A rather vague article in the paper this morning...

Turn back time? What it means to wear a watch in the era of mobile phones

https://www.theguardian.com/fashion...f-mobile-phones?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Messages

 

about a year before the dawn of the iPhone I was going through my own "quartz crisis" at the tail end of 10 watches in 15 years and no satisfaction. I'd always worn a watch but..... every new model I bought seemed to work for a bit, then have movement and battery problems. I spent more time tracking down batteries than I did enjoying my (quartz) timekeepers. I was at a point of great frustration when I discovered the weird world of mechanical watches. Bought an Invicta that I loved/hated ever since, but one which never, ever failed me.

However..... if I'd held out just a little longer, until smartphones (syncing time across the internet with NTP) became de rigueur, there's a good chance I would have ditched watches completely, as did most of my family and most of my non-nerd friends and colleagues.

I still hate/love my Invicta; but it did its job well. And part of that "job" was being stuck to my wrist like a vampire, feasting off my life essence and still giving a more-or-less accurate account of time, day-in and day-out, until the day my wrist met an Omega.

 

Interesting. Hopefully that'll help kick-start the mid-tier watches again among younger people.

However, same journal, two years ago: https://www.theguardian.com/comment...e-clocks-students-cant-tell-time-during-exams

 

I much prefer using a watch or clock to tell the time than a digital screen. I actually very seldom even look at the time on my computer while at work, but rather glance at my wrist or at the wall clock by the door.

 

I never used to wear a watch, preferring the convenience of the smart phone or someone else's wrist, until I received one as a gift a little more than ten years back. Fast forward to when I first saw the inside workings of a Swiss Mechanical watch and ended up buying the darn thing (it was a Baume and Mercier Clifton Moonphase), and then to my first vintage watch (a 1930s Longines Art Deco), and now when I'm staring at a collection of more than a hundred of these beating beauties.

There's just a certain charm to them, the winding, the ticking and sweeping hands, that keeps me hooked. Very glad to be a watch collector.

 

I am also not sold on the idea that watches are obsolete. We still need to tell time. Why the f%#k is it easier or better to use your phone to tell time. It makes no sense. It takes longer to take out my phone than glance at my wrist. I am so tired of the digital masturbation.

 

I've worn a watch since about age 10. My first "real" watch was a beautiful automatic Seiko chrono at age 16. It lasted me 20+ years of daily wear and abuse. I can't imagine NOT wearing a watch, and, since I see it as a necessity, the watch may as well be a really nice one.

 

A similar article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday titled, "What Makes a $60,000 Watch So Expensive" was very shallow and didn't really inform the reader. Many of these types of articles appear in the Fashion section and are just filler.

 

100? do you rotate 3 or 4 times a day??

 

A watch is unquestionably the most convenient tool for timekeeping. Leaving aside the particular joy of watch-appreciation, they just make sense in western society where we live by arrangements and appointments.
I completely understand that there are those who are happy not to wear a watch and to use their digital devices instead, but I suspect the only people who really think watches are obsolete are people who haven't thought the notion through. Obsolescence is what happens when something is superseded by something that does the same job, but better. There's no way that our phones are better than watches for telling the time.
Perhaps when we all have implants that provide us with information at the drop of a thought, perhaps then we'll no longer have a need for something that requires us to lift our wrist and look at it? Until then, watches are about as ergonomic as you can get for the function they perform.