[HN Gopher] Ultra-flat timepiece, the RM UP-01 Ferrari, is 1.75 ... ___________________________________________________________________ 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. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-07-10 23:00 UTC)