An Open Letter to Time + Tide, the Australian Horological Publication

You've got a current headline which reads:

RECOMMENDED READING: Apple sold nearly 10 million more watches than the entire Swiss watch industry in 2019

Well, good luck with the Apple watch crowd. Because all of these recent articles about quartz watches and smart watches are losing us who like mechanical watches and used to like Time & Tide. We had 45 years to start liking quartz watches before the Apple Watch was invented -- didn't happen, did it? And yes, we do know that quartz watches are much more accurate and that smart watches do all sorts of amazing things. We just don't particularly care.

It also will do you no good with me to compare smart watches to electric cars, because I'm already completely on board with EV's. That's right: electric cars and mechanical watches for me, please. And solar and wind power and the death of the oil, coal and gas industry just as soon as possible!

And I'd dump mechanical watches too if they spewed poisonous gases the way internal-combustion vehicles do -- but they don't, do they?

I know, the Apple watch geeks will stare at us mechanical-watch geeks as if we were pods, as if we were simply inexplicable beings. News flash: most people already looked at us that way, and we already knew it, and we already didn't care. To us, the others were always the pods, and right now, anybody who tries to talk us into Apple watches over mechanical watches -- is of course a pod. There's not even the slightest question about it. And there's also not even the slightest question that some of the people who work at your magazine are one of us and not one of you, and they'll quit, and they and we will be just fine. In fact we'll be better because we'll be just a little bit more convinced of each other's genuineness once pods like you have been weeded out.

We had of course assumed that you, Time & Tide, were one of us, but we'll live. We'll live wearing mechanical watches, and sometimes even carrying mechanical pocket watches, and not being the slightest bit tired of having to pull them out of our pockets every time we want to know the imperfectly, mechanically-kept time.

We'll be just fine. Mechanical watches won't disappear. Quartz didn't make them disappear, smart watches and sleazy sell-outs like you, Time + Tide, won't make them disappear. Mechanical watches are already not about maximum profits any more than they're about the absolutely best-available precision time. Rats jumping ship will just make the love and dedication of those who remain shine more clearly. You're just pushing mechanicals further in the direction of art. Art hasn't disappeared.