Mit der Vorstellung der Apple Watch ist das Thema "Smartwatch" in aller Munde und der Kampf um das Handgelenk hat jetzt wohl endgültig begonnen.
Wenn man etwas zurück in die Geschichte schaut, dann ist es ja gerade mal etwas mehr als 100 Jahre her, dass die Uhr den Platz am Handgelenk eingenommen hat. Wird sie diesen jetzt an die Smartwatches abgeben müssen? Wie stehen wir als Liebhaber mechanischer Armbanduhren dazu, das wird in den nächsten Jahren den Platz an unseren Handgelenken einnehmen ?
Ich bin gespannt über eure Meinungen und Kommentare.

Zum Ende von HMT Watches hat der indische Autor und Kolumnist der "Times Of India" Santosh Desai eine schöne Kolumne geschrieben die auch sehr gut zum Thema "Der Kampf um das Handgelenk" passt. Hier der Text:

Zitat

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HMT and the times of the watch

The demise of HMT watches would hardly come as a surprise; indeed some would wonder as to whether the brand had not died years ago. It might well be a time to reflect upon what this passing means, particularly, as it also happens to be the week in which Apple has launched its watch. The journey of the watch, and in some senses of time itself from the days of HMT to those of Apple, has a story to tell.

My first watch was the HMT Ajeet, which i earned by passing my Xth class exams. Like all HMT watches, it wore its functionality like a badge, and still does. My father owns a HMT Pilot, which he wears to this day, and its lack of any design artifice has conferred on it a retrospective beauty. It was a time when if things worked, they were deemed brilliant, and the HMT watch certainly did work. It lived in a world where human beings needed to give machines a helping hand- like the bicycle pump or the two-wheeler kick-start, the HMT watch needed to be helped along with periodic winding, unless it was an ‘automatic’ watch which relied on the movement of the body to do its winding.

The meaning of the watch then was different. It needed to be earned- wearing one was a sign of responsibility, an affirmation that one belonged to a larger system of order. One was deemed ready to bear time on one’s wrist, being presumably able to meet the expectation that the world placed on an individual. Worn on the wrist, time sat broodingly on the body, creating a rhythm that melded its sound, the mechanical tick-tock with the living throb of the pulse. In doing so, the personal got implicitly located in the social as one’s life became an inextricable part of the times one lived in.

It may not seem so at first glance but the manner in which time is measured and told, changes the way we live in other ways. Time as we well know is not experienced uniformly- exams swallow up time while lectures drags it out. The idea of objective time that is imagined as being made up of equal and uniform intervals is a wholly human invention that gives time an insistent and precise quality. Measuring time through a sun-dial finds a connection between the biological and the cultural; time still becomes a reflection of a natural process (of course, when the sun goes down, time dies). An hourglass imagines it as a finite quantity, perpetually running out. In a clock-tower, time becomes a social instrument; its role to create a common canopy of order. Worn on the wrist, the individual gets included in the larger system of order, from which there is no escape.

While the watch does instil a common currency of order in our lives, as a machine, it has traditionally been a thing of wonder. A combination of compressed complexity and exquisite craftsmanship helped make a thing of precision a work of beauty. The idea of the watchmaker as a some kind of divine creator is one that has found common expression. The watch is the machine that came closest to the complexity of the human body, and it helps that it seems to have a ticking heart of its own. The finest watches in the world are all little miracles of the human hand- intricate, bejewelled, perfect.

The HMT watch was of course, untouched by any considerations of art and managed only a rudimentary stab at beauty. In the case of HMT, the watch performed the primary role of keeping time and in turn ensuring that we kept to it as the somewhat limited script of our life played itself out. The coming of the quartz watch through the good offices of Titan, was a significant challenge to the socialistic limits of the middle class imagination. The precision of the watch came to be taken for granted, and the instrument became a site that hosted several other meanings. Titan released the individual from the framework of shared time, allowing for a sense of personal expression. The watch became an object of desire, not just duty, and time began breathing a little easier. The watch became more a product of the surplus economy, and began to tell stories about the dreams and fantasies of the individual. One could choose one’s own watch, based on neither its functionality nor its craftsmanship but on the basis of how good it looked on the wearer.

In the days that have passed, time has taken on new qualities. Technology strives to multiply time, and indeed we are able to reside in many simultaneous universes as a result. We do things parallel rather than sequentially, and time has become a background icon rather than an overbearing presence. Time is told everywhere, and the watch is no longer an essential part of one’s life, at least not for the purpose for which it was created. The Apple watch is imagined for a time when in spite of a universal objective measure of time, every individual uses time in a unique way. Time by itself has little value, it is only in its use that it finds worth. The Apple watch itself looks very much like one, but what it is really trying to do is to occupy the real estate that is the wrist. It is a Trojan Horse of technology, a ‘wearable device’ that is donning the disguise of a watch.

The death of HMT was a foregone conclusion. And not just because of mismanagement or an inability to keep pace with change, but because it told us a time we no longer care for. The watch will stay, but it will exist to tell us stories of a new kind, none of which will have much to do with telling time.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

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Quelle: http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Citycitybangbang/hmt-and-the-times-of-the-watch/

Es ist schon ein Dilemma, wenn mann die Apple Watch tatsächlich nutzen will, dann ist der Platz am Handgelenk besetzt. Ist die Apple Watch also eine Art "Exit Watch" da sie mit all ihren Funktionen ja nur Sinn macht wenn man sie permanent trägt?

Hier ein Bericht eines NOMOS Trägers von seinen ersten Eindrücken:


http://www.kluge.de/2015/05/uhrsachen-2.html

Sein bisheriges Fazit:

Zitat

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Die Apple Watch ist nicht die erste Smartwatch, nicht der erste smarte Fitness-Tracker. Aber sie macht alles richtig. Sie ist in erster Linie eine Uhr. Eine sehr smarte Uhr. Damit wird sie die Uhren-Branche kräftig wachrütteln. Ich würde derzeit nicht in Aktien der Swatch-Gruppe investieren.

Die Nomos ist und bleibt ein zeitloses Schmuckstück. Aber sie wird jetzt lange Zeit nicht mehr mein Handgelenk zieren.

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