I Had A Random Thought...

[Merus]

I've had to use one at work for the last few years and Apple computers are literally just PCs at twice the price. I don't understand the appeal.

 

The appeal is those Apple computers that are very well made PCs at about the same price as a premium PC.

[Bjorn]

Somewhat tangentially, is it my imagination, or has there been an increasing fetishization of watches?  Like, a few people I know have increasingly larger and larger collections of watches that they obsess over.  The attraction is a combination of "oh shiny!" with a dash of nerd wonder at interesting mechanical devices.  It's no weirder than any other collectable, I suppose, but for some reason it irritates me. 

[JonCole]

Is anything tangential in a "I had a random thought" thread?

 

I haven't noticed any watch fetishization in my personal life, though I have been looking at various automatic watches for myself for some reason. I used to wear a watch all the time but it was kinda crappy and got all scratched up.

[Bjorn]

Is anything tangential in a "I had a random thought" thread?

 

True!

I know three guys I know who probably personally own 20+ watches each (one even has a travel case for them all so he can pick the appropriate watch for any clothing or function).  I'm super disconnected from whatever is current or popular in fashion, so I didn't know if it's just some random outliers in my circle, or if this was a "thing" that was going on with men and watches. 

[Ninety-Three]

Is anything tangential in a "I had a random thought" thread?

 

 

I'll also weigh in to say I've seen no evidence of watch fetishization. At some point in the last ten years, phones completely obsoleted them, and now the only people with watches I know are fancy businessmen. I suppose you could call that fetishization, but I don't think it was what you meant.

[Zeusthecat]

I wonder what Flavor Flav thinks of the iWatch? For that matter, I think they missed a golden opportunity by not announcing the iWatch Flavor Flav edition.

[Dewar]

Wouldn't that just be an iPhone in a gold circle hanging on a chain?

[tegan]

I'd say he's scaled up to iPad now.

 

 

One interesting thing about the Apple Watch Edition that I noticed was the weird Twitter tension between "really nice watches cost this much" and "this costs too much, period". I sympathize with the latter position, mostly because I feel the first sentiment is a bit snobby because it totally doesn't acknowledge the fact that a smartwatch has an inherent end of usefulness (whether that's due to obsolescence with regard to functionality, the rechargeable battery dying, or software eventually becoming incompatible with it) while a luxury watch will theoretically serve its intended function forever.

 

Also, a ten thousand dollar watch is usually handcrafted by some savant hermit in Switzerland who lives alone in the mountains and does nothing but spend months making a single watch. The Watch Edition is literally the regular one with a different material for the strap and a small amount of gold instead of a small amount of aluminum or steel. The target demographic for it is just a Powerpoint slide labeled "Kanye West" and I don't really get why they even bother letting the average consumer know about it. It's like having a black Mastercard.

[Professor Video Games]

I don't know if there's been an increase in interest or not, but there's certainly a scene that's into mechanical watches that I would say comes from the same mental space as something like getting into vinyl. Quartz watches are better in just about every way, but the mechanisms involved in mechanical watches are really neat and there's something about technology that you can see/understand that is appealing (plus probably some backlash over the ever increasing pervasiveness of modern tech). And like JonCole said, at least with a normal watch it won't be obsolete in a year.

 

Anyway, there are people that get way too into just about everything...watches, shoes, video game figurines...I wouldn't read too much into it.

 

I've thought about getting a watch mainly because there are plenty of situations where I feel getting my phone out is rude, even if it's just to check the time. Of course now with smartwatches even looking at those is kinda no good.

[Ninety-Three]

The target demographic for it is just a Powerpoint slide labeled "Kanye West" and I don't really get why they even bother letting the average consumer know about it. It's like having a black Mastercard.

 

Because it's gotten a lot of people to talk about the Apple Watch. It fits perfectly with modern marketing's ideas of brand awareness and so on.

[SecretAsianMan]

I see the Apple Watch Edition as a hardware version of the I am Rich app, an app that was released in the early days of the app store.  It cost $999.99 and had no function besides showing off that you were rich enough to waste a thousand dollars on a joke.

[SuperBiasedMan]

So it turns out my country accidentally legalised over a hundred different illegal substances (including things like LSD and meth) for a 48 hour period.

 

salutes the nearest flag

 

I don't plan to make use of this impromptu festival but that's just a wonderful demonstration of this place.

[Twig]

Haha wow how?

[Vasari]

Ireland dun goofed!

[SuperBiasedMan]

Ketamine! Nearly forgot about that one.

[Dewar]

Nice, even with all that, Marijuana is still illegal. *sigh*

[Blambo]

From that same article: http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/irish-language-version-of-same-sex-vote-text-changed-1.2133577#.VP8XaPh7k0g.twitter

[Akidu]

As a producer the Blurred Lines verdict infuriates me. I mean the amount of artists who have knowingly or unknowingly ripped off another at some point or another is 100%. 

 

Music/ideas don't work like property you can't just own it like a house. It has to be available for reinterpretation by other artists. UHHH. 

 

If one artist releases a song identical to another with the same points and ideas then I think there might be a case but other wise no. If the Blurred Lines verdict were applied to artists 30 years ago there would be no rap/hip hop. If the Blurred Lines verdict were applied to all artists now you would turn art into a "what chord progressions do I have left" game. 

[N1njaSquirrel]

Sorry, but what's the Blurred Lines verdict? Other than it's an awful song? I know nothing.

[Akidu]

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/robin-thicke-and-pharrell-lose-blurred-lines-lawsuit-20150310 I guess that gives an idea(I havn't read thoroughly). 

Essentially the song "Blurred Lines" written by Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke was deemed plagiarism of Marvin Gaye's " Got to give it up". 
Marvin Gayes family won 7 million as a result. 
The song has a very similar vibe to Gaye's track but they are different. Which is like many many many songs out there. 

 

 

After thinking about it a bit I care less, I don't think these kinds of cases will come up often and I doubt it will have any real impact on most artists. 
Still i wish more people would understand that great ideas don't happen in a vacuum(not that i'm saying blurred lines is a great idea). 

[Merus]

Honestly I'm less worried about Blurred Lines and more worried about the cases where producers have ripped off emerging artists like chiptune artists or unsigned musicians and got away scott free because these artists have no practical legal recourse. I still remember Timbaland having ripped off a chiptune track, and Glee stole Jonathan Coulton's arrangement of Baby Got Back then told him that he should be grateful.

 

Copyright largely doesn't model the process of inspiration and evolution that many creative works go through. Since I Left You by The Avalanches is kind of an extreme example: incredibly creative, and very few of the samples are, individually, materially important to the work, and yet all those people gots ta get paid.

 

(I think this problem would be largely solved by reducing the length of copyright significantly. Mickey Mouse is a trademark, no-one except Disney is going to get away with using him.)

[N1njaSquirrel]

I'm probably not the person to argue this, but I can see their argument as for it sounding similar.

 

As for whether that's grounds to sue, I don't know enough about the music industry to say. This certainly isn't the first time that it's happened though. I don't think it'll shake up the music industry though. Not at all. 

 

That article was interesting though. I didn't know that Williams wrote practically all of that song. That's a shame, I thought he was a more intelligent man than to write those lyrics. :/

[SuperBiasedMan]

People can be intelligent and sexist, it happens all the time really.

[N1njaSquirrel]

That's a good point.

 

SBM, when you get to 1402 posts, please change your profile pic again, using the same method, then again when you get to 2804, and so on. The long-term effect would look sweet.

[SuperBiasedMan]

Sure! I assume the 1402 number came from doubling the number in my profile picture? It's too small for me to read on my phone. Assuming that is the case, I kinda wish I'd had the idea sooner so I could exponent with much smaller intervals.