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The Eerie Beauty of the Apple Watch Solar Face, and the Anatomy of Nightfall

238 pointsby janniksover 4 years ago

18 comments

loosetypesover 4 years ago
There really is something eerily beautiful, as the author states, about simple layouts that convey the immediate information sought as well as the intuition behind the abstraction.<p>Another I&#x27;d throw out there are the charts for latitude vs. hours of sunlight per day by month[0].<p>I have never wanted a tattoo, but that&#x27;s an icon that I&#x27;d consider - maybe overlay each city in which one&#x27;s lived, and periodically update it..<p>[0] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.physicalgeography.net&#x2F;fundamentals&#x2F;images&#x2F;daylength.jpg" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.physicalgeography.net&#x2F;fundamentals&#x2F;images&#x2F;dayleng...</a>
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chrisseatonover 4 years ago
Wow this makes me want to buy an Apple Watch!<p>In the military knowing first-light and last-light, down to within a few minutes, is essential daily. I have an app on my phone that tells me sunrise and sunset, but as the article describes these aren&#x27;t the same thing. I also have a very expensive top-of-the-range Garmin watch and even <i>that</i> just tells me the less useful sunrise and sunset, which makes me suspicious it&#x27;s not as military as it markets itself as.<p>I don&#x27;t know if anyone knows an app that gives first-light and last-light for the phone, so I don&#x27;t have to buy a new watch?
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saagarjhaover 4 years ago
Apple certainly can make very pretty watchfaces. Especially in the areas where it seems that they are inspired by physical, classical watches: there’s a bunch there that you can basically see as very attractive to traditional watch people. But the other faces? Eh, they’re kind of mediocre. I never really understood why Apple is so dead set on shipping watch faces that aren’t very good while also denying people the ability to make good ones :(
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mncharityover 4 years ago
Yay, their Sun is white. Way to go Apple. Though the adjacent yellow line and fuzz may still reinforce the pervasively common &#x27;Sun is yellow&#x27; misconception. But that&#x27;s still better than the yellow and orange disks of other apps people have linked to. Including Google&#x27;s android and web search weather widgets. :&#x2F;<p>Therein lie my hopes and fears for AR&#x27;s educational impact. Things done well with care, becoming ambient informal education. Here twilights, day lengths, Sun color, cause of night. Versus ambient cognitive pollution, as collateral damage from design choices, and from the usual carelessly wretched education content.
pugworthyover 4 years ago
A timely read, as I just got a Fitbit Versa as a gift and have been exploring the watch faces.<p>The Fitbit store has tons of them, mostly just crap IMO - the Hallmark card of watch faces as it were, with a lot of variations of &quot;cute kitty background&quot;. But there are a few gems, including one I found that&#x27;s based on a Tokyo Flash design.
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liquidifyover 4 years ago
Awesome article. Lots of awesome science went into its development.
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sinuhe69over 4 years ago
Yeah, the Solar Dial is beautiful. But I‘ve a weird problem with it. As you can see from this screen shot: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ibb.co&#x2F;ZBKC0xg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ibb.co&#x2F;ZBKC0xg</a><p>The horizon is not horizontal at all. Even weirder, the watch shows „Nautical Dawn“ at 9:21 PM and sunrise around 10:20 PM! I‘m currently in GMT+7 time zone and my iPhone is set accordingly (automatically) so no way the sun will rise in the middle of the night!<p>The App doesn’t offer much setting thus it‘s still a mystery for me.
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yeswatchover 4 years ago
In 2000 we launched our first watch collection with this eerie, intuitive and deeper understanding of time. It took Apple 20 years to catch up. I am happy to see the understanding of time is expanding. Check out our watches at: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.yeswatch.com&#x2F;wrist-watch&#x2F;worldwatch&#x2F;index.html#" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.yeswatch.com&#x2F;wrist-watch&#x2F;worldwatch&#x2F;index.html#</a>
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bhickeyover 4 years ago
&gt; One wonders what the rationale for this might be. Certainly, the distinction is unlikely to matter to the victim of a burglary – perhaps the view is that in operating at night, the criminal is somehow cheating, or demonstrating a lack of nerve, and therefore more morally culpable?<p>A burglar robbing a house at night is more likely to encounter occupants. The law is such to discourage home invasions, accidental or not.
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sneakover 4 years ago
There is still no apple watch face that does not display the time. I filed a radar about this when the watch first launched. I don&#x27;t like being a clock slave, but do rather like the idea of complications to display data and getting notifications on my wrist.<p>The amounts of spyware in the app store have caused me to massively scale back my use of apps now, so I almost never wear my apple watch anymore.
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2sk21over 4 years ago
This has been my favorite watch face for a while now. Some of the things I have learned over the past year:<p>- solar noon wanders around a fair bit around the clock noon<p>- the length of daylight varies quite asymmetrically between the summer and winter solstice (relative to the equinox). I realized afterwards that this is probably because of Earth&#x27;s elliptical orbit around the sun.
exabrialover 4 years ago
This reminds me a lot of a watch face I have for my Garmin Venu: SHN TxD. It&#x27;s _incredibly_ useful when hiking or biking. There&#x27;s one piece of repeat data I have on the watch face, which is time till sunset or sunrise.<p>Wrist shot: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ibb.co&#x2F;TtSS6Jh" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ibb.co&#x2F;TtSS6Jh</a>
theomegaover 4 years ago
Does anyone know of a website&#x2F;js remake of this watch face?
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supernova87aover 4 years ago
Is it just me or does anyone else not have access to this new face (even if watch is on OS v6+)? Do you need a certain watch series?
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mxmilkbover 4 years ago
I wish <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;play.google.com&#x2F;store&#x2F;apps&#x2F;details?id=info.staticfree.android.twentyfourhour" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;play.google.com&#x2F;store&#x2F;apps&#x2F;details?id=info.staticfre...</a> (similar in an Android widget) worked without requiring location to be on all the time.
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TimMurnaghanover 4 years ago
Not seeing it on my watch. Just a fairly uninteresting solar graph. Maybe it&#x27;s not available on my watch - but shows a real problem in modern UI design. The &quot;shadowban&quot; school of UI. The problem with that is discoverability. You&#x27;ll never know if you&#x27;re looking in the right place.
irrationalover 4 years ago
I’d like to see what the watch face displays in far northern or southern latitudes on the summer and winter solstices.
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WClayFergusonover 4 years ago
There&#x27;s two kinds of watches:<p>1) Mechanical Watches<p>2) G-Shocks<p>If you&#x27;re putting something other than those on your wrist, that&#x27;s fine, and you can dork out all you want, but just please don&#x27;t call it a &quot;watch&quot;. The Apple Watch is an insult to every horologist and a disgrace to everyone with an ounce of class. :) Yes I jest, but actually not all that much.
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