Today $300 or less can buy a watch that runs UNIX, can emulate any machine in 1981 in realtime, and stream data from the
ARPAInternet over a wireless connection orders of magnitude faster than any leased line.Sounds like a €30 smartwatch I’ve seen some 7 years ago. Yep, it costed that back then. It ran Android 4.4 and even the battery was user replaceable.
I think it was called QW09.Unfortunately, I was 10 at the time, and €30 sounded like a lot to me, so I didn’t buy it :(
Edit: Found some pics
this looks cool. Particularly this rectangular screen is great.
rectangular smartwatch master race
i don’t care that watches used to be round because of a rotary mechanism. i want a SCREEN on my wrist and screens are square for a reason!Tell me about it. They rather hamfistedly tried to fit a rectangular design language into a circular screen and it never quite works right.
To be fair, Apple seems to have done a good job at fitting a circular design language into a square watch…
I mean, you can probably still get 300 different variants of that on aliexpress for less than $10
I think you had it right, let’s bring ARPANET back.
Good old floppydrive for ants
Aka micro SD.
I wonder if it would be possible to recreate something like this for real, with cartridges for each software/tool (like a gameboy or similar?), excluding the comically tiny keyboard probably :P
The size of that floppy does seem a decent match to a microSD card.
I’m really tempted to buy some RPi pico stuff or smth and see if i can make something similar
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PineTime’s CPU isn’t that grunty - 64MHz Cortex-M4F.
I’m curious if it would be possible to replicate somehow with a PineTime
Just seeing the Byte logo makes me want to open up that magazine and see which basic listings I can type in.
What is this, A keyboard for ants?
@larsbrinkhoff “Your fingers are too fat to operate this watch. To receive a special dialing wand, mash the keyboard with your palm, now.”
Every time I think about smartwatches, I just think about how much I miss Pebble. I loved my Steel and Time Steel, and was bummed that the company failed before the Time Steel 2 happened.
RIP Pebble. I went through three of them that all ate it to their failing LCD. :(
god, i loved my pebble back in the day. Had an OG and picked up a Time a couple years ago to try Rebble. It’s nice but it’s just not the same anymore…
I love retrofuturistic tech. It even has a full qwerty keyboard, like anyone would be able to use it lol.
you’d have to use a needle to hit the keys lol
What I want is a watch that looks just like old fashioned analog watches, does all of the fitness tracking you get from a modern Fitbit, and transmits it to my phone. I don’t want a square watch or a digital display. I want classic beauty with tech under the hood.
https://www.withings.com/us/en/scanwatch This one is mostly analog plus a small monochrome screen
I tried using an analog style watch face on my Apple Watch, but the rectangular digital screen + the need to charge it every single day just wasn’t all that great
I traded it back in and reverted back to my Citizen Eco Drive (which is solar powered so I never have to worry about charging it) and is visible easily in sunlight
Yeah? I kind of figure that’s how it’d be for me. I like the idea of how the Apple Watch integrates with iPhone, but I don’t like the way it looks.
While I wouldn’t call it classy I really like the familiar design of the garmin instinct. It’s definitely a sports watch but as a woman I actually love it so much more than my fitbit versa 2. And I love my fitbit. Now it’s still a digital watch not mechanical but I’m from the generation where they started making tamagochi etc when I was in middle school so it’s pretty nostalgic to have a watch using that tech.
Folks who like this may like Watchy, an opensource smart watch with an eink display, WiFi, Bluetooth, and a 7 day battery life. I do not own one but it is a bit tempting. https://watchy.sqfmi.com/ make sure to check out the watch faces
I’m putting that on my birthday list.
Neat. This one looks pretty interesting too
Forget the smartwatch, I want that 3.5 mm floppy!
I miss Byte magazine so much. Now you’ve made me sad. I hope you’re happy! (jk)
https://archive.org/details/BYTE-MAGAZINE-COMPLETE (although contrary to the name it’s not complete, only goes to 89)
Wow, you gotta use a needle to press the keys on that keyboard!
I hope it comes with a stylus.
There was an early smart watch released in the late 90s called the Ruputer or onHand PC. It had a small grayscale screen and a joystick input, and featured installable applications. There was a small but thriving development scene for it. I’ve wanted to pick one up to play with but they seem nearly impossible to find now, at least at a good price.
I wore a “data bank” watch around that time, which could store memos and phone numbers, typed in via a tiny phone style keypad. I also remember lusting after the Casio watch camera.
Yes, I want this
