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Apple Pays Swiss Federal Railways $21 Million For Clock Icon
- jere 14y agoWhen an app that lets you upload photos to the internet sells for 50 times this, I think I'm OK with it.
- tedmiston 14y agoWatching the motion of the real Swiss railway clocks [1] with its smoothness is quite soothing. "It requires only about 58.5 seconds to circle the face, then the hand pauses briefly at the top of the clock. It starts a new rotation as soon as it receives the next minute impulse from the master clock." [2] 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvIvKiDWDks http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvIvKiDWDks 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_railway_clock http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_railway_clock
- smarx 14y agoI imagine that the part you find soothing is the first 58.5 seconds of each minute, where the second hand just rotates continuously rather than ticking. But I find it really jarring that the clock stops every minute and then starts up again with a jerk.
- ekianjo 14y agoInteresting fact. I wonder why they could not make it go round in 60 seconds exactly. Did you they have to play with some motor limitations for the seconds hand, or was it purely by design ?
- tb 14y agoIt's to keep all the railway clocks in sync. You could have one that's running up to 1.5s slow and it will still be able to keep up with all the rest, and they're all resynchronised with each other every minute. This is important when it could be the difference between catching a train or not.
- jrockway 14y agoIf it's really that important, why not just use digital clocks?
- dblock 14y agoThis was designed in the 50s!
- nicholassmith 14y agoHistory and culture, it's a symbolic touchstone for the Swiss railway. It could of course be ripped out and replaced with a digital one, but would it be as well loved? Possibly, possibly not.
- hessenwolf 14y agoTo most of us in the world, I am sure, there's a fifteen minute standard deviation on arrival/departure times :(
- sgift 14y agoBecause this is a mechanical clock. It has to catch 60 seconds independent of environmental conditions (weather, snow, cold etc.) which adversely affect the performance of the clock.
- marvin 14y agoIt this really true? I hope this doesn't count as a useless contribution, but paying 21 million dollars for a clock design on your mobile OS seems to me like complete insanity. For this price, you could literally hire multiple competent workers to do whatever you wanted for the rest of their working lives, and still have money left over. It would be a lot more rational to just switch to a different clock design and pocket the money. 21 million is almost just a rounding error in Apple's accounting department, but it's still a ridiculous amount of money. I can't possibly believe that giving your users this specific design and not losing face due to backpedaling is worth this much.
- lucasvo 14y agoWhat most people don't know about this clock design is, that the Swiss Railways are licensing it to a watch manufacturer who sells them in retail. The watch with the exact same design is available commercially. Therefore suing Apple and making Apple pay is something the actually have to do without risking their other licensing deals.
- salgernon 14y agoI do wonder if this is officially licensed: http://www.chumby.com/guide/search?sort_by=score&device=&query=Railway&x=0&y=0 http://www.chumby.com/guide/search?sort_by=score&device=... I've had it on my chumby for about a year.
- skeletonjelly 14y agoThey didn't create the clock with the notion that it would cost this much. They used a design, whether it was copied or not from the Swiss design, and subsequently the Swiss Rail claimed infringement.
- leviathant 14y agoI'm curious about your insertion of "whether it was copied or not from the Swiss design" - any suggestion that this was designed independently by someone who had never seen the Swiss design is either fantasy or absurdity.
- thx1138 14y agoI hope that came with a reach around.
- LVB 14y agoCan Swiss Federal Railways now turn around and offer a license to Samsung for $9.99?
- tnuc 14y agoIt is their property, they can do whatever they want with it.
- adrianhoward 14y agoDepends on the terms of the licence. It might be exclusive in certain domains.
- apetresc 14y agoAn identical clock is used at most of the swimming pools I've competed/trained in for lap times and synchronization. I remember it distinctly, since I spent so much time looking at it. It even has the "smooth motion, with a pause at the minute mark" feature that others in the thread are discussing. I suppose that also has practical advantages for swim meets. I sure hope my high school won't also have to pay $21,000,000; I don't think they'll be able to afford it.
- DanBC 14y agoWith a red (not orange) second hand? With that big counter-weight circle on the end of the second hand? With square-cut parallel-sided hands?
- apetresc 14y agoYes, yes, and yes. Especially those last two things, that's the most distinctive thing about it.
- JeremyBanks 14y agoDoes your high school manufacture its own clocks?
- vadimoss 14y agoI think Apple should actually pay another $21M to your high school as well:). I am pretty sure some of their designers go swimming in between researching for "inspiration" for the most iconic designs of human civilization:)
- Luc 14y ago> An identical clock is used at most of the swimming pools I've competed/trained in for lap times and synchronization. It's quite possible - you can buy them new from the original manufacturer. They are not exclusive to the railways. http://www.mobatime.com/products/analog-clocks/analog-outdoor-clocks/profiline.html http://www.mobatime.com/products/analog-clocks/analog-outdoo...
- hemancuso 14y agoWhen you are making $4 million in profit per hour[1], you might as well buy a nice watch (face). 1.http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/07/27/amzn-profit-correction http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/07/27/amzn-profit-corr...
- josephagoss 14y ago3-4 Hours of net profit. :)
- clarky07 14y agoWhile this is obviously a copy, I'm not sure why everyone loves this design. The only thing that looks different from every other watch in the world is the ball on the end of the second hand, and I find it disturbing.
- huhtenberg 14y agoIt'll grow on you :)
- jessriedel 14y agoApple has sold a quarter billion iPhones. This fee works out to 10 cents per phones for one of the most prominent images. Arguably worth it.
- dhbanes 14y agoThis clock isn't used on the iPhone.
- nicholassmith 14y agoI imagine if they've just licensed it they'll be considering getting their money worth so to speak.
- jessriedel 14y agoWhoops. Well, they've sold about a 100 million iPads, so it's more like 20 cents.
- genuine 14y agoWill someone please stand up, gets some balls, and say that the world needs to stick its litigiousness where the sun don't shine? I'm not defending Apple. They screwed the pooch recently suing Samsung. This is karma. But, we need to speak out against people just suing because they can. And, while we're at it, enact laws that restrict the power of unions.
- gillesv 14y agoKinda puts the whole Samsung deal in perspective, doesn't it? $1 billion seems like a bargain now.