The only thing I want buzzing on my wrist is a Memovox. Why I’ll never wear an Apple Watch…

Shane Hegarty

You don’t need the statistics to tell you that Apple Watches sell more than the rest of the Swiss watch industry combined. You need only to glance at people’s wrists. 

You can’t miss those sleek square slabs. They’re everywhere. Worn by every age group, in every profession. I’ve been told they’re particularly popular among undertakers, who can discreetly check messages without having to whip out the phone in the middle of a widow’s eulogy.

But I refuse to wear one.  

Worse, I instinctively let out a pathetic little “pah” of derision at the mere mention of the Apple Watch. Why? Because I believe there’s a difference between having an obsession with a watch and being a slave to one.

Traditional watches are not hyperactive kids bouncing about on your wrist, demanding that you give them attention right now. Wind your mechanical watch every day, or keep that automatic’s rotor turning, and it will do its job calmly and soberly, without minute-by-minute demands. And it’ll do it with a calm and regular tick-tick-tick, not the intrusive buzzing of notifications. 

I sit with friends and see them constantly glancing at their wrist at every single interruption. An Apple Watch isn’t asking you to focus on the here and the now but is instead wrenching you repeatedly into the never-ending stream of information and activity and news and invective. It’s putting all that stress right next to your pulse and then boasting about how it can tell if you’re having a heart attack.

The only thing I want buzzing on my wrist is a Memovox. A great watch, especially an aged one, can be contemplative to look at. That watch is not just telling you the time and asking you to concentrate on the here and now, but its design, movement, patina and case scratches are often telling its own story and how that’s connected to the meaningful moments in your life.

And yes, I’m overly sensitive about how Apple Watch and others call themselves “smart watches”. That’s just condescending and arrogant. 

What about a mechanical watch isn’t smart? What is dumb about a tiny machine on your wrist that can tell you the time, day, month, date, moon phase, the date in another country, determine your pulse rate, calculate your speed, time how long your eggs have been simmering – and sometimes do all of these at the same time without you having to swipe across the dial?

To be clear, I have nothing against digital. I own a G-Shock, with all its tough, indestructible charm. I own a 1970s Omega Speedsonic chronograph – its tuning fork movement powered by a battery – and it has so much charisma it sometimes overpowers everything else in the watchbox. 

I own quartz in a Dan Henry 1962, but I know the passion and care that went into that watch because the man himself shares that on social media. 

Good luck to those of you who own and enjoy one, but I just can’t stretch to wearing an Apple Watch and never want to. I won’t even double-wrist it and have the best of both worlds, as many collectors have done.

I will stick with watches that tell me the time and not whatever Trump has just done. 

I will stick with watches that have soul – because I don’t want to wear anything that chips away at mine.