Be Excellent To Each Other

“From $10,000 to $20,000, you are into the realm of watchmaking where everything you see is original and interesting — or at least should be. […] all featuring truly in-house movements with a moderate amount of hand-finishing to internal components. These watches will be assembled by hand, completely in Switzerland and offer the incredibly low tolerances and extreme quality for which this industry is known.”

...

“The Apple Watch Edition is not a luxury watch; it’s just a gold-cased version of the cheaper watch. There’s nothing exclusive about it, nothing special. It’s not like more expensive watches where you pay for complex machinery. Yes, there is gold; that will make it more expensive than the other models. But not that much. Estimates of the cost of the gold suggest that the metal would cost less than $1,000.”

http://www.mcelhearn.com/thoughts-on-th ... h-edition/

The comments to that article read as the better source of comparison than the article itself, unusually.

But both articles miss the argument that you cant compare the inherent values of products with wildly differing lifecycles on the same basis. If the deal was that you'd auto upgrade at insignificant price to v2 ad infinitum then you can compare it to a luxury watch. I think Gruber covered that point off. As it stands its a standalone one off item.

This is what bothers me the most about the iWatch.

I'm not going to go into whether paying $15,000 for a Rolex (or whatever) is worth it, but if people do, at the very least it will be a beautiful piece of precision machinery, that will (ironically, I suppose) be timeless. It will become an heirloom, passed down through generations, it will stand the test of time.

Not so with the iWatch, which will most likely be obsolete within 2 years at most? And at any point could be rendered utterly useless. I imagine iOS 12 probably won't run on one, for example.

I just don't see how/why people are attempting to provide valid comparisons between iWatch and a regular "luxury" watch.

A much better comparison is the Vertu bling phones, which do have a market for people who want bling.

Also incredibly rich people buy hugely expensive cars which depreciate in value and are not good investments. They don't care - it's the experience they have while it's new that's important. Money is disposable.

They don't just pluck a figure out of the air when pricing cars, though. As with luxury watches there is at least some reflection of the costs of producing them. This is just pure bling tat, the only experience to be had is that of displaying your wealth. I suppose they figure that it's a necessity if they want these things to be seen on the wrists of the sorts of twats who morons might wish to emulate.

You obviously haven't seen gold-plated cars then, or phone cases encrusted with diamonds. Go to Abu Dhabi, there is so much bling tat there as they have more money than they know what to do with. There is a huge market for this.

My grandparents bought me a watch for my 16th birthday, and I loved it. Two days later I was mugged, at school, by a group of about 8 people from a neighbouring school (they also took the new purse I'd bought with my birthday money... The irony).

Since then I've never been able to wear a watch, because I found it kind of upsetting.

Now I have a phone I just use that for the time. Before that I'd just look at clocks around the place. They are everywhere. I'm not sure I understand the use of a watch anymore. Less do one that has the stripped down functionality of my phone.

I also rarely take my phone out of the house. I must be some kind of Luddite, but everywhere I go people sit with their phones, in restaurants and parks, pubs and parties, ignoring each other. It's weird and sad.

The Bank of Oman has gold doors in Muscat. The Sultan liked a beach so much he moved a whole village and built a luxury hotel there. High end Mercedes are driven quickly through graded roads in the desert. Huge sporting events are bought and imported. Conspicuous consumption is big business in the middle east.

A gold-plated Lambourghini is still an outrageous hypercar underneath. But the $17k Apple Watch is identical in almost every way to the $349 one; it's just made of gold. It's not a Lambourghini, it's a gold-plated Ford Focus. Are there a lot of those in Abu Dhabi too?

I don't know what that is, Davpaz?

Have you never seen it, though? Russell and I see it every time we go out. We went out a few times for dinner last week, and everywhere we went there were miserable couples looking at their phones, not speaking to each other.

At a wedding we went to a few weeks ago someone caused a bit of a ruckuss as soon as the ceremony was over and through the reception by insisting people check their phones for football scores and then getting loud and angry because they weren't what they wanted. I just don't think we need to be up to date with every single occurrence, 24 hours a day, when we do get to spend precious time with our friends, families and loved ones.

The picture is a "Better Than Life" worst-case scenario about how people may start to live in virtual worlds and let the real world fade.

But yes, I've seen it. I work in a University and it's not uncommon to see large groups of people sat around in silence on their smartphones. To be fair though, it doesn't really happen amongst groups of friends, in the refectory for example the buzz of conversation is still as loud as ever.

I prefer sitting in the corner with a book.

Hipster

I'm pretty sure there's a middle ground between spending every waking hour looking at your phone vs never even taking it out of the house (which is arguably also an odd attitude in itself); and I suspect the vast majority of people happily occupy that middle ground.

Sad idea. I think you can get a lot of strength and support from friends online. Goodness only knows, I know that more than most, but if you ARE lucky enough to have family and friends who are with you, near you, you shouldn't ignore them for the sake of football scores, Twitter feeds and Facebook. Never for Facebook...

I think the thing I don't like about this watch is that I like to get away from constant world contact. When I go out for dinner, or shopping (unless we plan to split up to buy each other surprises, in which case I take it so we can find each other afterwards), I leave my phone at home.

I think if you had a watch that acted as another world contact port, but also used it for something as everyday as checking the time, the ease with which you would leave it all behind, whether at home or in your pocket, would perhaps escape just a little more.

They are both luxury items. Your gold-plated Ford Focus analogy would be more akin to this:

Screw the plated Ford Focus. I want a gold BBC Micro

And people bought those to show off their wealth, did they?

No, that's my point. Same as a gold-plated Ford Focus.

Do keep up!

Well, of course. Did that need saying?

No, just to annoy the gold-plated Speccy owners.

Mr Dave's flat is a mess.

Here you go. £22,800 for a mid-spec feature phone. Because it's made of shiny materials and is well bling innit.

http://www.vertu.com/gb/en/collections/ ... cgid=12500

It's basically an old Nokia. It's that price because it's bling, exactly like the fancy Apple Watch.

BATPHONE!

As much or as little as anything else we talk about here. Apologies if I'm not hitting your required level of interest or something.

Apology accepted.

Of course, I never said I never take my phone outside the house, I just don't bother with it very often. If I am going to meet somebody somewhere, it's handy in case one party is delayed. If I am going out alone I will take it for safety in case something happens. If I am going to split up with someone to do secret shopping, again it is handy to find them again.

But I don't know why I would take my phone out if I was going out to dinner, or on a shopping trip with a friend, or a wedding, or any other occasion where I was going to be spending time with someone else or a group of friends and family. Answering texts, checking sports, reading Twitter - all of these things can be done at another time.

Go fuck yourself dude.

It's less about 'why' and more about 'why not'. It's not difficult to think of emergency situations in any scenario where someone might need to urgently contact you, or you them, which can be done if you've got your phone on you. If you don't want to answer texts, checking sports, read Twitter there's an easy solution there: just don't do it.

You're sort of presenting it here as a binary choice between having your phone on you and thus acting anti-socially to a degree vs not having it on you and properly engaging with whomever you're physically with which I don't really understand.

Perhaps she has no will power?

Maybe. I'm answering the question 'why would I take my phone out'.

I honestly don't really mind this, sometimes the conversation drifts to something that is absolutely of no interest and at those times I think that momentarily taking myself away by looking at my phone is less rude than yelling "SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT FUCKING FOOTBALL" into their faces. That said some people do seem to have a problem to the point where they're constantly having to look up from their phones and say "erm, what, sorry" to get someone to repeat what they just asked them. That's just rude.

The trick is to know how to activate the ringer without looking.

The only person I expect will ever have any reason to contact me quickly is usually with me. He usually takes his phone in case of break down, etc.

I can't really imagine any situation outside of that that requires me to see my phone in any kind of urgency.

She actually has incredible amounts of will-power, but that's not what's needed.

I don't have any need, want or feeling to check my phone when I am out, so why carry around an expensive but of extra equipment to bulk out my pocket to not look at it for eight hours to then return home?

It might as well carry around a small frying pan and a can of Mr Muscle if I start toting around things for the sake of it.

If I'm not going to use it, why bring it with me?

To take pictures of your food. Like an Gaywood.

Ever since I was a teenager and phones were first coming in, I've always felt that the moment people get theirs out and start discussing size or features etc is the moment that the conversation had exhausted itself and the evening was drawing to a close.

That depends on the company you keep. As evidenced by the various Android/iOS threads here, and all the discussion everywhere else on the internet, a lot of people are interested in phone technology in and of itself and not just because they've somehow run out of other things to talk about (does that ever actually happen?).

Yes. Then they get married.

Your frying pan comparison is, obviously, ludicrous because there's a massive difference in potential utility when out of your house between a mobile communication device and a cooking implement but ultimately (of course!) it's all about whatever works for you. Aside from the fact that I personally can imagine a multitude of situations where I might need to urgently communicate with people who aren't physically with me it's also no hassle at all to stick my phone in my pocket. It costs me nothing even if it sits in there doing nothing for any length of time so again, for me, it's more about 'why not' than 'why'. Whatever works for everyone.

I'm going to have to start eating in some more interesting places if I'm going to do that

Ludicrous for you as you are more likely to use one than the other. You seem to forget that I'm not saying you shouldn't carry your phone around, just that I don't find a use for mine when I'm out, so don't take it with me, so the idea of a watch to further tie people to their devices doesn't appeal to me.

I honestly don't care if you take your phone out, why would I? Even if you were one of those people that sat in a restaurant near me and ignored your wife/friends/parents/kids whilst on your phone I wouldn't care (I'd feel a bit sorry for those being ignored, and think you looked rather silly, but that was it), but I'm sure you'd not do that anyway.

The only time that it would bother me at all would be if you were out to dinner with me, or visiting me at my house, etc, and spent your time with your nose buried in the phone, then I'd find it rude.

Are we honestly going to pretend that habitually a mobile phone around is less odd than carrying a frying pan for anyone? Really?



I've no idea; I've never at any point claimed that you would. I'm just having a conversation here.

I don't take my phone out when I'm going to see my friends because I need to, I take it out just in case.

Pretty sure that carrying a mobile phone with you is less likely to lead to Plod feeling your collar late at night.

On three separate occasions, I have grabbed a dog who's roaming loose, phoned the owners from the number on its collar, and returned it safely to them.

I've never seen anyone in a car accident or medical emergency that required me to call 999 immediately, although I did once report what I thought was probably a stolen and abandoned car to the police's non-urgent number.