[HN Gopher] Ultra-flat timepiece, the RM UP-01 Ferrari, is 1.75 ...
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Ultra-flat timepiece, the RM UP-01 Ferrari, is 1.75 millimetres
thick watch
Author : taubek
Score : 77 points
Date : 2022-07-10 16:18 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.richardmille.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.richardmille.com)
| jakzurr wrote:
| 1st thoughts: soooooooo stupid!
|
| 2nd thoughts: really mechanical? - yes; bend? - no, titanium;
| crystal makes it taller? - no, inset sapphire; cost? - uhhhhh...
| still want one.
|
| more pics: https://monochrome-watches.com/richard-milles-rm-
| up-01-ferra...
| ninefathom wrote:
| Between the minuscule face and the fact that winding A) is overly
| complex, and B) keeps time for less than two days, this seems
| like more of an expensive toy than a practical timepiece. As an
| engineering feat, it is admittedly impressive... but impressive
| and useful are not synonyms.
| piperswe wrote:
| In my opinion mechanical timepieces are novelties in the modern
| era, so I don't think the practicality of a mechanical watch is
| very important. If you want practicality, a quartz watch will
| run continuously without intervention far longer than a
| mechanical one and will keep better time. Better yet, a
| smartwatch can tell you more than just the time! If you want to
| make a statement or own a neat piece of engineering though,
| mechanical watches are the way to go.
|
| Again this is my opinion, but I don't see any reason to be
| worrying about the practicality of something like this.
| iasay wrote:
| I think a smart watch is a more impressive piece of
| engineering!
| layer8 wrote:
| A much too thick one, unfortunately.
| iasay wrote:
| I think that's subjective. I have no problems with mine!
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| It would be pretty trivial to flatten a Casio - or
| equivalent tech - to this degree. The biggest problem
| would be battery thickness. If you didn't support
| charging or battery replacement you could fix that with a
| standard ultra-thin rechargeable battery and solar power.
|
| OLED panels are less than 1mm thick, so the display
| wouldn't be a problem.
|
| I'd honestly be more interested in that as a product than
| in a clockwork Veblen toy.
| turdit wrote:
| thanks for sharing
| SamReidHughes wrote:
| 45 hours is a longer power reserve than some of the basic ETA
| movements, the 2892 and 2824, had. It's pretty normal for a
| mechanical watch.
| DaveExeter wrote:
| It's a Veblen good. You buy it because it advertises your
| wealth.
|
| That is overpriced and impractical actually adds to its appeal.
| jasonladuke0311 wrote:
| People who buy Richard Mille pieces likely don't care about
| practicality.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| That's a pretty ugly watch if you ask me.
| moolcool wrote:
| Well it _is_ a Richard Mille
| sbf501 wrote:
| Watches that cost more than US$2,000,000 are typically ugly a/f
| because the point is to draw attention to it. When you're worth
| hundreds of millions or billions, you need to invent more ways
| to show it off.
| hulitu wrote:
| Looks like it is designed by a modern UI engineer: gray on
| gray, black on gray, difficult to see relevant information and
| a lot space wasted.
| DwnVoteHoneyPot wrote:
| The Ferrari logo is very clear.
| ukoki wrote:
| What is this, a dial for ants?
| geoduck14 wrote:
| It is a watch for people who are really really good looking,
| and want to tell time and do other stuff, too
| MarkMarine wrote:
| They don't care. I have one watch, a 2008 model from a
| watchmaker that no one cares about, that tells perfect time and
| has a mechanical alarm. It gets no love and that's fine with
| me. This quote about watches from a tastemaker blew my mind:
|
| "... the Italian-born Davide Parmegiani. I met Parmegiani, who
| is in his mid-50s, at his new boutique in Monte Carlo, where he
| sells both vintage watches and cars.
|
| He arrived 30 minutes late. I asked him what drives the passion
| for watches, if not their ability to tell time.
|
| "Sometimes I don't even set the time on the watches," he said.
| "If I want to look at what time is it, I can look at my
| iPhone." He held up his smartphone: "This is the only exact
| time we're gonna have," he added."
|
| https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2022/03/inside-the-frenzied...
| kingludite wrote:
| pondering flatness I had this idea to paint the small hand onto
| the dial then get rid of the big hand and replace it with a
| virtual one using a Moire pattern painted onto the glass and the
| dial.
|
| very crude demo (running in the wrong direction :P)
|
| https://jsfiddle.net/s1cwze3d/
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moir%C3%A9_pattern
|
| (Designing the correct pattern is left as an exercise for the
| reader)
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| First time I have read the word "allusive" as well as "grade 5
| titanium"
| sriram_malhar wrote:
| Awful looking, terrible typography, form chases away function
| ....
|
| Hugely impressive piece of machinery though.
| itronitron wrote:
| Although much better typography than the other watches on that
| site.
| tyleo wrote:
| I hope they follow up with an excellent V2. The tech is down,
| now if they can only take care of those aesthetics.
| caconym_ wrote:
| The typography really threw me off. Obviously this is
| subjective, but it gives me a really cheap vibe, like something
| you'd find in one of those travel gadget stores at the airport.
| It looks like they just didn't give a shit.
|
| I don't mind the form so much. Obviously it's not a very
| practical piece, but very expensive limited-run watches rarely
| are.
| pwillia7 wrote:
| Is that not just their logo's font?
| ksaj wrote:
| Watch collectors, especially if they are Ferrari owners, will
| probably want this. It's clear some people don't like the
| tininess of the actual watch face, but this is a side effect of
| having everything laid out so flatly. It is a technical marvel,
| and surely will have competitors in the future.
|
| The winding and setting mechanism is a really unique solution.
| EB-Barrington wrote:
| Price: $1,888,000 US dollars.
| leeoniya wrote:
| one of the few watch brands (the only one?) that makes a
| ferrari look cheaper than a clearance item at a dollar store.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Is there are meaning behind this number (apart from nazism,
| obviously)? Otherwise it seems kinda odd.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| chris11 wrote:
| In China 8 is considered to be a really lucky number,
| signifying wealth. https://www.mansionglobal.com/articles/it-
| s-in-the-numbers-l...
| FabHK wrote:
| Indeed. Note that Swiss Watch exports to Hong Kong alone
| (7m inhabitants) were more than to the USA (330m
| inhabitants) in the last decade, until HK's recent demise.
| Asia is a 3 to 4 times bigger market than North America;
| Europe is between those.
|
| So, it is no wonder that the number 8 figures prominently.
|
| In 2021, in Swiss watch exports in CHF bn:
|
| to USA, China about 3 each; HK about 2; Japan about 1.5;
| Italy, Germany, Singapore, UAE, France about 1 each.
|
| http://www.fhs.swiss/scripts/getstat.php?file=histo_regions
| _...
|
| http://www.fhs.swiss/pdf/regions_210112_a.pdf
| layer8 wrote:
| 1888 is the year that, when written in Roman numerals, has
| the most digits (so far). But it's probably just to make it
| seem more of a bargain than $1,999,000.
| __del__ wrote:
| we should be able to write MDCCCLXXXVIII as MCXIIM
| throwamon wrote:
| Apparently that's also how much you have to pay to get a device
| that won't choke on their website.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| It's impressive that they've actually managed to make the
| websites for these products as overwrought and unnecessary as
| the products themselves.
|
| There must be a very happy web design team somewhere in there
| world that's been told "you don't need to care about any kind
| of optimisation, our clients will always have the tippest-top
| computers and phones and so that you get it right we're going
| to buy one for each of you too, just in case you accidentally
| do something that makes it work on a pleb-grade device".
| yomkippur wrote:
| what sort of yearly income do you need to be able to buy this?
| I assume people in this tier just pay cash and already own a
| sizable Ferrari collection.
|
| Otherwise with 30% down. current market interest rates, you
| would be looking at $20,000 / month to lease it.
|
| So you could flex considerably as a double digit millionaire.
| Its just fascinating how wealthy some people are and how
| limitless it is.
| layer8 wrote:
| You may like to read this: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit
| /comments/2s9u0s/comment/c...
| yomkippur wrote:
| insane...so you need at minimum upper 3 digits.
|
| i got anxiety from reading it. it almost seems like at the
| very top, its lonely and dehumanizing when every whim
| challenge is met leading to time scarcity.
|
| i think the sweet spot is $270MM. 250MM generating 3~5% a
| year, 20MM in cash. you can buy everything but wouldnt
| spend it on this watch (you shouldnt)
|
| which means this watch is for ppl with 800MM minimum.
| dqpb wrote:
| This is not for people who work for a living.
|
| It's also probably not for people who gained their fortune
| via their own intelligence.
| W-Stool wrote:
| Limited run of only 150 units! Sheesh ...
| layer8 wrote:
| Stacked on top of each other, that's less than a foot.
| coldcode wrote:
| Pretty cool, but it costs like $100K per mm.
|
| Think of it as art, not a tool.
| layer8 wrote:
| More like $1M per mm.
| beebeepka wrote:
| We see Leclerc wearing it as a watch on that very site.
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| This is seriously impressive engineering. As far as I know a new
| achievement in watch making.
|
| UX is dreadful.
|
| The one function a watch is expected to have is unreadable at a
| distance.
| xwdv wrote:
| Bulgari made a much better looking flat watch IMO but
| unfortunately it was fatter than this one.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| chmod775 wrote:
| Wouldn't wear that even if you paid me and took me out for
| dinner.
|
| Maybe they should be marketing this watch to rich nerds instead
| of playboy LARPers - to people who will appreciate it for the
| technology.
| curiousgal wrote:
| The only appeal to me is the prospect of me tearing it apart
| and (trying to) put it back together!
| exabrial wrote:
| hijacking the scroll wheel is still not cool in 2022
| deergomoo wrote:
| Arguably the least cool it's ever been considering how many
| devices have inertial scrolling these days.
| marklubi wrote:
| I don't think it's that they're hijacking the scroll wheel, but
| that there are parts of the page that just don't respond to it.
| Mildly infuriating to say the least.
| staplung wrote:
| William Gibson wrote a piece for Wired back in the day about his
| obsession with mechanical watches.[1] He puts it thus:
|
| ``` Mechanical watches are so brilliantly unnecessary.
|
| Any Swatch or Casio keeps better time, and high-end contemporary
| Swiss watches are priced like small cars. But mechanical watches
| partake of what my friend John Clute calls the Tamagotchi
| Gesture. They're pointless in a peculiarly needful way; they're
| comforting precisely because they require tending.
|
| And vintage mechanical watches are among the very finest fossils
| of the pre-digital age. Each one is a miniature world unto
| itself, a tiny functioning mechanism, a congeries of minute and
| mysterious moving parts. Moving parts! And consequently these
| watches are, in a sense, alive. They have heartbeats. They seem
| to respond, Tamagotchi-like, to "love," in the form, usually, of
| the expensive ministrations of specialist technicians. Like
| ancient steam-tractors or Vincent motorcycles, they can be
| painstakingly restored from virtually any stage of ruin. ```
|
| (1): Seems to be pay-walled now but you can find the whole thing
| in _Distrust that Particular Flavor_
| jhgb wrote:
| To me they're the timekeeping equivalent of pole vaulting
| yourself onto the second floor. A normal person would use
| stairs, but it's impressive and even cheered on by a bunch of
| onlookers when someone can do it just by jumping on a long
| stick.
| huhtenberg wrote:
| > _Any Swatch or Casio keeps better time_
|
| ... and that 's my cue to pimp one of the most practical watch
| of all time - Casio Oceanus, the 100 series. *
| Analog watch face. * Quartz, radio auto-sync, solar-
| powered. * Sapphire glass, titanium body and bracelet.
| Waterproof. * Clean design. Under $500.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=OCW-S100-1AJF&tbm=isch
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| In my opinion, its successor, the S200, has a cleaner design.
| mrwh wrote:
| Handsome watch!
| polio wrote:
| They're beautiful and impressive, but I find the amount of
| money that flows into "high horology" to be an sum with an
| egregious opportunity cost to society, made even worse by the
| fact that all that complexity goes towards a movement that is
| worse at keeping time than a rudimentary quartz. If people want
| Tamagotchis, they can get a Tamagotchi. I wish people would
| flex their donations to effective charities instead and find
| simpler luxuries.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| For sure, charities would be a much better use of the money
| involved... but on the other hand couldn't you say the same
| about art in general?
|
| I think what makes it different is the conspicuousness of
| these watches when they become a way to advertise wealth and
| status. But I like that artists/engineers can make a living
| by putting their time into producing such marvellous things.
| The world is richer for them.
| what-imright wrote:
| The solution of giving away your money over buying something
| is some broken logic. Plenty of corrupt charity officials
| line their pockets and live it up on donations. The rich
| don't owe society, exactly the opposite, hence the money. It
| represents an unpaid debt so you can't turn around and ask
| for it back.
| jansan wrote:
| Slightly offtopic: If anyone missed Bartosz Ciechanowski's
| website explaining how mechanical watsches work, you sold at
| least look at it once. It is a piece of art.
|
| https://ciechanow.ski/mechanical-watch/
| harywilke wrote:
| I love that all the diagrams are rotatable in 3d. it's such a
| great write up of how a mechanical watch works. The Youtube
| channel linked at the end
| (https://www.youtube.com/c/WristwatchRevival/videos) is a good
| companion to see the pieces in action.
| technothrasher wrote:
| You can learn a lot about how a watch works by getting a few
| old inexpensive pocket watch movements off eBay and playing
| with them. They're bigger movements than a wrist watch, and
| thus easier to work with, but most of the concepts are the
| same.
|
| I did just this a couple years ago and got hooked on horology,
| although I actually moved the other direction and now have a
| big collection of 18th and 19th century clocks.
| The_suffocated wrote:
| The concept is interesting, but the watch looks ugly and the dial
| is too small to be useful.
| moolcool wrote:
| Richard Mille's whole deal is technically interesting but very
| ugly watches
| samatman wrote:
| I'm disappointed to see this merger of art and engineering
| received so poorly here.
|
| This pushes the envelope of the possible, something I consider
| beautiful. It's roughly as impractical, expensive, and awkward
| looking, as a human-propelled airplane.
|
| I don't think any of the many commenters here who panned this
| watch would have anything bad to say about a human-propelled
| airplane. It's a pity that they can't appreciate this object in
| that spirit.
| sedatk wrote:
| If we'd started to replace airplanes with affordable $200
| flying saucers, and somebody came up with a $1.8M human-
| propelled airplane as "innovation", I bet it wouldn't have been
| liked as much.
| samatman wrote:
| Why compare with flying saucers, why not bikes? It's the bike
| industry existing which makes enormous gossamer human-powered
| craft possible, after all.
|
| Most art has little reason to exist, kind of by definition,
| and is seriously expensive at the high end. This is
| engineering art, where most expensive wristwatches are just
| art, specifically jewelry.
|
| I wouldn't expect the latest Hublot limited to end up on the
| front page of HN, but a 1.75mm mechanical wristwatch?
| Gratified my intellectual curiousity!
| sedatk wrote:
| Because that's just a lightweight version of an old
| technology. No new value is being added here. Had this
| watch provided, say, some smartwatch features mechanically
| (such as an analog heart monitor, or an analog altimeter
| etc) I might have found it interesting despite the
| technology still being old. This feels like just a flex on
| contemporary manufacturing capabilities. They just spent
| more money than everyone else.
| lgvld wrote:
| Maybe we shouldn't be pushig that hard towards reducing
| the size of processors/transistors?
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| Indeed, it's a bit like finding it hard to get all that
| hyped up about the latest Intel i9 whatever-K. Sure it's
| objectively a monstrous amount of processing on a sliver
| of matter (just like the one before it), but it's "just"
| throwing more transistors and fab at the same thing as
| the [whatever-1]-K.
|
| And then this is basically just an "if you know, you
| know" flex for a rich person. At least the incremental
| CPU "tick" or "tock" was somewhat useful, even if the -K
| variant is not especially useful in the general case.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| It's a flat watch - no doubt mechanically clever, but it also
| happens to be jarringly ugly.
|
| There's an entire economy dedicated to pandering to the
| pretensions of the vulgar rich, and it certainly fits in there.
|
| But as a design classic - no.
| nimbius wrote:
| the light that burns twice as bright burns half as long, or so
| its said. I'm thrilled to see the envelope pushed but I find
| seventeen jewel Chinese movements and old soviet designs so
| much more enriching. they tell a story that isn't just a
| bourgeois expression of the craft. luch, Vostok, sturmanskie,
| sugess and shanghai diamond all paint a rich tapestry that
| bridges history and modern craft, and are refreshingly
| approachable.
| samatman wrote:
| If I had 1.8mm to spend on watches I'd have to figure out
| what to do with the other 1.7 million, I'm happy to
| appreciate them on their own terms and from a safe distance.
| mrwh wrote:
| I have a 1960s Omega that's honestly one of my favourite
| possessions. Nothing fancy, steel, handsome face. It's
| comfortable to wear, because it's a fraction of the size and
| weight of a modern status watches; and it keeps good time. So I
| wear it most days. It's not just an affectation: glancing at a
| watch when I want to know the time is a better experience than
| pulling out my phone. And it turned out not to be a gateway into
| more and more expensive mechanical watches. It's being used for
| what it was made for 60-odd years ago.
|
| First thoughts on seeing this were: that looks uncomfortable. Oh,
| but it's so expensive you'd hardly ever want to wear it so...
| that cancels out? Finally: the sheer amount of concentrated money
| in the world where that makes sense as a business proposition
| still astonishes. To be so rich to go past comfort or function
| and into a realm of pure envy.
| penneyd wrote:
| These guys are gonna be sad, this comes in at 1.8mm
| https://www.bulgari.com/en-us/watches/mens/octo-finissimo-wa...
| This guy comes with a heckin NFT though so there's um that!
| __del__ wrote:
| the fake region of that qr code bugs me more than _that it has
| a qr code on it_
| daneel_w wrote:
| The watch can be seen about 2 minutes into the video, just at the
| end, after all the cars and other unrelated stuff. Fantastic
| directing...
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| This seems the same thinking that made MacBooks ever thinner
| while they were also losing utility. This is kind of cool
| engineering but why would you want a watch that has a huge
| Ferrari logo, some winding thingies but the actual clock part is
| really small?
| motohagiography wrote:
| Given the volatility of crypto, a unique watch like this is a
| pretty good hedging instrument. As an asset, I'd put ~$2m into a
| watch like this before an NFT, and Richard Mille watches are
| sufficiently unique that they can be competitive to a similarly
| priced piece from one of the other makers. I've commented in
| depth before on the the political economics of ultra luxury items
| like these watches, and the only question to me is what their
| liquidity looks like.
|
| It's the same as a Lamborghini. Something you can enjoy, with an
| acceptable level of depreciation, insurable as collateral on a
| loan for leverage into other productive assets, with a good and
| liquid aftermarket. Portability between countries is important as
| well for other kinds of transactions.
|
| The engineering really is pretty cool, and what an amazing job it
| would be to design products to become alternative assets.
| Literally, art. What markets are missing now is assets like these
| to put rapidly deteriorating cash into, and the timing of the
| release of this watch is impeccable as people rush to get out of
| cash and look for alternative assets. Engineering like this also
| cuts out the curators and gatekeepers who appraise art (paintings
| were the original NFTs, imo), and sets a very high bar for entry
| for any imitators. One of the problems of wealth after a certain
| point is finding ways to appreciate and enjoy it instead of the
| drag of just managing it all. Something like this, you put a
| couple million into, get some enjoyment out of it, then when you
| want out, you get more than inflation adjusted remainder out of
| it, or take a small loss that isn't as bad as what you lost in
| another asset bubble popping had you put the money there.
|
| Realistically, if there is something people love, with some
| engineering and craft you can make a million dollar+ version of
| it. They are beautiful examples of what they are, and the
| business of many of these things is the financial engineering
| around them.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Didn't realize Johny Ive found his way to Ferrari ;-)
| Ekaros wrote:
| All this marketing and I don't see the most important pieces of
| information. How well does it keep time? How accurate it is over
| a year?
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| Any historians able to provide color on the social context behind
| "The Emperor's New Clothes" and their contemporary relevance?
| Beltiras wrote:
| I've never seen an ad for a timepiece feature cars almost to the
| exclusion of the watch.
| whartung wrote:
| I guess you've never seen a Breitling ad.
|
| As far as I can tell, they sell flying stunt teams.
| ThePadawan wrote:
| I believe a few of the James Bond movies meet those criteria
| /j.
| LightG wrote:
| I don't know, as a layperson I love everything about this except
| it's final appearance.
| jgerrish wrote:
| Smooth folding phones, foxy ultraflat watches, I honestly don't
| know what radiant beauty is next.
|
| The future isn't limping along in the fog, is it?
|
| My blind eyes already paid the price for that video, nobody else
| has to.
|
| So, anyways, what's the topic today? Italian design? Arduino and
| Wiring? Arduino is an inspiring beginner electronics kit, and one
| of the first. Innovative design.
|
| Maybe open the user immediately into a tutorial project when they
| open the IDE? It's that Apple unboxing experience, right? You
| want to reduce the friction, reduce the time between when they
| open it, and their eyes light up at the blinking lights.
|
| Arduino online stores with code-signed projects? The newer
| Arduinos have WiFi, but I don't know how the browsing experience
| is in the IDE lately.
|
| I'm stuck in the CLI, trying to enjoy it again, hoping I don't
| cause too much pain to users. Which is a messed up mindset in
| some ways.
| pppq wrote:
| > _I honestly don 't know what radiant beauty is next._
|
| > _The future isn 't limping along in the fog, is it?_
|
| > _My blind eyes already paid the price for that video, nobody
| else has to._
|
| I enjoyed these words. Felt somewhat like lyrics to a Cardiacs
| song. Thank you.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| One of the best looking watches I have ever seen. Truly a
| mechanical pearl. Also looks quite unique in contrast to
| basically every other watch looking almost the same.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| Can you say why you think the design is good?
|
| That logo is unnecessary and takes up more room than the watch
| face. I don't think this is even for telling the time. I can't
| imagine this distinctive look is merely to signal that you have
| 1.8m on your wrist.
|
| This to me is like Louis Vuitton. I always thought plastering
| their logo everywhere was ugly.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Mechanical pearl: yes
|
| Unique look: yes
|
| Best looking watch: hell, no. it looks like utter crap. like a
| $2 scratch-off lotto ticket
| rowanG077 wrote:
| I disagree. But I guess I find most things ugly that are
| generally well received. I find almost all cars ugly, almost
| all watches, almost all laptops etc.
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