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Comment by logfromblammo | Hacker News Reader

Who is supposed to be wearing these wristwatches? I can comprehend the use case for wrist-worn electronics devices that do more than just tell time, but we have mostly gone back to pocketwatches now--pocketwatches with a rounded-rectangular form factor that also function as telephones, cameras, notepads, maps, compasses, calculators, game consoles, and televisions.

As adornments go, I also think that handing over $500 to a local jewelry artist would get you a better bracelet.

The mechanical-movement wristwatch is obsolete. Bring on the Pip-Boy.

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I seriously don't think I can find a $500 bracelet with a good aesthetic appeal I'd like. Part of the reason is that I like moving things (with a mechanism), and would dislike skeuomorphism in bracelets.

Obsolete? Not by a long shot, even if by a narrow margin.

Wristwatches do tell the time, and a decent mechanical one will do so far far longer than any electronics device, even high end quartz wristwatches.

What do you mean? Original quartz watches are still working, are they not? Do we have a good idea of how long they'll last?

Not having any moving parts would generally mean a quartz movement will be more durable.

> Original quartz watches are still working, are they not?

Barely, and replacement parts (and sometimes even appropriate batteries) can be extremely hard to source.

> Not having any moving parts

Electronics are brittle and do degrade over time. As I observe them, they last about 20 to 30 years realistically. Early mass produced commercial quartz watches are prized collector items, whereas mechanical watches from before the quartz revolution are easy to find in perfect working condition.

Technically, quartz piezoelectric-movements do vibrate.

Equally technically, non-functional mechanical-movement watches from before piezoelectric-movement are also easy to find in garbage heaps and bankrupted watch-repair shops, and the "perfect working condition" of the functional ones are possibly a result of Ship-of-Theseus-style maintenance. Note that mechanical timepiece repair is a somewhat less viable business than it once was, and able to support only a tiny fraction of workers as it once did.

Quartz watches have fewer individual repair parts available, because the typical repairs are to replace the battery and to replace the entire movement. Now, it is reasonable to consider the repair part for a broken quartz watch to be a newly-manufactured watch, and the repair procedure is to remove the broken watch from your wrist and replace it with the working new one.

Mechanical watches are certainly useless when removed from Earth, whereas electronic timepieces may be reprogrammed to display the numbers of a different timekeeping convention.

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