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This is a very interesting article, and I like how it's written in the perspective of a functional watch user instead of being about fashion or watch collecting
by reubenmorais 12y ago
This is a very interesting article, and I like how it's written in the perspective of a functional watch user instead of being about fashion or watch collecting.
I couldn't help but laugh at this part:
> Also, though it sounds trivial, I enjoy the perfect 60 FPS smoothness of Apple Watch’s second hand — a smoothness no mechanical watch could ever match.
Isn't a mechanical watch hand ∞ FPS by definition? Real life has got to be at least better than 144hz :)
- serve_yay 12y ago> Isn't a mechanical watch hand ∞ FPS by definition? You guys are so silly sometimes.
- Shivetya 12y agohttps://www.theverge.com/a/apple-watch-review https://www.theverge.com/a/apple-watch-review I found this more informative because he used it a bit more like I expected someone to.
- green7ea 12y agoI'm going to take your ∞ FPS comment on go on a wild tangent because physics is fun :-D: Nothing can be infinity FPS because it would be limited by the frequency of the light that we use to see the watch hand. In the case of the visual spectrum, it caps out around 668 THz with blue light (red light is lowest at 400 THz). This would make it "only" ~4.7E12 times better than 144 Hz ;-).
- cozzyd 12y agoReally you're probably limited by the speed of sound in the watch hand
- vacri 12y agoTo further complicate the issue, the human eye cannot see 668 quadrillion 'frames per second'. Under the best possible conditions, for parts of the eye, 1000 'fps' is the best we can do, though generally it's much, much lower.
- aesthetics1 12y agoHuh. Now I remember why I read hackernews.
- t0mbstone 12y agoBrilliant! With that said, though, I believe that the movement of the actual atoms making up the mechanical hands is still happening in an "infinitely smooth" sense, although the way we measure and observe that movement (via reflections of light or perhaps some other type of electromagnetic radiation) may be limited.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- seanflyon 12y agoAssuming movement is continuous and not in discrete units. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_length http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_length
- nilkn 12y agoYou don't even need to appeal to Planck length here, because it's clear from more basic quantum mechanics that particles simply do not have classical paths.
- leni536 12y agoPlease don't misinterpret the Planck length. Please don't interpret it in any way, it's right in the wiki article: >There is currently no proven physical significance of the Planck length;... It's just dimensional analytical playing with some fundamental physical constants. Physicist believe that this scale length may have some connection with the yet to be discovered laws of quantum gravity. It has nothing to with the "finite resolution of the universe". There is no evidence that the universe has finite resolution.
- vardump 12y agoIf time or space are quantized, then "infinitely smooth" would be impossible. I guess no one knows.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- jonhester 12y agoMechanical watches, think Rolexes, have smooth second hand movements but they are acutally still ticking, just about 6 times a second. The Apple Watch, on the other hand, has a second hand with 60 ticks per second so that the second hand is about 10 times smoother.
- pcurve 12y agoTrue as long as there are sufficient number of pixel density to movement of 60 ticks per seconds.
- idbehold 12y agoAntialiasing.
- Cookingboy 12y agoI don't know many mechanical watches (especially Rolex) that ticks at 6 times per second. That requires the balance wheel to be beating at 12Hz. Old Rolex tick 3 times per second on 6 beats/second balance wheel movements, and modern Rolex do 4 ticks per second on 8 beats per second movement.
- Calcite 12y agoThat's incorrect. The seconds hand moves 6 times in one second on my 7S26 movement (21,600 bph). On a modern Rolex, it would move 8 times in one second. You can check this with a high speed camera (such as the one in the iPhone 6). Nonetheless, there are vastly superior mechanical drives out there that are continuous (Seiko Spring Drive for example).
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- noinsight 12y agoAnd Bulova has the Precisionist line that moves much more smoothly: > In 2010, Bulova introduced the Precisionist, a new type of quartz watch with ultra-high frequency (262.144 kHz) which is claimed to be accurate to +/- 10 seconds a year and has a smooth sweeping second hand rather than one that jumps each second.
- 13 12y agoI'm not so sure about that, 60fps means that every single rotation of a second hand has 3600 individual steps; does a mechanical watch with a sweep second hand have that much precision? I'm inclined to think not, even from the perspective of backlash the digital version is going to appear significantly smoother to the eye.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- sz4kerto 12y agoThe guy has probably never heard of the Seiko Spring Drive, where the hands are moved by a spring and regulated by a brake. Therefore they're completely smooth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsBTXgksr4s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsBTXgksr4s
- chadgeidel 12y agoIt's a bummer that video plays at 30fps. This is a case where 60 (does YouTube do higher framerates?) would pay off.
- arh68 12y agoSee: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9344766 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9344766 ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7ZmyWO-QU8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7ZmyWO-QU8
- rodgerd 12y ago> The guy has probably never heard of the Seiko Spring Drive Gruber is the unpaid wing of Apple's PR team. I doubt he cares.
- sanoli 12y agoSpring Drives are pretty rare outside of Japan. Most mechanical watches today tick 8 times a second. On a small watch it's pretty smooth to me.
- Cookingboy 12y agoThe balance wheel oscillates at 8 beats per second, but it requires 2 beats to complete a full second "tick", so most modern mechanical watches actually tick at 4 times per second. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_wheel#Period_of_oscillation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_wheel#Period_of_oscilla...
- sanoli 12y ago
- redacted 12y agoWelcome to Daring Fireball :)