176: Countdown timing with watches, and Apple coming for watchmaking? - podcast episode cover

176: Countdown timing with watches, and Apple coming for watchmaking?

Sep 09, 202419 minEp. 176
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Episode description

In this episode we answer a questioner from Jordi about how we actually time things with mechanical watches. Except for a very select and expensive few watches, there aren't many options in mechanical watches for minute-level accuracy timers which actually notify you. So, what are we to do?

We also talk a little about the new Apple Watches and some of the very watch industry terminology they seem to be using when talking about their Apple Watch (don't call it a smart watch!).

Transcript

Welcome to this watch life. Hi, I'm Lydia Winter. And I'm Boo Boo. I've never been more Swedish than this weekend. Where? Well, I guess watch Nerd Swedish. Yeah, it's a very. Specific, I matched my my Rolex OP, my coral red. I wore it purposely. Yes, because we were going to a crayfish party. Yes. And it is quite similar to the

color of some crayfish. Yes, some of the crayfish are in that color way and I've actually been just taking photos matching everything to it. Then on Sunday we went to our favorite forest pizza place and then I matched. I matched it to pumpkins. So it's a very orange time of year is very autumn like. Although I will say that's kind of like this question that we wrongly answered the other day about seasons. Wait, never wrongly.

Remember, we were, we're talking about seasons and we kind of went down very different paths about seasons. Oh. Did we know? Yes. Then the original question and I was like what seasons do I like to wear watches the most? But then I thought about just certain watches I bring out in certain seasons. That is very true for you. Definitely the coral red and the yellow come out because of color during the autumn. They are definitely my like, OK,

it's autumn watches. Yeah, I've brought out, I talked about about how I bring out certain colors because, oh, sorry, certain watches because of like their functionality. For differences but the. Color thing actually works really well. Thinking about that. I do remember one time I took my Rolex Explorer 2 white dial out into because it was fall and I just walked around the forest and got like 20 photos of it. Yeah, especially because of the orange on the GMT hand. Yeah, yeah.

Then it's like a perfect little. A bunch of like dead leaves. Yeah, but I guess that's, I mean, that's also true in the summer there's certain colors, color watches we didn't talk as much about. But also my mom had a really great she actually sent us a an observations message about the podcast and she's had a great point about seasons could be

seasons of life. So like graduation, wedding, promotion, birth of a child, like all great reasons to buy a watch and like that that because we talked about like, is there a season that you most want to that you typically buy watches? We said mine is after watches and wonders, But in this case, I really like that she talked about these like celebrating special occasions. So great job, mom. Thanks for listening to the podcast.

I'm in the. Season of life where I feel young enough to move around too quickly and then I find myself always injuring myself doing something that should be truly mundane, like putting on my shoes. Oh, that's. And so now you're getting a watch to celebrate this? No, I'm. Trying to think like what Watch celebrates the season of like, 'cause here. Here's the thing I think. It's like everyday life, she did say. Like seasons of life. Not just, and this is the

season. And in this season, it's like I feel young enough to move, like I'm still in my 20s, thirties, but my body's like, hey, when you move that way, this is what's gonna happen. OK, so VU needs a life alert watch. I'm gonna. Slow myself down a little bit. All right, we have a question from long time listener Jordy from Barcelona. Hey, Jordy. Hi, Lydia. Hi, MU. Going to ask you questions about complications. So I think it's for both.

Sorry, Lydia. True. I'm just thinking how I use my watch complications. So mainly the camera for the bezel. The GMTS is known but I don't dive and I don't go into races or something like that. So I have a dive watch because I like it. Same that the crab complication. So I mainly use it for time normal things like daily things like cooking for example. And I seen that most of us do

the same. So I'm going to cook some pasta and put the crab on or the diver vessel to the minute hand and just wait and keep checking my watch until the minute indicator whichever it was gets to the time. But most of the times and just forget doing the other things I'm doing are my pasta super coat. I don't know, but I seen the countdown complication. If that exists it would be amazing.

I've been making some research and only found one watch without complication with an old ascutte original. Sorry for destroying the pronunciation but it's a bit chunky and odd. I don't know if you know if there is any other one. Any more watch without complication, which I think it would be amazing to have in a watch. It will be the most useful one I think, for all normal lives. Yeah, I I do completely agree

with this. So the watch that Jordy's talking about is the Glasute original Pano Retrograph. And last year when we went to Nomos to visit, we stopped at the German Watch Museum in Glasute and there was this entire room like this round room. And in the middle of this giant, not a giant room, but in the middle of this huge display in this room was a big round table. And projected down onto this was an interactive display. And you could interact with it by move like rotating the table.

And the watch was this watch that Jordy's talking about. The glass fit the original Pano retrograph. Super complicated watch, like really reasonably sized in in proportion to what it can do. Like it's a 39.5mm watch. They've made it in a few different limited editions. This was over 20 years ago. They made it in platinum, yellow gold and white gold. Seeing that display really showed you like the craft of watchmaking their glossitae original could do and what they did with this watch.

So it's it's got a bunch of features, but like fly back chrono is one of them. The countdown timer from 1 to 30 minutes, though is kind of the star and it does take up a significant portion of the dial. And I think it's kind of cool that the same seconds hand that runs forward to operate the chronograph when you're operating the countdown timer, then it runs backwards and at the end it chimes like it's an alarm. So exactly the problem that Jordy's talking about trying to solve here.

This watch does it, but it's not exactly an attainable watch. And there have been other watches I've seen that JLC did one at one point. No, but none of these are very attainable watches. So I think this problem is super common, but maybe it's more common for some types of people than others. Me, I am also fairly absent minded. And the number of of times I've tried to use my dive bezel to like time something and then completely forgetting I, are you OK?

I used to use my speedy, right? And I use a chronograph to try to time something and then it'd be like the next day and I'm like, hey, my timer like. When did I turn? On the. Chronograph. And I'm like, Oh yeah, yesterday I went to TIME. Something and then food's like my pasta is overcooked. It's been cooking for 25 hours. I cook the entire house down yeah, so definitely can relate to overcooking pasta and eggs and other things. Yeah, specifically because of

using those timers now. Well, because it. Requires that you're paying attention to it. Yeah, I prefer to use it. I never use it as a countdown. I use it as just more of like, hey, this is when something started and then if I remember later. But it has no bearing. It's like, oh, I wonder how long my grocery. No, that's when my speedy. Would be, you know, like I wonder how long. I wonder how long this took. And then I'll sometimes remember and other times I'm like, never mind.

We're into our three. Yeah, So like I liked that my FXD that you gave me like it has a countdown bezel, which is opposite to most dive bezels, right? It counts down and I was like, this is amazing because usually I'm timing to a fixed time O it's like OK. I do. So I want it in the boiling water for exactly 6 1/2 minutes. Click, click, click, click, click. Awesome. Except you have to remember you have.

To remember to look. And then you're as soon as you look tired and it's actually not that useful. It's not that useful then, so that's where. And you probably look at like 2 minutes out and then you look again and it's 5 minutes past. That's what happens is like you pay attention for a little while, then you're like, oh, I've still got a few minutes left and the next time you look you have missed it and now you have hard boiled eggs.

Yeah, well, I actually have a different watch suggestion for this. OK, if I'm, if I may, OK an Apple Watch. Well, I do agree with that, but OK, OK. Before we get to that though. Before Apple Watches. Came and offered this amazing. You know, everything that they do. Yeah, I am wearing an Apple Watch right now. Like I used to time things on my Casios. That's true like because they will technology. Has been around for a long time and they would beep and they

would have full on alarms like. This was a feature I used often on my Casios back in the day, and then I upgraded to mechanical watches and somehow every feature got downgraded except for beauty and brokenness. I do think you could use like a memo vox like a JLC memo vox. They're not fine enough for. Me, I know, but but I mean more if you were like around, it's if it's like a loosey goosey alarm, you're like in about 15 minutes. I should. Go outside. For a walk.

Or for a pot roast or something. Yeah. Where like, it's not exactly 3:00 to 4:00. Hours. Exactly. So you're like Alice, put it at 3 1/2 hours. I've never made a pot roast. I don't know why I said pot. Roast. You don't even know how long a pot roast. No, I, I, I assume 3:00 to 4:00. Hours. You're like somewhere. Between I think I was. Actually thinking. Crockpot for some reason. Yeah, I mean, I guess you could put a pot roast in a crockpot. I don't know.

They don't make pot roast. I know. Or crock. But also the crockpot has a timer and then it will like make a sound or something. Whoopsie. OK. OK, so you back to your suggestion. OK, my suggestion of an Apple Watch, I mean, I mean, OK, this suggestion comes up because we just watched the new Apple Yeah announcements, the. September announcements that

happen every. Year yeah we really like to see what's coming especially for the new iPhones but the the Apple Watch announcements the thing that was interesting is just there are certain things that really pertain to the watch world that I. I kind of noticed this year that I haven't seen as much in previous years because obviously like all the data and, and using it for diving and all of these different things like that's what they've been talking about.

But this year they actually made some of the cases in titanium. Well, what? Yeah. And it's used to be for the first time, this is. So it used to be that you had a choice between aluminum or steel and then came the Ultra in titanium. But the Ultra is gigantic like it's but the regular watches came in aluminum or steel and steel was the upgrade and steel cost more. Steel came with more features,

right? Like it would come with cellular built in and it also came with a sapphire crystal so scratch free crystal. Watchwords. Yeah, these are all watchwords, right? Yeah, to kind of see now, now when I look at it through this lens, these announcements of someone who loves, you know, horology and is talking about it daily like a weirdo, do you? But then I kind of see these things differently, especially like the titanium and and they specific grade 5.

They specifically call out that it's grade 5 titanium, which feels like to the layperson means nothing. So they were used a bunch of different words and they have over the years that I think is actually calling towards people who know a little bit about watches, right? Like they want the Apple Watch to be associated with watches. So when? They even say titanium advances in watchmaking. They did. They were, you know, they were. Making advances in watchmaking.

They're not like saying this is a tiny computer on your wrist, which is what it is, right? They're calling it No, no, this is a watch. Grade 5 polished titanium as the material, sapphire crystal, right? Like all. Of these things, that's kind of the interesting part. And then even with the new Ultra 2, they created a new Titanium Milanese loop for diving specifically, and it's based on, you know, more traditional

diving bracelets. It looks a lot like, I mean, it functions a little bit differently 'cause it wraps around itself. And it has a parachute style buckle, which there's some. Interesting stuff going on there but it looks like the look of the the mesh. I I feel like having not seen it in person but just in their their renders and images it looks a lot like the Seamaster 300 titanium the Bond. One it really does someone someone at Apple was like, if I have to wear this, can I pretend

it's a bond watch, please? Can I just wear it? But so to me, I just thought, I mean, yes, and it and it will not let you overcook your eggs, but that's true. And you just, you don't even have to touch it. I just say Siri set a timer. For seven minutes exactly. I use my Apple Watch for no. For work we just set a 7 minute timer, so at least we'll be done by then and we won't. Run over on my watch and my iPad. Now there's timers running. Too many Apple products.

It's like, did you say you want a timer, Sir? But I mean, I used my Apple Watch especially for for working out and for sleeping. That's the data I like to collect. But I think it's in like, I just thought it was really interesting today to hear them talk about these things. Yeah, within the context of really the watch world. That anyone listening to this podcast, I may have set off their device as well.

Oh, you're, you're creating, you're making a timer for all devices around the world for everyone. I think because I just sent it out loud that the trigger. Word. Okay, well. I everyone, there's probably like a rule of podcasting. Yeah, don't that you don't say that one or the Amazon one or, you know, any of those ones like that. You don't say those words. Yeah.

So I'm very sorry. So for anyone who has a timer that goes off in roughly 6 minutes and 10 seconds and you're like where did where did this go? Oh, it was. It was Ville, that guy, yes. OK, one last thing that I'm very excited about our friend Owen, he was at the airport. He was he's we've worked with him for years and he's into watches. His daughter was the one who had a very strongly not interest in our podcast. Please make it stop.

But and when he was at the airport leaving Stockholm, he sent us a bunch of questions for the podcast and one that I fell in love with. And so now I'm posing it to all of you because I want to, like, Crowdsource a lot of answers to this because I just find it delightful. And it's been something I've been thinking about since he wrote it. Yeah, you. You have been you. You have talked about it a lot. You put it into one of our group chats with our Stockholm crew.

I've already seen a lot of fun things. I have a couple that I'm thinking of. But now I'm worried if we put it out there that all of any good idea I could have other people have. We'll see. So OK, if your favorite watch was a dog, like what dog would it be? But but so you need to name the. The the watch and the dog, Yeah. And and why this isn't just like you're like just. Make stuff. Up a Boston Terrier and a whatever. No, you need to give us some reasons why don't. Go giving away.

Good, I know I didn't want to give any of my ideas. Terrier, actually. I didn't. I didn't pick a watch yet for a Boston Terrier, but I have watches for for quite a few quite a few dogs. I really like my, I'm just going to say my Daytona idea. I really think it's good. And so we're going to do an episode about this. So you can write us a message on either e-mail on this watch life.com, this watch lifepodcast.com, this watch life.com. It's questions at this watch life.com.

OK, or you can write. There's either. Type form at this watch life dot. You can. Just watch life.com. You can send us messages on Instagram. Yeah, but definitely get your answers in Yeah, I I really episode about. Or send it in a voice message. Yes, that would be even even all of them are all the ways are awesome. Yeah, yeah, just can you can, can you, can you? Do this and with that. Yeah, I think. Have a great Monday. And amazing. Well, I think most people's

Mondays are over well. Alright, but there's a lot of day for the rest of the world. Have a great whatever. Bye bye.

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