Concerning Wearable Tech:

Let’s beat this dead horse down to the dirt.

It’s about the name. The fuckers over at marketing really nailed the right words calling them “Smart Watches.” Cuz now you’re a dumbass if you don’t wear one. Who wears one of those stupid old timey watches when I can do infinitely more things with this smart watch… it even connects to my “smart phone.” Step into the future bitch or get left behind. But no, we can’t call it a wrist computer, no, can’t call it wearable tech, not catchy enough, it’s gotta be: SMART WATCH! So therefore the marketing gods have spoken and furthermore they shall be watches. Regardless. No questions.

Just like the damned Tudor “snowflake” hands. Some asshole in the crowd shouted out that the handset lume blocks look like snowflakes to them and then other assholes in the crowd chanted in agreement, and then you have a mob of idiots calling squares snowflakes. Fancy simple names can be catchy, i get it.

i WEaR iT ON mY wRiST, iT tElLs tIMe, IT”S A WATCH! :: Such irrefutable logic I can’t fathom to comprehend, but I’ll do my best to argue anyway.

Sure they tell time more accurately, that doesn’t make them a watch.

Sure you wear them on your wrist, but that doesn’t make them a watch. What about dive computers? Why do they get a pass?

Sure they might have sparked some people into wearing traditional watches more and again and getting people into the collecting hobby, but that doesn’t make them a watch, it makes them a failure as a watch.

There was an example brought up that the Casio calculator watch gets to have a non time related complication on it and still be called a watch, therefore the smart watch receives the same pass. What about the remote control watch? What about the Seiko Alpinist, or any watch with a compass bezel? What about the Richard Mille Sylvester Stalone with a pill compartment? The Breitling Navitimer? The Citizen Skyhawk? Main theme tying them together? Their primary purpose is to tell the time, secondary features happen to exist peripherally. Is the smart watches primary function to tell time? Or is telling time a peripheral feature? Another running theme: these examples are made by companies, whose sole product, are watches. Not computers. Not cell phones. Not servers. Not keyboards. Not headphones. Just watches… Except Casio and Seiko-Epsom get to make everything else, sooooo, there’s that hiccup.

One gentleman’s anecdote described that his Apple Watch purchase was solely based on the decision to use it as a watch. To add it to the collection because it was unique. To this I say—does treating it like a watch only…make it only a watch? If I used my Swiss Army Knife multi-tool as a toothpick only… would that make it only a toothpick? I use my Microwave as a clock 99.9% of the time…does that make it just a clock?

Sure smart watches can be convenient to millions. Sure they help solve lots of problems for people looking to learn more, but just because it’s called a smart watch doesn’t make it a watch, it’s just common nomenclature lazily following a marketing label.

A watch has a job, to tell its wearer the time, however it doesn’t have side jobs (unless we consider art/beauty which is a whole other ball of wax), it has complications that split and measure time accordingly. Not actual life complications.

This is a watch enthusiast forum after all, isn’t it? Shouldn’t we be able to tell the difference between a watch and a wearable-multi-function-computer-medical-tracking-device-thingy?

I dunno. Just my long winded two cents. Cheers and Crunch on.