I don’t get why any if this is an issue that justifies vilifying Apple. Every watch that I have ever owned has either:
Required a special tool (an insertable tool or a keyed twist-off device) for properly opening it to replace the battery,
Had a warranty that required that service (including battery replacements) be performed by an approved service center, or risk voiding the warranty, or
Been so inexpensive that it was often simpler and cheaper to buy a new watch than it was to find, purchase, and install a new battery.
So the fact that the battery and display are potentially user-replaceable is surprising, in a good way. Would anyone like to point out any other smart watch that is more user-serviceable than Apple’s?
You need a thin-blade screwdriver, or for other types a precision vise (precision-enough to have the top edges edgy enough to grip the sides of the lid).
…also, when you’re in a pinch, you can recharge the battery. Before the Revolution when such things were often in short supply, we used to prolong the battery lives using a clothespin, a 4.5V flat battery, and a series resistor. Be wise in choosing the resistor and the charging time, or you’ll be surprised with a loud POP and you’ll never find the little cell’s halves, don’t ask how I know.
…same method works for e.g. those coin cells from digital calipers. (Why aren’t those made as solar-powered?) Can take you over the weekend or until you can source a replacement cell without mad scrambling around.
See, fruitheads? It can be done.
edit: …and it can be done without triwings and pentalobes, too. Whoever invented such abominations should be publicly shot as a warning for others.
People tend to be artists or scientists - sometimes both. But businesses and governments alike prefer to imagine that people are either producers or consumers. So we witness crass treatment like this. Commerce is basically just a parasitic philosophy.
Well, if you’re going down that road, there’s no need for everyone to have their own watch at all…the communal clock tower in the middle of the town is sufficient.
So the whole discussion about whether it’s sufficiently disassemblable is moot. No point talking about the design of an object if you first invalidate the environment in which it came to be.
This is assuming that we should take the description of it being a watch at (bad pun warning) face value. There is only an aesthetic similarity. They are programmable computers with haptic I/O, which doesn’t really overlap with the functionality of a clock tower at all. Not to mention that one clock for everybody in town assumes that the people all exist at the same relativistic speeds to each other, and the clock.
It’s a consumption device designed to keep you in the Apple ecosystem. So complaining that it’s not amenable to taking apart and hacking is like complaining that your Fusion handle only takes Fusion cartridges.
If openess and hackability are important to you, buy an Andriod watch…and a safety razor. But don’t criticize the design of the iWrist for doing what it’s designed to to.
Which, in the ballpark figure, they generally do. The effects of their relative velocities become important only for uncommonly accurate measurements (e.g. GPS reception, where the clocks are at moving satellites and the town extends to low Earth orbit).
Can’t we criticize it for propagating the thought that closed consumption-geared systems are something that should be considered acceptable or even good?
I was being facetious. Look, I don’t own an iphone, and consequently I can’t use an Apple Watch. I do own a mac, and an ipad. Most of the time, I use my iPad to consume the web (and kindle ebooks) It’s a great tool for doing so.
Are those the fruits of Apples garden?
Just give @popobawa4u credit for accepting time as a shared concept that exists, or he’s liable to go off about blindly accepting the horolocracy and how we shouldn’t allow our schedules to be forced into the rigid prison of temporal consensus.
Yeah, but I was seeing a lot of "oh, these chips are too small, why doesn’t it just come apart easily?..when Apple markets it as “you don’t have to do anything, just turn it on and use it”…people who want that don’t care about access, they just want it smooth and pretty.
And low cost accessible raw materials. I need more particular structured crystals for my lasers. And some plutonium-239.
But coming from an era of cheap disposable digital watches, I don’t see parts from it I can really re-purpose and the cost of repair is more expensive then just replace. Whereas when there are parts, I usually need difference specs. The quartz, capacitors for instance, better just to get new.
In the case of “smart watches”, at that size and the way they are manufactured, it’s not worth the additional costs to make it easy to service. Do note I own watches which I would consider “smart watches” before the media caught on to this fad. Casio’s calculator watches, Timex’s datalinks to name a few. The Timex USB datalink I own is actually a bit faulty–the pins to the USB are misaligned. My fix choices were either to do full replace or just lift the entire circuit so it connects properly. I choose the latter.
There are several techniques for monocrystal growth. Some in smaller scale could be even DIY-doable. Czochralski, for example, on silicon, may be doable with a smaller induction furnace. The same method is used for YAG host crystals for lasers as well. (But you may get away with merely glass, for the cost of wider laser line, the irregularities of the host matrix will smear the line.)
Also don’t forget the scintillator crystals. Thallium-doped NaI would be cool to be able to grow in significant sizes at home. The secondhands are expensive and the new ones are downright unaffordable.
That’s more difficult. For a microgram amount, I’d go for a homemade accelerator.
What about attaching peripherals the manufacturer never dreamed about? Using the thing as a whole as a controller, or just the display (or the control electronics) as a component of something else?
These things mostly run on a few standard frequencies.
The cost can be pretty low. It however requires a little of imagination from the designers.
WAKE UP
