I've always loved this idea. It just makes sense. People argue against the "circular notation" of a clock face and how it relates to 60 minutes/seconds, but all that analog stuff is dead.
> Just curious — aesthetics aside what other
> advantages do you think an analog watch provides?
Think of an analogue watch as a 2d graph where one of the dimensions is t. If you have a table of numbers you can compare them by looking at all the cells or you can graph each row one a cartesian (or polar or...) plot. Both contain the same info, and the table probably has higher resolution, but which tells a more illuminating story?
On a watch face, the minute hand is the biggest win: you can see at a glance approximately what time it is / approximately how long you have / approximately how far away you are which is what you usually need. I definitely think in terms of it being about "a quarter past fourteen" or "half past seven". The digital watch has too much precision and requires too much parsing.
The hour hand gives you similar data on a larger scale, but you typically need that less. And in fact though the watch face shows 2x 12 hours, when I look at it I see the normal 24 hour clock.
The second hand is good when you're working out since as you see it sweep to its goal you might push harder to get one more rep in or whatever, but this is a less common need and in fact many analogue watches come without a second hand.
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The analogue clock face is an example of more humane design for specific problem domain, sort of the like US & Imperial unit systems. They are utterly useless for engineering (but even in engineering I use both MKS and CGS depending on the problem domain -- and its community). Miles and km / acres and hectares -- it's no big deal to me either way. But when making a staircase, cooking a meal for three people or resizing a dress pattern, the ability to use a system that naturally decomposes into rational factors is appropriate. And that's the beauty of the babylonian time system: despite the annoying (though necessary) primality of the week, there are plenty of factors available for subdividing the intervals.
> The digital watch has too much precision and requires too much parsing
Funny, my stance on analogue clocks is they have too little precision and require too much parsing. If I'm tired or stressed it can take me seconds to read one, while digits practically beam the numbers into my head simply through the act of glancing at them.
I do have to admit, though, most digital watches are monstrous things, with tiny displays to leave room for all the trademarks and other nonsense they feel the need to plaster everywhere. I seriously don't understand why they're almost universally awful.
> aesthetics aside, what other advantages do you think an analog watch provides?
* Appreciation of craftsmanship. Look at a watch with 10+ complications and try not to be impressed. Do not get me started on the Patek Philippe Calibre 89.
* Sentimental attachment/Nostalgia, e.g. the family heirloom.
* EMP resistance
* Permitted inside testing room during LSAT administration
- if you are using a 24h sovjet analog clock or a pocket sundial (as i do), you are more in tune with the cosmos on which our time, day and night schedule is based
- it associates time more with quality then with quantity
- can be purely mechanical, no electricity or batteries
I also wear an analog watch, but it's just aesthetic. It's actually slightly less useful than a digital watch because it doesn't have a backlight, calendar, stopwatch, etc.
And as long as we're discussing "out there" time notations, I'll throw out my support for a calendar system that makes more sense. 12 30-day months with a 5 (or 6) day "Holiday Month" at the end. Adjusting the "week" to be 10 days instead of 7. 3 weeks a month, 9 weeks a quarter, 36 weeks a year. Work 7 of the 10 days in a week would be the same as a 5-day work week (2 more days off a year actually).
That's what I have in my time system UIT (linked earlier). I renamed the days to nullday, unday, duoday, triday, quadday, pentday, hexday, heptday, octday, nonday. One nice feature is that if I tell you that it's 1st Unday today, you can see immediately that it's the 12 day of the year (since 0th Nullday is the first day of the year).
Seems like all the complexity and special casing of the time keeping is moved into the "holiday month" at the end. E.g., Which financial quarter does it belong to? Moreover only 5 or 6 out of the 10 weekdays will occur in the holiday month, then you have to reset to "Monday" again to have a fixed date->day mapping.
Beats time is no more 'digital' than the 24-hour day. It's 10 base which makes it easier for us to calculate, and without time zones, makes it easier to communicate around the world as we become more global.
I think maybe Swatch gave up to early on this? It could have just been another measurement on their watches. Not the main one, but secondary.
There's no way this was going to be an overnight change.
> Beats time is no more 'digital' than the 24-hour day. It's 10 base which makes it easier for us to calculate, and without time zones, makes it easier to communicate around the world as we become more global.
But 'digital' literally means base-10 (as in, like the digits on your hands), so in what sense is it not digital?