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I live in the opposite side of the fence. I have a Longines I bought some twenty years ago and I consider it irreplaceable with any kind of smart watch. While t

I live in the opposite side of the fence. I have a Longines I bought some twenty years ago and I consider it irreplaceable with any kind of smart watch. While the latter provide a lot more functionality an automatic watch is a marvel of engineering and as such I view them more like an accessory than something that just tells the time. I love staring at it even twenty years later.

Bartweiss 7y ago
It's been fascinating to see the rise, fall, and rise of digital watches among techies. I remember 1990s Dilbert having an entire storyline about the engineers getting into a calculator-watch arms-race. In real life, it was pretty common to laugh about how a $50 digital Casio could do far more things than a Rolex. By about 2010 (or perhaps even by the iPod Touch or Palm Pilot), I stopped hearing that. Watches had lost all of their unique functions to smartphones, so their raison d'etre was either "rugged and cheap" or "jewelry" and calculator watches almost vanished. Circa 2015, we get Pebble gen 2, Apple Watch, and Fitbit Blaze: smart watches have phone integrations, fitness tracking, and don't look like hell anymore. Since then, they've increasingly aimed for design good enough to wear with a suit; the Galaxy Watch is always-on and analog. These days, I see two splits among watch-wearing engineers: smartwatch vs not, and practical vs decorative. So the result is quadrants like: Fitbit | Galaxy Watch Casio | Longines
stevekemp 7y ago
I wore a fitbit for a year or so, which was enough to tell me that I walk "many" steps a day - remarkably consistent amounts for weekdays, and then much more over the weekend. But nothing beats a decent watch. I have no problem pulling my phone out of my pocket if I want to interact with it, and it seems like most people who have notifications pushed to their wrists still do that. It's announce-only. I've got a 20 year old rolex I wear most days, and a couple of other mechanical watches, including an old Soviet piece made the year I was born. Each of my watches is used for a specific thing, which keeps them in regular rotation. (For example I have a sauna-watch, a photography watch, a swimming watch, a posh-event watch, etc. My only digital watch is a Casio F-91W which is used in the sauna.) Sure mechanical watches aren't perfect, and if you have one with a date you need to reset it if is one of a rotation, but they're classy, they're fashionable, and they're so much more practical than most smart-watches (largely due to the charging issues).
- nradov 7y ago
  Smartwatches are far more practical if you need more than time / date / stopwatch / timer. Some smartwatches can go several days on a charge depending on how much you use the GPS tracking or apps.

Bartweiss 7y ago

It's been fascinating to see the rise, fall, and rise of digital watches among techies. I remember 1990s Dilbert having an entire storyline about the engineers getting into a calculator-watch arms-race. In real life, it was pretty common to laugh about how a $50 digital Casio could do far more things than a Rolex. By about 2010 (or perhaps even by the iPod Touch or Palm Pilot), I stopped hearing that. Watches had lost all of their unique functions to smartphones, so their raison d'etre was either "rugged and cheap" or "jewelry" and calculator watches almost vanished. Circa 2015, we get Pebble gen 2, Apple Watch, and Fitbit Blaze: smart watches have phone integrations, fitness tracking, and don't look like hell anymore. Since then, they've increasingly aimed for design good enough to wear with a suit; the Galaxy Watch is always-on and analog. These days, I see two splits among watch-wearing engineers: smartwatch vs not, and practical vs decorative. So the result is quadrants like: Fitbit | Galaxy Watch Casio | Longines

stevekemp 7y ago

I wore a fitbit for a year or so, which was enough to tell me that I walk "many" steps a day - remarkably consistent amounts for weekdays, and then much more over the weekend. But nothing beats a decent watch. I have no problem pulling my phone out of my pocket if I want to interact with it, and it seems like most people who have notifications pushed to their wrists still do that. It's announce-only. I've got a 20 year old rolex I wear most days, and a couple of other mechanical watches, including an old Soviet piece made the year I was born. Each of my watches is used for a specific thing, which keeps them in regular rotation. (For example I have a sauna-watch, a photography watch, a swimming watch, a posh-event watch, etc. My only digital watch is a Casio F-91W which is used in the sauna.) Sure mechanical watches aren't perfect, and if you have one with a date you need to reset it if is one of a rotation, but they're classy, they're fashionable, and they're so much more practical than most smart-watches (largely due to the charging issues).

nradov 7y ago
Smartwatches are far more practical if you need more than time / date / stopwatch / timer. Some smartwatches can go several days on a charge depending on how much you use the GPS tracking or apps.