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Comment by ventana | Hacker News Reader

This fun game just made me realize that actually using analog watch does not require converting the time to HH:MM.

I've been using analog watch for years, my Apple Watch face is set to analog and, apparently, I read the time as "it's almost 11", but never as "it's 10:58".

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Yep this is why I prefer analog watches. They are much faster to internalize the time but slower to convert to numbers. Because it’s an abstraction I innately know as someone who learned to read them as a child they are very familiar and easy to read. You really only need the actual numbers when someone asks you for the time.

Technology Connections did a really great video on this a few years ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeopkvAP-ag

Apparently being raised with analog clocks vs digital changes how one intuits the passage of time.

The classic example of this is when someone sees you check your watch, then they ask the time, and you have to check the watch again to see what time it actually is. A comment is almost always made about how the watch was just checked.

"Well, surely some time has passed since I read it last...you weren't asking me what time it was the last time I checked, were you?"

How about speed and speedometers in cars? For some reason I prefer digital readouts of speed while I prefer analog faces for watches/clocks.

Well, maybe because digital is better at showing small differences in this case? Like on a 50kmh road, dropping below 50 is quite noticeable in digital, less so with a line above or below another line.

But for the revs, I think it's quite clear that the analog is better.

Maybe one way to put it would be how important an exact value is? For the speed, it is. For revs, the relative value and its change is much more important and humans track movement much better.

It’s because speedometers aren’t showing a fraction of a whole. Analog clocks work by showing how far through the minute/hour/12 hour period you are. Speedometers are just sticks pointing at numbers. Analog speedometers do however do a better of representing your acceleration than digital ones because the speed of the dial does show acceleration.

> They are much faster to internalize the time but slower to convert to numbers.

People keep saying that, but even after trying all my life, I still can't read analog clocks without mentally "decoding" the exact time. And I'm usually good at quickly building visual intuitions!

Though I think I experience what you're describing, just with digital clocks. For those it feels like I'm not reading 4 separate digits, as if the general "shape" is enough.

Yes, if you use an analog indicator for an analog parameter, you can skip a „parse” step. Similarly, airplanes use analog indicators, or digital ones that either mimic their analog counterparts, or in some way incorporate visual aids that go past a number. This allows the pilot to, at a glance, check the values, see the rate of change, get a useful readout even if the value is noisy or oscillating.

I got a mechanical watch with a 24-hour dial, and I see it as “mid-morning”, “late afternoon” etc.

It does annoy me that it’s harder to find 24-hr dials with noon at the top and midnight at the bottom. They all put midnight at the top for some reason.

The same “kids across the street” I reference in another comment needed translation from “quarter to eleven” when they’d ask the time. Makes sense given they couldn’t read an analog face at the time.

Similarly, when I moved from the UK to Canada, people often didn't understand what I meant when I said it was "half ten", which is the common way of saying ten thirty, at least where I grew up.

I never heard that when I lived in the UK in the 70s, but only in Ireland in the late 90s.

I’m a “quarter past” person but I’ve always been confused by “half ten” (which thankfully isn’t used in Australia). But in German, “half ten” means 9:30, which is make more sense to me (probably because I’m used to how German speech often drops words, which is less common in English)

For "half ten" we're just dropping a word from "half past ten".

How does one get to "half ten" in German? Is it simply starting from "half to ten"?

Halfway to ten.

05:00

This actually makes more sense!

>How does one get to "half ten" in German? Is it simply starting from "half to ten"?

Never thought about it much but I think you're spot on. English uses "half past" and therefore "half 10" means 10:30, whereas most other languages use "half to" which causes "half 10" to mean 9:30.

One would think this should cause confusion for international meetings often enough to be common knowledge, but I didn't know until today...

“Halfway to” -> “half”

Well we only disagree 1/60 of the time so it's probably fine as long as we avoid meetings at exactly the half hour.

English thinkers might also want to consider the fact that 0930 is half-way through hour 10

Yes but it’s uncommon in English to simply drop a word from a sentence while pretty common in German casual discourse.

The only other English common case I can think of is the American “I could [not] care less” dropping “not” which is also confusing.

Next, go to Germany or the Netherlands where half ten means 9:30.

Half ten? So.. 5. Got it.

I was thinking 10:30.

Some Americans say ‘a quarter of X’ and even after 30 years I can’t remember if that’s before or after hour X.

Before. Source: born and raised Midwesterner.

As a Canadian, I've never heard anyone say half ten. I do hear half past ten regularly, so you'd figure it'd click :)

My 18 year old daughter is the same (and also can't read an analog clock). Despite me using "quarter to," "quarter past," and "half past" regularly throughout her life. And we having analog clocks in most communal spaces in our house. And we drilled her on analog clocks for two summers in a row...

Have you ever run in to issues sharing your interpretation?

Like, people ask me the time, I say "almost 11", and they insist "but what time is it rEallY" and it's like...it really is almost 11, if you required access to the information that it is 10:58, you'd have the access to determine that. There's no world in which you need to know when it is 10:58 and do not have the ability to determine that.

If you're asking, you need exactly the general read I just offered.

As a habitually right-on-time person, I disagree. I time things down to seconds, not minutes. I'm rarely ever late and almost never early, but to be that way, I need to know exactly what time it is. And if I'm asking, it's because my watch is broken, and the general read you offered is exactly useless to me.

Most people asking just need the general time, but if they follow up asking for the precise time and you know what it is, it's for a good reason that you've obviously never considered. It's up to you to help them out, or give them a hard time for no good reason. Your choice will say a lot about you.

If you really needed the exact specific time, you'd be wrong to trust a random analog watch anyway because you know how inaccurate they are given how much you care about time.

Your entire hostility is based on the assumption that I do know the actual time, which I usually don't because I don't live my life like that. I cannot handle either the anxiety of waiting until the last minute to do something or the friction of being upset in traffic or being perturbed over someone showing up "five minutes late when they damn well knew the meeting was at WX:YZ" or whatever.

I am almost always early, and can't remember the last time I was late, but I don't mind that at all because I am far more comfortable spending a few minutes meditating, gathering my thoughts, planning, etc in between events than acting like I'm speed running life.

My point was more referring to the many instances in which I know the person and the situation and know that the exact time is both irrelevant and not likely offered by my watch.

> Have you ever run in to issues sharing your interpretation?

Not really.

Of course, having an analog Apple Watch face does not mean that don't know the exact time for the cases when I need to know the minutes, e.g. for a train departure time or things like that. It's just a mental calculation that I don't normally perform when I quickly look at my watch.

I would agree that people who need to know the time up to a minute normally won't ask because they likely have their own device showing it; and if they don't, they most likely don't need to know it up to a minute. But if they indeed do, I don't have problems with converting the watch time to HH:MM.

Same, I find it easier to see time on analogue. When I see 3:30 for example, in my head I see hands of a watch (in-fact, a very particular watch I grew up seeing in the shade in courtyard). I visualize not just the watch but the lighting at that time of day as well. Gives me perfect sense of how late or early in the day that time means.

Do you live on the equator?

03:30 is anywhere from dead of night to nearly dawn for me. Similarly 15:30 is anywhere from near midday to near sundown.

I meant 3:30 at the day time aka 15:30

That's because one doesn't usually look at their watch to find out what the time is: most of the time (pun unintended) we want to how much time is left for an activity, or for an activity to start.

As in, how many more minutes before my flight takes off, or how much time left for this exam?

I like your take, but specifically to the Apple Watch: I’ve been using it for 10 years, and still find it annoying that Apple ships so few high-quality digital faces.

It’s either cutesy stuff with one complication or overwhelming complex ones.

yeah, i've been using cheap mechanical analog watches and wouldn't trust it to be accurate to-the-minute by the end of the day anyway. i kind of enjoy knowing only the approximate time.

Long ago I used KDE's "fuzzy clock." the fuzziness was adjustable to as high as "middle of the week," which is funny but not very practical. At a higher resolution it was fun for a while.

haha same

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