*promote

Self promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Tuesday, October 14th, 2014 12:49pm PDT - promote requested by original submitter lv_hunter.

Arrrgh, this video kills me!

My first reaction is that $2.5 million for a watch is borderline offensive. That really is just spending money for the sake of it.

But then you see you the phenomenal artistry and engineering that goes into it and I think that the world would be a poorer place without such sheer craft. The detail in the mechanism is simply beautiful.

And then finally, they put it all together... and it's hideous.

Garish, ostentatious, impractical.... it's just an aesthetic mess. And worse, they have hidden all that beautiful clockwork.

But still, the engineer in me simply has to upvote this!

Rube Goldberg wears one of those.

I wonder where this company will be in 5 years time?

They've been around since 1839....

I hate this device with every fiber of my being.

It's an ostentatious, gaudy and useless bauble built for privileged, elite parasites. It holds no value in any society. The unbelievable waste of technology and resources that has been diverted to the creation and acquisition of such an embarrassing canker brings shame on us all.

Anyone who purchases one of these monstrosities should have it strapped around their neck as they're paraded in front of the community that they embezzled their wealth from.

In a just society, these would be worn on the wrists of the underserved homeless people who dragged these oligarchs off the top of their pyramids and bludgeoned them in the gutter.

Why did you upvote the video then?

I don't believe in commenting without upvoting. ;-)

It is impossible for some people to see that this watch is at the intersection of art, engineering, and style.

While it is not my style it is very impressive in terms of the attention to detail, the complexity, and the skill of its makers.

Sure this watch is made for a Saudi Prince or a Chinese gazillionaire, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate it.

I don't cry foul when someone spends their life making music or sculpting stones into statues. What a waste of resources...

Where will Patek be in five years? Making even more money as Asia continues to buy up more luxury goods.

Ugly watch !!!

Much prefer the $2000 - $8000 watches from here
http://videosift.com/video/Look-over-the-watchmakers-shoulders

My only issue is the ridiculous extra time they spent machining patterns and filigree into parts that will never be seen by anyone besides the maker. That part really seemed like a waste to me. Well, that and the price tag.
The intricate and precise clockwork involved is great though, at least to me. Far more than needed, but most truly great things are. Just look at the Bugatti.
Also, I love the chime. You'll never re-create that tone with a tiny speaker and a digital file.

ridiculously nice mechanical engineering in any case!

The Gist:

Guy in business suit looking thoughtfully out of window.
(Doubtful anyone who designs fine consumer goods, *actually designs consumer goods*, wears a suit). Maybe its supposed to be you! You avant-garde millionaire, you!

Person sketching watch designs. This is probably semi-close to reality, though they don’t show the hundreds of designs the visual designer creates that are dismissed at whim by the aforementioned, assumed (but inevitable even if not shown) suits.

People fiddling with plastic representations of what one would assume as the model for said watch design. Maybe realistic, though with the caveat that two people are sitting there going over said physical design, in any serious discussion concerning the actual physics of the end product. I can *not* imagine that nearly the entirety of this process today, both visual and mechanical design, are not done digitally.

Okay, there’s some CG. Because CG is the next step, rather than the first, least expensive step in any design process today. Who wants to quickly model everything in a matter of hours when you can fabricate expensive, physical material for iterative testing?

Holy shit, was that guy just looking at a wood cutout? I can’t even think of a shitty, sarcastic/realistic remark about that one. I might have misunderstood that shot.

Alright, now we’re machining shit. You can’t really fake that with a few grand for marketing. That’s the real stuff. (1.5m in)

No, they don’t sand/polish things by hand during the fabrication phase. That’s entirely too inaccurate and subjective to the assembler to leave up to human hands. (But hey: it’s a 2.5 million dollar piece of metal, so lets make those buyers feel good about their money spent).

Oh look: gemstones! (???) That's kingly.

More faux machining that is veritably inferior to quality mechanical assembly.

Oh shit, someone just turned a nob!

3.5 minutes in, and we see some actual hand-polished work that is legitimately viable to perform by hand.

Hey lets sand those nodules off the finished pieces, and micro-inspect those printed markings, because nothing about us says “accuracy” without a fallible human to do it. Also: what are they printing shit on there for? Was it pushing the price to $3mil to engrave the timestamps on the faces? That better be the highest quality electroplated coating, but even then I can't imagine that's superior than a tactile, physical representation.

Now they’re hand-engraving the sculpted ornamentation, but it’s one more point I can gladly give them because those kinds of human touches let you know at least some sort of artisan was involved. I can appreciate that, though realizing what I just said causes me to reflect on the inaccuracies of mass-production, and why we would take one over the other…

More microscopes. (Because if one notch is off, it’s back to the furnace for you!)

Awe shit, payday. A guy in a suit looking confident is walking towards your building!

Finally, the gear assembly. It certainly looks fantastic, photographically speaking. I can’t help but notice that all that detail is lost to hundreds of textural indentations or are due to stylized alternating polish/grinding. However, I’m confident that spending $2.5mil on this product would get me the absolute, most accurate, unnoticeable details (hand-made!) within a micro-millimeter of accuracy. Those indentations are like chrome on a street-racer in the 90’s: the more you have, the greater they perform.

@~8min, I’m pretty sure no one works like that at their desk. That posture would kill you in a month.

They know you can’t spin the head of a watch while it’s on your wrist, right?

Awe! It’s got 5 ringtones! That’s way more than any other watch I’ve even heard of! Except everything that doesn’t cost $2.5mil.


If I can take anything away from this that’s even remotely positive, it’s that at least millionaire shitheads are now being just as suckered as the rest of the consumer base. Let me sell ONE of those watches, and I would have enough money to overtake their business within a year, except for that I don't have the greed, dishonesty, and overall lack of morals that it would take to set up a quality factory, and trick such dickheads into buying (even superior BS) products.

As a bonus, it manages to keep time only few orders of magnitude worse than a 50 cent quartz crystal oscillator does. Impressive.

(And yes, of course I know it's really meant to be jewelry more so than a watch)

I personally think it's a beautiful watch, but even if I were Bill-Gates-rich, I wouldn't buy such an excessive luxury item. Obviously this isn't the only watch that Patek Philippe make - it's just meant to be a show piece, the best of the most complicated pure mechanical watches. The watch itself is a marketing tool (Look at what we can do - surely our $5000 watches are better than $5000 Rolex!)

It wasn't made for a Saudi prince, unless it comes in a color other than gold. Maybe someone with such large wrists as Kim Dotcom...
Celebrities like Schwarzenegger or Stallone wouldn't wear this watch because it's not manly enough.

2 more comments have been lost in the ether at this killed duplicate.