H. Moser is a Swiss watch manufacturer with a very strange sense of humor.
In 2015, when the Apple Watch first came out, Moser released the “Endeavor Perpetual Calendar Funky Blue,” a traditional, fully mechanical automatic watch – promoted with a cheeky video that made fun of the idea of smartwatches, including different forms of the ergonomics of an old-fashioned wristwatch. (“CLEAN INTERFACE”, the video boasted: “No finger zoom to check the date”). It sold for about $ 60,000 when it was released.
Moser has continued to produce timepieces that poke fun at the Apple Watch, including this new one: the “Swiss Alp Watch Final Upgrade”. It has a Vantablack-coated watch face and a rotating mechanism that mimics the look of an Apple “loading” animation.
As they describe it on their website:
The latest edition of H. Moser & Cie.’s paradoxical, satirical and whimsical Swiss Alp Watch, a timepiece that mimics the look of a “smartwatch” with the proven ingenuity of a traditional mechanical timepiece. The Swiss Alp Watch Final Upgrade is made in a steel DLC case and is paired with a Vantablack® dial. Instead of a second hand, a running indicator reminiscent of the “charging” symbol rotates continuously at 6 o’clock.
Technically, the joke is impressive. It’s not easy to replicate that digital animation by purely analog means, and it turns the whole watch into an intriguing illusion. From a distance, it looks eerily like a regular computer-controlled Apple Watch that just happens to have a reduced set of digitized watch hands. But if you look at the bottom, you can see the busy mechanical watch casings swirling away.
But man, I can’t imagine Spend $ 30,800 on what, as The Verge puts it, is Apple’s “next-level” troll. Maybe there are people with money to burn, who are these kinds of things aimed at?