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Re:The Apple Watch by jonhester on Wednesday April 08, 2015 @11:15AM (#9341264)
Mechanical watches, think Rolexes, have smooth second hand movements but they are acutally still ticking, just about 6 times a second. The Apple Watch, on the other hand, has a second hand with 60 ticks per second so that the second hand is about 10 times smoother.
Re:The Apple Watch by kgwgk on Wednesday April 08, 2015 @11:51AM (#9341585)
Some "hi-beat" watches tick 10 times per second (still well below 60). Seiko's Spring Drive (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_Drive) offers continuous movement, but it's not completely mechanical (a quartz oscillator controls the escapement). I would rather have one of these than an Apple Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8m-5YpNUwgc

(Edit: only now have I noticed it was already mentioned in another comment)

Re:The Apple Watch by sanoli on Wednesday April 08, 2015 @11:45AM (#9341509)
Correction: Rolexes tick 8 times a second (or 28.800 beats per hour, as is used by watch people). 6 are the vintage ones.
Re:The Apple Watch by Cookingboy on Wednesday April 08, 2015 @11:00PM (#9345611)
You are wrong. The movement moves at 8 Hz per second, but it actually takes two cycles to actually tick once, so it's actually 4 ticks per second.

The old watches tick at 3 times per second on 6 Hz movements.

Re:The Apple Watch by sanoli on Thursday April 09, 2015 @01:50PM (#9349508)
No, I'm not. It's 8 ticks per second. I have one and I have checked. Look at this video of the hand up close (it's a 28800 bph movement):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxgahvNH3q0

Re:The Apple Watch by Cookingboy on Wednesday April 08, 2015 @11:07PM (#9345628)
I don't know many mechanical watches (especially Rolex) that ticks at 6 times per second. That requires the balance wheel to be beating at 12Hz.

Old Rolex tick 3 times per second on 6 beats/second balance wheel movements, and modern Rolex do 4 ticks per second on 8 beats per second movement.

Re:The Apple Watch by Calcite on Thursday April 09, 2015 @12:37PM (#9348853)
That's incorrect. The seconds hand moves 6 times in one second on my 7S26 movement (21,600 bph). On a modern Rolex, it would move 8 times in one second. You can check this with a high speed camera (such as the one in the iPhone 6). Nonetheless, there are vastly superior mechanical drives out there that are continuous (Seiko Spring Drive for example).
Re:The Apple Watch by pcurve on Wednesday April 08, 2015 @04:34PM (#9343750)
True as long as there are sufficient number of pixel density to movement of 60 ticks per seconds.
Re:The Apple Watch by idbehold on Wednesday April 08, 2015 @08:10PM (#9345024)
Antialiasing.
Re:The Apple Watch by noinsight on Thursday April 09, 2015 @09:02AM (#9347174)
And Bulova has the Precisionist line that moves much more smoothly:

> In 2010, Bulova introduced the Precisionist, a new type of quartz watch with ultra-high frequency (262.144 kHz) which is claimed to be accurate to +/- 10 seconds a year and has a smooth sweeping second hand rather than one that jumps each second.

Re:The Apple Watch by sanoli on Thursday April 09, 2015 @01:57PM (#9349582)
Huh. Cool. I always wondered why they didn't make quartz second hands jump in smaller amounts. Something difficult or not efficient to achieve, I guess.

By the way, Seiko has had a movement for some time that is rated to +/- 5 seconds a year. I think it was on a special edition of the Grand Seiko line (already rated to around 10 seconds a year, so you'd get 5 seconds off less. Yay!)