree, except you have to take the Apple Watch every single day for maintenance (charging). You can buy a Casio F-91W for $20 and go 7-10 years before you have to take off your wrist for a battery change. If you simply want to tell time, digital watches, quartz watches, and arguably mechanical watches beat smart watches.

The fact that she had batteries in those Cartier and Omega says a lot, and explains why the Apple watch had such an appeal.

A watch with batteries that can die is by definition not a mechanical watch like this one.

My $40 Casio surviving everything from camping trips to getting dunked in a sink still feels like its own kind of masterpiece

And in a way, it is...

Used to have one of those. Survived daily swim practice and saunas for years.

Iconic F-91W currently costs $16.88 at Amazon AND it now comes in colors: Clear, Pink, Blue, Gray, Green, Gold, White (and Black)

A158 (Obama) for the upgrade to steel, A168 for EL backlight.

Look at moneybags over here paying $30 for a watch. /s

One thing I like about Casio's, especially the cheap ones, is how unpretentious they are.

Just go for solar radio sync G-Shock square and you're done. No batteries, no setting up, extremely rugged and imo it looks good as well. Since I got that one a few years ago I only wear mechanical watch for various "occasions" - pretty much like a jewellery.

I went thru a couple of F91W and the bracelet kept breaking. I since got a A158WA-1. Check it out.

Done. Thank you!

All the F-91Ws I have gotten through Amazon have been fakes.

Remarkable. I've purchased at least five over the decades, all the real thing.

Sure, but I wear watches to tell the time or (mainly) as a fashion accessory. Not as an object to donate to a museum someday...

And 200 years from now, I'm sure there will be a few Apple Watches in museums as well. And some Casios too.

I wonder how many of these Casios and Apple watches will be in working order, and as functional as day one.

Museums don't operate objects that are 200 years old, so it doesn't really matter.

But also, it's not like a mechanical watch is going to work for 200 years without maintenance and repair either. Lubrication, springs, bearings... these all degrade over time.

>you'll be very lucky if your Casio can last as long

The Casio would last even longer - and would be closer to the right time even without touching it in between.

Good luck finding a compatible battery for it after 200 years.

I'll just ask the ruling AI to summon one into existence from the required atoms?

Adapting to whatever battery exists 200 years from now to the form of a CR2032 battery would be simple. A Casio just takes a round battery shell that contacts with the positive and negative terminals on each side.

Hell, I can make one from scratch in my workshop trivially, from basic materials.

Finding high-end mechanical watch technicians? Not so easy. And hardly so cheap.

Mostly because it'll be worn by a rich dude who uses it one day per week and sends it for CLAa every 5 years, treating it like some sort of religious idol every step of the way. The most extreme thing it'll go through is the swing of a golf club

No, because the achievement, the mastery behind it is not obliterated in the next few years, by the upcoming iterations of newer smartwatches.

Smartwatches, Phones, (most) Cars, TVs, ... all of these are mass produced, and as such completely obsolete in a few years, even if they are sold as "premium" products for a month's salary.

Unique, manufactured Design pieces are... timeless. It's a piece of art. And I say this without any inclination to ever join that market.

> No, because the achievement, the mastery behind it is not obliterated in the next few years, by the upcoming iterations of newer smartwatches.

Just like a Casio F-91W, or the $50 mechanical Swatch.

> It's a piece of art

Yes, that's the only argument really, it's a good looking wearable piece of art. It won't last longer than a waterproof gshock, it isn't more precise than a $5 quartz watch, &c.

> No, because the achievement, the mastery behind it is not obliterated in the next few years, by the upcoming iterations of newer smartwatches.

That's just another way of saying that there is no real innovation in end user benefits in mechanical watches. The marketing is all about how difficult they were to make.

Look at the functionality that the watch described in the article has to offer:

* It can show the time — to an accuracy of 8.5 seconds a day, apparently: https://www.reddit.com/r/VacheronConstantin/comments/1aiyjeb... Technological marvel, innit?

* It can show the date (with squiggly hands, for some unfathomable reason). It probably can even account for different lengths of months, and leap years (I was flabbergasted when I learned that there are watches being sold today for hundreds or thousands who require a manual adjustment at the end of every month that doesn't have 31 days).

* It can show the phase of the moon. Awesome if you're a werewolf running a hedge fund, I guess. It has a ton of other astrological indicators (Zodiac signs, etc.)

* It can chime every hour (presumably to remind the people around you that you exist and wear an overpriced watch).

* It works as a chronograph.

That's it, as far as I can tell. Nothing a $10 watch on Aliexpress could not do. It does not even seem to have an alarm, apparently. You get three actually useful functions (time — inaccurately, date, chrono) in a package that is 15mm thick.

No payment functionality, step counter, agenda, calculator.

But yes, you have a $100K or whatever watch that you can leave to your great-grandchildren so they can be assured that prior generations overpaid for gimmicky crap as well.

The fact you think this is a $100k watch shows you may not really be looking at it with the right framework?

A $2 print of a picture from the internet serves the same purpose, and provides the same functionality, as a $1,000 piece of art, or a $1,000,000 piece of art. The value isn't in the raw functionality it provides.

I was flabbergasted when I learned that there are watches being sold today for hundreds or thousands who require a manual adjustment at the end of every month that doesn't have 31 days

Watchmakers deserve more appreciation for how hard it is to track months/years mechanically in a package small enough to fit on your wrist! It's a lot of expectation for watch in the hundreds of dollars.

The end user benefits are none of the things you mentioned. Mechanical watches are jewelry. They look nice, and hopefully they remind you of something. For many people it's a connection to something cool. Omega sells a lot of moon watches, and it's not because anyone buying them is going to use the chronograph to time a fuel burn with life or death stakes. You're probably not wearing your Daytona at the race track or using your Longines watch for anything Amelia Earhart or Howard Hughes did. But it's fun to think about how you have a tool with a historical connection - whether that is to history everyone knows, or something more personal to you.

Wristwatches are fetishized but not buggy whips.

To each his own I guess.

The Apple Watch has billions of transistors in its microcircuits, mass-produced repeatably at very low cost. It's a different type of engineering but I think it's nonetheless impressive too (and I'm not actually a fan of Apple either.)

>this Vacheron-Constantin will likely be around 200 years from now

I’m interested to hear more. Typically things that are “most complicated” and lost lasting don’t go hand-in-hand.

You should visit this museum : https://www.patek.com/en/company/patek-philippe-museum/the-m...

Since mechanical watches are, by design, open source, there will always be a technician interested in keeping them going.

The mechanical watches are not open source at all - most (all?) of them do not come with engineering drawings nor with list of materials.

Even if you have a watch in front of you, it does not mean you can create a copy of it without a lot of work - you need to measure every gear, guess the materials used (how stiff should this spring be?), and re-draw mainplate and dial.

Compare to things like old electronics, which came with full schematics, service manual and sometimes even debugging guide.

The people who buy this kind of watches don’t usually wear them much, they store them in a safe environment.

I've had my Casio g-shock for 20 years, including bringing it to two war zones. I have a physical job and I abuse the shit out of it.

I'll take my chances with my Casio.

> I've had my Casio g-shock for 20 years, including bringing it to two war zones.

Watch aficionados appreciate G-Shocks just as much as an A. Lange & Söhne. If you visit their Youtube channels and web sites you'll often see things like Seiko SKXes were recommended for years (pre-discontinuation) as good value and great for day-to-day wear (beach going, gardening, etc).

Yep. I have 40 watches, from tudors, omegas, iwc, zenith, dunhill, nomos, oris, grand seiko, panerai.

I still love the shit out of my g shock. The only reason it doesn't get worn much is it was replaced by my garmin.

> this Vacheron-Constantin will likely be around 200 years from now, it will still be a testimony of the refinement and engineering

Usual playbook of the luxury watch market since marketing somehow made it relevant in the mid to end of the 20th century. Thank Haye for not being able to stand near a Swiss mechanical watch without someone uttering the world "timeless". This is the second best achievement of marketing after making people believing that diamonds are valuable.

These watches use small mechanical pieces (which are still very far away from the state of the art - a watch is an engineering achievement by the standard of 200 years ago). They require very regular maintenance to keep working and this maintenance is very expensive. They are not in anyway "timeless".

This is an expensive piece of jewellery, subject to everything related to expensive pieces of jewellery including fashion. It’s basically a Veblen good signalling wealth.

Mechanical watches don't require much maintenance. They need reoiling every decade or so. They also aren't usually very expensive. You wouldn't say that clothes are a Veblen good just because there are expensive clothing brands that are. Most mechanical watches are not this kind of luxury example.

Cheap mechanical watches are not generally what people talk about when they brandy the usual marketing points.

They are poor timekeeping pieces bottom feeding from the expensive brand marketing. A quartz movement in the same body is an all around improvement except for the smugness.

I like watches where I don’t have to change the battery. I have a kit to change them, but I appreciate the elegance of the purely mechanical solution, and my mechanical watches are generally my favorites for that reason. None of them are luxury goods or particularly expensive.

Even though I am not the kind of person who would spend an insane amount of money on a watch, I still think the elegance of the manufacturing of a piece like the one under discussion is really impressive and interesting.

Having to change the battery every now and then doesn't bother me, but I'm not at all jazzed at having to charge my watch every day or or so. Plus I just don't like wearing watches: I'm no steampunk, but they do need to bring back the form factor of a pocketwatch on a chain.

Don't you trade battery-every-5-years to "adjust time weekly"?

In the other comment, someone mention Vacheron Constantin watches can be off by as much as a minute per week! This is bad enough that I'd call a watch like that "unusable".

Yeah, I mean, I'm not claiming it's generally better in any objective sense, just that I prefer it.

I don't think mine loses a minute per week, but it isn't perfect. Noticing the watch is a minute or two behind once a month and quickly popping out the dial to roll it forward is not a meaningful hassle for me.

Relative to a battery watch, it's nice that the watch is a self-contained functional unit. It will "always" be functional, even if I've left it in a drawer for a few years (always in quotes because of course anything can break).

Part of it is also just that I like to think about the mechanical complexity and elegance of it. It gives me a little bit more joy than my battery watches (but I still have plenty of battery watches that I like!), and that's something I appreciate.

I agree that the marketing of some very expensive watch brands is over the top, and that some of the people wearing those might be rather smug. But you're overlooking a large market of watch enthusiasts who just like mechanical watches because they think they're cool, who buy decent quality watches that don't cost that much.

I got into it after reading the book Longitude. As someone who grew up sailing, who'd learned celestial navigation as a kid, I thought it'd be nifty to have that tech on my wrist. Plus I like that it's possible to understand exactly how it works. Now I have a small collection.

One of my watches, a Hamilton, cost me $700 and as long as I wear it, keeps time within a couple seconds a day, which was good enough to win the Longitude Prize in the 1700s with essentially the same tech. Lots of really expensive watches don't do any better. Hamilton is a brand that goes back to the 1800s, just like the expensive guys.

My only watch that cost over $1000 is from a guy in Denmark, a watch reviewer who decided to make his perfect watch. He hired a designer, spent a couple years blogging about the whole process, made it the best quality he could, produced 300 watches, and sold them at at a modest profit for $2700 each. I wore it in my wedding. To anyone else it's just another anonymous watch.

Lots of mechanical watch enthusiasts like quartz watches too. I have one I quite like that's solar powered. Just like a mechanical, I won't have to replace the battery in a few years.

I usually don't need to know the time to the exact second, and I generally have my phone with me anyway. But when I wear the Hamilton, for fun I usually check against time.gov every day or two to see how it's doing, and adjust to the exact time if it's off by more than a few seconds. I've seen it be exactly accurate after a week.

Yes, that’s the marketing working. People are basically purchasing a dream in the same way Rolex actually sell the idea of James Bond and Roger Federer. The brand wants people to somehow think that owning a random bunch of expensive metal connects them to people who did compete from the Longitude Prize more than just thinking about them.

It’s completely fine if it makes people happy but it’s also in a lot of way manipulative and disingenuous. That’s why I hate industries which are purely marketing based.

I don't think I'm connected to those people. I think it's a nifty device and I like how it looks. I learned about the Longitude Prize from a history book, and I doubt that it was commissioned by the watch industry.

Not everything is some ugly marketing conspiracy. People have appreciated beautiful, clever things for as long as they've been making them.

Jewellery, masterpiece of craftsmanship, wealth signaling ... and least importantly a time keeping device!

It is a nice looking watch!

But I can buy an Apple Watch Ultra every year for the next 200 years for less.

So, 199 Apple watches Ultra in landfills 200 years from now. Congrats.

A very worthy concen, but I don't think you want to go too deep on the morality if luxury goods. An Apple watch a decade leaves a lot of charitable giving.

499 actually. Can't let our unsold overproduction dilute the demand for the next model, so straight to the landfill it is.

Apple watches are unlikely to exist then

Apple is unlikely to exist then

You... well you already know.

Apple will likely exist in 200 years. It has $86B in cash on hand and could easily have had $1T if shareholders didn't kick up a fuss a few years ago.

I wouldn't bet on the Swiss watch market being necessarily around given that many young people aren't being taught how to tell the time and have little appreciation for watches.

Perplexity Pro's list of companies that have been around since 1825 (200 years ago):

1. Kongo Gumi (578 AD, Japan) 3. Specializing in temple construction for over 1,400 years, it was acquired in 2006 but still operates under Takamatsu Construction Group. 2. Drohobych Saltworks (1250, Ukraine) State-owned and Europe’s oldest salt producer, now also a cultural heritage site. 3. Shirley Plantation (1613, USA) Virginia’s oldest family-owned business, operating as a historic farm and museum. 4. Avedis Zildjian Company (1623, USA) The world’s premier cymbal manufacturer, founded in Istanbul and relocated to Massachusetts in 1929. 5. Hudson’s Bay Company (1670, Canada/USA) Originally a fur-trade monopoly, it now operates department stores like Saks Fifth Avenue. 6. White Horse Tavern (1673, USA) America’s oldest continuously running restaurant, serving patrons in Newport, Rhode Island. 7. Baker’s Chocolate (1765, USA) Launched by James Baker in Massachusetts, it remains a baking staple under Kraft Heinz ownership. 8. Laird & Company (1780, USA) The oldest licensed distillery in the U.S., producing applejack since the American Revolution. 9. King Arthur Baking Company (1790, USA) Founded in Boston, it’s now a Vermont-based leader in flour and baking products. 10. Brooks Brothers (1818, USA) America’s oldest clothing retailer, surviving bankruptcy in 2020 and continuing under new ownership.

This list seems very wrong. The US is overrepresented given its relatively short history. The number of breweries in Europe that are older than the US is probably over 100.

While there are a lot of tricky questions around the exact definition, I feel this Wikipedia list seems more believable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies

I agree. So much for my $20/month AI. BUT — it did a great job of guiding me to the perfect Jump/Carry/Charge device for my car....

You sure it was "perfect"? Or was it just like that advice - realstic looking but actually not the best...

It has become clear to me that using an AI in ANY capacity to add to a discussion here results in guaranteed downvotes.

Because it is an unreliable source and so you are just wasting everyone's time.

The shareholders will kick up another fuss someday, probably led by some Carl Icahn type, and loot the company until selling off the corpse. Berkshire Hathaway may be around in 200 years if civilization still is. I don't see the same for any tech company.

One could argue that the potential number of complications in any smartwatch is practically limitless, and also that the sophistication and craftsmanship required to make it, including the hardware part, is the ultimate testimony of refinement and engineering.

If you took an Apple Watch and this Vacheron 2000 years in the past, which one would the people of the time find more impressive (until the juice runs out, that is)? In other words - which one looks more like magic?

We're just used to microprocessors we can't see tick and maybe don't always appreciate the complexity.

I agree with what you said. But unfortunately I find this watch to have very little use. If I got it for free, I'd love it's value, wear it once or twice a year to some events, but that's pretty much it. On the other hand I sleep with my Garmin smartwatch, and use it every day. Between vibrating alarm clocks, notification synching (which allows me to use my phone less), NFC wallet, and all the fitness tracking for triathlons, it is one of the electronics I use the most.

I got so used to all the value my Garmin provides, I don't think I could handle replacing it with a watch that does nothing. It would be like going from a smartphone to an old nokia. I'd go crazy not being able to flip my wrist just to check the outdoor temperature.

I own mechanical watches and had the hardest time switching to an Apple Watch.

But one thing sold me on it. Apple Pay. It’s so convenient to be able to wrist tap things without whipping out my phone. I can pay for things in 1 second. With express transit I can tap to ride subways and buses.

I gave up the status of a mechanical watch wearer for this convenience. And the status is often more limited than we think — I realized no one except other mechanical watches enthusiasts really notice what watch I was wearing. You can wear a Vacheron Constantin and realistically 99% of people you meet will not know what it is and likely will not notice it.

When I started on a plan of ramping up my walks to half marathon distances, I knew I didn’t want to have to carry a wallet with me. I had Apple Pay already, which gave me the idea, but I was due a new watch so I got the cellular version, so if I got caught in a storm or tweaked a knee I could call someone to pick me up.

I still wish they got better battery life with each new version. You can chew up that whole battery in about 2:30 by running the workout app, music, and Bluetooth headphones. Half the reason I bought a HRM was to improve the battery life.

And sure enough the time I actually did tweak my knee, I had to stop listening to music and the workout app to conserve the battery long enough to ask for a ride and get somewhere that I could be picked up. By the time they arrived my watch was dead.

Yes battery is definitely a limitation. I’m able to get 15-16 hours on my Series 7 between charges. That works for me because I just charge it when I shower and it takes no time.

I wonder if for your use case a Watch Ultra might work better? It has a bigger battery.

That said, I agree with you that the battery could be better. Other smart watches have battery lives measured in days. (That said, they also do less)

Music and workout at the same time seem to have a power law relationship with power drain.

Most batteries produce more juice when discharged at their preferred rate and produce more heat if driven at full tilt.

There is craftsmanship in software.

It is just the reality that we live in you are not gonna exactly hear from A list celebrity talking about what a wizard Ken Thompson is but you are gonna spot the celebrity secure a brand deal wearing some monstrosity like RM.

As much as like and appreciate mechanical watches let's not kid ourselves you are talking about CNC machines and cad models rest of it is marketing from the 70's quartz crisis.

Given that just Apple watch outsold the whole swiss watch industry I am not sure if VC we will be here in 200 years but some piece of software will be probably still running.

> this Vacheron-Constantin will likely be around 200 years from now

And why should I care? I won't be alive 50 years from now.

Besides, right now, what I care about is functionality. And, right now, my old Pebble offers far more of it than this jewelry for millionaires.

This thing is just a stupid Veblen Good[1], like a diamond ring, a Hugo Boss suit or a Porche Carrerra.

Remember, 150 years ago, millionaires used beaver fur top hats to show off. Have you seen any billionaire wearing them?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good

Nobody asked you to care. As for co fusing soft from hard luxury... a Porsche Carrera or Bugatti Veyron will likely be worthy of consideration 150 years from now, a Hugo Boss suit, not so much..

> Nobody asked you to care.

Well, you did. It is implicit in your comment.

Don't get me wrong, you have every right of fooling the fools, even to the point of believing in the foolishness and fetishism.

But don't expect me to be one of the fools.

Your overcomplicated watch is just another version of "Jackie Kennedy's fake pearls necklace", as in this video[1]. Your "timelessness" of it is just fake sophistication, like Michael Jordan's "signature" in Air Jordan Nike. You are selling illusions, but it is coherent that you believe in them.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63oErn-gKfU

Original iPhone 1 is worth quite a lot actually.

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