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Comment by zer0tonin | Hacker News Reader

It's a watch. It's an item that literally has one single job: tell the time accurately. It goes without saying that it should do a pretty good job at this and be accurate.

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Define "accuracy".

What, if anything, in your life needs to be done with-in ±5 minutes? If the analog minute hand "should" be on 2, but it's closer to 1 or 3, how many things will fall apart in your life?

Catching a train.

Frankly it's a total non-issue because you now have your train ticket on a mobile app on a mobile device with synchronized internet time anyway. Most people are wearing mechanical watches today as jewellery and a physical piece of craftsmanship that's nice to keep time that's directionally correct, but if it's out by 30seconds it's no big deal and you just reset it against the time on your phone and get on with your day.

I still use paper tickets and many others do too! At any rate though, I agree. It doesn't matter to me that my mechanical watch is often out by 30 seconds. I don't mind checking and adjusting it every now and then so it's never off by ±5 minutes where it would cause problems for me.

Any meeting? I wouldn’t want to be the guy that is always 5 minutes late

Watches are jewelry. Telling time isn't even their main purpose, nevermind telling it accurately. Of course, maintaining accuracy is part of what makes them cool to the people who like them, but even if they lost several minutes a day, I suspect my watch wearing brethren would continue to wear them.

That’s only the case for expensive watches. I use my cheap watch to tell the time.

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