It’s funny sometimes, If you knew how many disgruntled watchmakers I’ve met over the years over this exact bulshit, even though I can tell their skill level is quite high, you’d pull your hair out at the thought of yet another company lining up to abuse them.
The independent watchmaker in America is treated little better than a doorstop to be kicked by the industry they keep running.
You are probably right but the idea was a watchmaker can be taught to solder components. or something like that so I thought.
The original electric watchmakers who actually did solder new circuitry parts on circuit boards for the first wave of quartz watches did actually replace componentry and fix things at board level, but that is not done at all now, except in very rare special instances.
Now, the entire movement is simply replaced for cheap stuff, or a new circuit board ordered for anything decent, IF those parts can be found
Those Casios also keep much better time than literally any bent piece of metal watch by at least an order of magnitude less drift.
I’m still unhappy though, even though I wear a Fitbit.
Not only that but the Swatch group owns like 15 other brands, several of them making watches under $500.
I have no doubt of that. However if you look at the teardown there isn’t even much to solder. You might be able to replace a little more then just the battery and glass, but may parts are completely infusible. Many are on the same die as the watch’s CPU. The GPU might be an independly identifiable conceptual unit, but it isn’t going to be repaired without replacing a bunch of other stuff. The RAM is an independent die, but it is bonded to the CPU as part of a flip chip. In theory you could remove and replace, but I have my doubts that it can be done reliabbably and for under the cost of an entire new watch. Other parts aren’t bonded to the CPU, but they are under the same RF cover and the whole thing is in an epoxy blob. Probably not code effective to saw it open and repair it. Replace the whole system model.
That said battery and front glass are probably the most common failures. So even if you can only fix those you could do a lot. If you could replace the “system module” and make it waterproof again for less then the cost of a replacement watch that would get you basically all the way there (but I doubt that last one is possible).
And Swatch automatics in the sistem51 series for $150 or so. They are really really cool. If you like funky watches and would like a Swiss automatic mechanical in your collection, they are quite neat.
I’m practically a communist (well, much much more socialist than Sanders or Warren) and I still enjoy my Swiss mechanicals, including my trophy, which I’ve been wearing around as my daily wear these days. Unless I’m walking around my neighborhood in Baltimore, in which case it most certainly does not come with me…
I get how Swiss watches are amazing works of art. But the more complications they have, the more expensive they get, and the worse they get at keeping time. When cost and utility are inversely correlated, you’ve carved yourself a very small niche.
If I were the kind of person that had maybe $100.000 worth of luxury Swiss watches, it would be my personal assistant wearing that gauche, mass-market-ly Chinese Apple thing.
Because it’s lonely, that’s why. I caught it humping my smart remote the other day.
This. Of course Apple watches will way outsell Swiss and other high end mechanical watches. Anyone who buys a new Apple watch today will probably have to replace it 4-5 times in the next twenty years as new OS versions render earlier watches less useful or even brick them entirely. Whereas if you buy a new Rolex or Breitling today, in twenty years it will just be nicely broken in.
crazy to me because i only know like 1 person who even has an apple watch… but then again im not sure i know anyone who has a real Swiss watch. Its possible im just not paying attention…
A colleague of mine who lacks impulse control bought an apple watch last week and was already regretting it deeply when he told me about it the next morning. I paraphrase: “I have bought a lot of useless shit in my life, but this is the most regrettable buy yet.”
It was amusing to see him curse through the day because the constant buzzing on his wrist was getting on his nerves, yet unable to deactivate the buzzing feature, for as long at is was buzzing, at least the thing was irritating the hell out of him instead of just doing nothing for 600 €.
They all laughed until the EMP came. I’d like a nice wind-up watch for under $50 USD. Is Timex still in business?
If he just bought it he can likely still return it, if not they’re not difficult to resell as people want them. But yes i’m also in the camp that is not interested in smart watches, i do like the form factor somewhat but for the expense it doesn’t really offer me much.
I actually like my watch. One of the things I did though was change the alert settings on the watch. Email? If it isn’t from my wife the watch doesn’t say anything about it. Most apps I have disabled alerts, or have set to deliver with no sound/vibration. So if I hear my phone bleep I know it is “someone about something”, if it is my watch it is my wife, or a close friend. Sometimes I’ll turn work notifications on (mostly if I’m working from home), but normally I have them off. By “normally” I mean for months at a time.
So my watch has the alert settings I really should have on my phone, but my FOMO makes me not do 
My watch is mostly a “I look at it when I want to know the time/weather/my next meeting”, and once in a while it ends up being something more. Like “I left my phone in the other room at home & am getting a phone call”, or “I went in the garage to find something, and it isn’t where I left it, I wonder if my wife knows where it went?”. Nothing life altering.
I also exercise more then when I first had the watch, but the watch was only a small nudge there. You have to want to exercise enough to actually do it. Most people who want to exercise that much already do. It really only helps people in this narrow zone of “I want to, not quite enough to, but I only need a small nudge, maybe if it gets ramified a tiny bit, and tracked a bit…yep that is enough”
(“tracked a bit” == yes I can get a detailed record of my heart rate and how many minutes I was in the gym, but it won’t tell me if I was doing kettle bells swings, or deadlifts, or over head carries, and definitely does’t tell me how much weight I had on me…I can for sure see from the heart rate when I was doing the assault bike though)
If they bought it from Apple they can return it any time in the first two weeks for a full refund (no restocking fee). If got it elsewhere it might be worth checking what the return fee is, 90% of the money back on something you don’t enjoy is a better deal then putting it in a junk drawer for 0% back and throwing away next time you move house.
(if he got it used, may as well sell it used)
Hmmm. “The buzzing feature” are notifications, which can be individually disabled quite easily. I turned the vast majority off, specifically so it wouldn’t be a constant bother. Your colleague may want to consider doing this…
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