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 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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.

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 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").

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

To each his own I guess.

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

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.

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

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

I'll take my chances with my Casio.

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).

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.

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.

It is a nice looking watch!

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 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.

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

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.

Apple is unlikely to exist then

You... well you already know.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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)

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

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.

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