I like watches. I particularly like analogue watches. I like the mechanical precision required to make them. I don’t always wear one though.
I’m required to wear a watch for work. The last time I bought one I tried on some smaller watches than I was used to but I realised that my thick wrists don’t suit a fine dress watch, I need something chunkier. That said, I take my watch off to sleep, shower, and exercise. Whenever I’m doing those things and I’m on days off I’ll probably not put the watch on again unless I expect to need to know the time (say I’m going out to do some shopping and my wife needs me back home by 4:30 so we can take the oldest daughter to swimming lessons.) Ultimately I sometimes go days on end not wearing it at all and at other times I’ll wear it solidly for weeks, just depends. My phone is just as non-essential. I’ll make sure I have it if I want to be contactable but often just leave it at home.
I have also never had a phone that wouldn’t maintain the time when out of service.
why do so many people feel the need to, instead of just stating their opinion and noting that of others, convincing others that they’re In The Wrong? This thread has posts which sound like those people who, having just fallen in love, try to set up every singleton within their acquaintance.
There’s the rub. In the early stages of clock making there was one face for the hour hand and one for the minute hand and you had to mentally calculate the time. When clock makers managed to combine the two hands on one face all you had to do was take a glance at it and get an immediate mental image of how long time had elapsed since or how long time was left until something.
The advent of digital clocks has turned the art of clock using back to the pre one face clock times.
The only thing digital clocks are better at is to measure how long time something takes.
Myself, I prefer to be modern and above all convenient, so I wear an analogue watch.
drivel. a digital clock tells me at a glance what time it is. I don’t have to “mentally calculate” anything, since I can see numbers and know what they mean. The hour and minute digits being on opposite sides of a separator doesn’t support your statement since they don’t work the same way.
that, and telling me what time it is.
of all the things to be smug about, you choose this…
Well, this isn’t strictly true. Analogue displays are much better than digital displays for giving an instant “feeling” for the passage of time.
With purely digital displays there is a level of processing that has to take place before you can make sense of the numbers. Granted, the ordinary person in the street won’t notice this but in other, more pressured environments, those slight degrees start to matter.
Take a look around an aircraft cockpit, there is a reason why dials are still used.
You could, very accurately, display aircraft attitude via numeric values. Instead they still have a little picture of a plane and a horizon.
F1 car cockpits still have graphical displays for important info. and flashy lights to boot. That’s because process pictures faster than numbers or letters.
When you are trying to minimise the amount of brainpower needed, analogue is the best way to go.
Having worked in a position where user interface design and human factors were important (wireless phone technology management) I find this discussion facinating. By the way, the Economist reported on this phenomenom over a year ago in a Technology Quarterly. I own both a “geeky” watch (Casio Titanium Pathfinder with barometer, altimeter and compass) and an Iphone, as well as an Ipad. I realy enjoy portable electronics.
A thought that came to me is that most people who use the phone as their timepiece have a strong dislike of the physical sensation of wearing a wristwatch. Perhaps the same way some dislike polyester or tags on their shirt collars or neckties. The degree of irritation at these sensations can certaily contribute to how strongly people feel about watches. It would be interesting to see if the dopers who indicated a dislike for the sensation of a wristwatch also dislike these other irritants. I’d bet there’s a high correlation.
Another point is that screen-time is now such a larger part of our awake time, and that screen devices, be they phones, computers or TVs, all have a time readout, that we have a lot more alternative sources for the correct time. I would also speculate that Dopers would clock-up more screen time during the day than the general population average.
This being said, from my own perspective, I think that a wristwatch offers some advantages, namely in economy of motion, and the ability to be mostly “hands free”. I personaly find it faster to glance at my wrist than to “take out” my iphone. Also, I can still look at my watch with my hands busy holding or doing something else, not to mention looking at the time when I’m on the phone…
A number of Dopers have mentioned the desire to reduce “device clutter” and simplify. Whether you consider a watch to be another “device” is not necessarily a given, imho. If you take off your watch to sleep, and have to put it on in the morning, and decide if you need it that day, then, yeah, I can sure see it as yet another device in your life. But if you only take it off only to shower, and sleep with it, I find it just becomes part of me and I forget it’s there. More like underwear, in that respect.
One topic we haven’t touched on here is wearing a watch to bed. I know it’s a non-starter for those who find it irritating during the day, but as a myopic guy who has to take off his glasses to sleep, I find it has a number of advantages: I can see it clearly as opposed to the LEDs on the clock which are too far; I can check it with less motion that moving to where I can see the clock. Having to pick up your phone at night would generate both a lot of motion and a good bit of light, which can be disruptive to your bedmate.
Regarding accuracy, since we now hace access to network-synchronized timekeeping devices both in Windows 7 PCs and cell phones, it’s easy to keep you watch within seconds of perfect time. I adjust mine every 5 or 6 weeks or so, when it gets more than about 30 seconds out of sync.
That’d be me. I routinely snip the tags out of new underwear, and often out of new shirts. Hate neckties; I am blessed to work in a lab where jeans and a golf shirt is accepted attire.
I wore a watch a few times as a kid (in the 70’s and 80’s), but never could tolerate the sensation. Either it was too snug and made my wrist sweaty and itchy, or it was too loose and fell down and rubbed/bound against the heel of my palm. It always caught on my shirt and/or jacket. More often than not, I have found that there is a clock not far from wherever I happen to be, so not wearing a watch hasn’t been a huge loss.
I didn’t get my first cell phone until Y2K. Having a cell phone isn’t the reason I don’t have a watch, but now that I have one, it’s one more reason why I don’t expect to ever own a watch.
I’m not sure that causation runs the way you’re thinking. I cut the tags out of some clothing, and I refuse to wear anything tight-fitting unless it’s made of a comfortable fabric. I can’t stand wearing glasses. But during the years when I wore a watch, it always felt comfortable, and in fact it always felt like something was subtly but horribly wrong when I didn’t have a watch on. Now that I don’t wear a watch, if I put one on, it’s uncomfortable.
This is a really good point that nobody’s mentioned. But for me, it runs in the opposite direction. I usually sleep without my contacts in. As my eyes got worse, I got to the point where I have to hold a watch pretty close to my face to read it–close enough that the backlight is disruptive. My iPhone, on the other hand, has big numbers that I can read at a normal distance. And, because I’m often reading on my phone or otherwise fiddling with it before I go to sleep, I always know exactly where it is, and can reach it easily (and blindly) without disturbing anyone else. (Well, except when the cat decides to sleep on the phone.)
I doubt this was a factor in my deciding to go watchless (for one, I don’t think my older phones were as readable), but who knows?
Because you don’t actually need to know the time. It’s like getting rid of a nervous tic. It costs a tiny amount of tiny, energy, and stress and doesn’t get you anything of value in return. It’s not a huge impact, but to the extent that there’s any impact to constantly checking the time, it’s a negative one.
I agree that, for some people, this is more than counterbalanced by the fashion element. I wear hats, and it seems pretty easy to argue that the practical impact of being a hat-wearer is even more negative than being a watch-wearer. (You never have to hang onto your watch because of the wind, for example, or stick your watch in a backpack so you can put a helmet on.) I wear them because I like wearing them, and think I look good in them. If you feel the same way about watches, obviously, you should wear watches.
But arguing that you get some practical benefit from wearing a watch that I don’t get from carrying my iPhone is just lying to yourself. If the reason you wear a watch truly is because you think you need to know the exact time all the time, you should try going without it.
I have no reception in half my house, but my iPhone is still showing me the current time. As has every phone I’ve owned in the past decade, and many of the phones I owned before that. (If you go too far back into the 90s, I had phones that didn’t show the time at all, even when they were in service.)
Well, I have two nice suits, because of semi-recent weddings and funerals and the like, but I can’t remember the last time I wore one to a job interview. Or even a dress shirt. I remember once that a recruiter told me that a certain company would be most impressed if I wore a jacket or a tie but not both; I decided not to apply to that company.
I show up for job interviews in a t-shirt and a leather jacket, with a motorcycle helmet under my arm. And I get hired. In fact, if someone showed up for an interview in a suit, unless he was fresh out of college or fresh off the plane from India, I’d have to consciously try not to count it against him.
Why? All of my timepieces are synchronized to either the cell tower or an NTP host, which is far better than I can do manually.
This sounds like you need a better phone.
My iPhone shows me the time in 24 hours.
When I’m out of the country, I can configure the lock screen to show me either local time or home time, whichever seems more useful. (Local time is more useful on vocation; home time is more useful if I’m working remote but collaborating more with people at home than on-site.)
I might have had to jailbreak my iPhone to do this; I can’t remember. But, even if I did, there are plenty of other options. I’m sure an Android can do this. Most of the phones I’ve owned in the past could. Even the phone that I got free with purchase of a 20-euro card on my last trip to Europe could.
You’re woefully out of date with your info. Android phones have massive amounts of customization and followers of same. There are many competing 3rd party ROMs that offer various different customized options, and they all have their loyal adherents.
Honey, your phone sucks. Sorry.
I’m a non-watch-wearer. I find them annoying and uncomfortable in degrees that far outweigh any hassle of looking at my cell phone for the time. I didn’t wear a watch even before I had a cell phone, either. I just hate wearing a watch.
I’ve never worn a watch as I’ve never seen the need to - clocks have always been plentiful, and with the advent of cell phones, I now carry a clock with me.
I think part of it may be simply not replacing a watch. For some reason I’m hard on watches and they don’t last long. So when my watch broke, I didn’t see the point of buying a new one. It’s not that I didn’t want to, it’s just an expense I didn’t need
I have a bunch of watches of all kinds, but the reality is that for most professionals and business people in urban or near urban environments a wrist watch has not been a real necessity for some time as you are typically surrounded by time keeping devices. There are rugged environments where an accurate watch is a necessity and watch advertising tends to trade on this image. Sport diving watches is a popular watch type for people who will never get beyond a swimming pool.
A watch is more of an aesthetic statement these days to be appreciated for it’s beauty and functionality.
As a side note there is a magazine of fine watches I pick up occasionally called Watchtime that did a “torture test” review of popular upscale diving watches a few years ago, and subjected them to the maximum depth and pressures they were rated for. A surprising number leaked and failed at pressure and some had cracked faces. Some of these were watches that costs several thousand dollars each.
"Well, this isn’t strictly true. Analogue displays are much better than digital displays for giving an instant “feeling” for the passage of time.
With purely digital displays there is a level of processing that has to take place before you can make sense of the numbers. Granted, the ordinary person in the street won’t notice this but in other, more pressured environments, those slight degrees start to matter.
Take a look around an aircraft cockpit, there is a reason why dials are still used.
You could, very accurately, display aircraft attitude via numeric values. Instead they still have a little picture of a plane and a horizon."
I agree there are many situations where analogue is useful, but I am not convinced this would apply to a clock face. A horizon display is a visual display of what the plane is doing - a clock isnt. An analogue equivalent would be something like closer to light than dark on a display.
A watch can much more easily be misread as the only major difference between 6:20 and 4:30 is the length of the hands, not to mention the lack of AM/PM.
So Im dubious time is still being shown in clock face because its easier to read, are there any cites that this is a supported finding?
It seems obvious to me that if one system conveys the time just by means of two unequal lines at certain angles, while the other requires up to four ordered characters to be read (characters which are themselves made up of lines oriented in certain ways), then the former is easier to read. I guess people are so adept at reading that they don’t notice the very small amount of effort that it takes, but that effort is still there.
Also, it’s easier to gauge rates of change with analogue dials. You can see at a glance if a needle is moving more quickly than before. Not so easy with digits.
that’s great and all. If it’s so obvious to you, maybe you can explain to us why you’re right. And no, “I’m right because I think I’m smart” doesn’t count.