Well, there's always aesthetics/fashion. I wear a (very attractive, IMHO) self-winding watch. As someone else has mentioned, it's actually really convenient compared to getting my phone out of my pocket, but mostly I like the way it looks -- I guess it's a form of functional jewelry.
I think watches are also status markers. Witness the wide variety of vastly overpriced -- for the actual functionality you get -- watches on the market. A 100$ watch probably performs 99.999% as well as a 10000$ watch, but people will buy the latter, because of the Cartier label or whatnot.
I'd love to say that I'm immune from that, but I'm not. A nice watch makes me feel subtly more powerful. Manly. Strong. In control. Etc... I feel a little awkward without it. This is difficult to explain and may be generational.
The aesthetics/fashion/status thing isn't going to be hit with a mass-market iDevice. Apple makes beautiful, even jewelry-like devices but they are solidly mass market and there's nothing to differentiate one owner from another.
A 100$ watch probably performs 99.999% as well as a 10000$ watch
Hell, a fifteen dollar quartz watch will outperform a $20000 Patek Philippe.
This is difficult to explain and may be generational.
It probably is generational. I'm Gen-Y and watches seem like an irrelevance nowadays. I can't think of one of my similarly aged friends who wears a watch.
To be fair I used to wear one, and felt naked without it for a while after the band broke but by that time I was carrying a phone everywhere and I soon forgot about it.
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who, honestly, still wears a watch?
Well, there's always aesthetics/fashion. I wear a (very attractive, IMHO) self-winding watch. As someone else has mentioned, it's actually really convenient compared to getting my phone out of my pocket, but mostly I like the way it looks -- I guess it's a form of functional jewelry.
I think watches are also status markers. Witness the wide variety of vastly overpriced -- for the actual functionality you get -- watches on the market. A 100$ watch probably performs 99.999% as well as a 10000$ watch, but people will buy the latter, because of the Cartier label or whatnot.
I'd love to say that I'm immune from that, but I'm not. A nice watch makes me feel subtly more powerful. Manly. Strong. In control. Etc... I feel a little awkward without it. This is difficult to explain and may be generational.
The aesthetics/fashion/status thing isn't going to be hit with a mass-market iDevice. Apple makes beautiful, even jewelry-like devices but they are solidly mass market and there's nothing to differentiate one owner from another.
A 100$ watch probably performs 99.999% as well as a 10000$ watch
Hell, a fifteen dollar quartz watch will outperform a $20000 Patek Philippe.
This is difficult to explain and may be generational.
It probably is generational. I'm Gen-Y and watches seem like an irrelevance nowadays. I can't think of one of my similarly aged friends who wears a watch.
To be fair I used to wear one, and felt naked without it for a while after the band broke but by that time I was carrying a phone everywhere and I soon forgot about it.