- Jony Ive’s design company created a bedside clock with illuminated digits instead of hands
- Inspired by pocket watches, but considerably more chunky
- Available in Japan for around $373 / £279 / AU$529
Former Apple design chief Jonathan Ive’s new company LoveFrom has designed a new luxury product: a watch called The Clock.
Inspired by old-fashioned pocket watches and made by Japanese brand Balmuda, The Clock joins Balmuda’s other luxury products including The Brew coffee maker, The Speaker wireless speaker and The Kettle kettle.
According to Balmuda, “we wanted to do more than just show the time; we wanted to make the time itself a pleasant experience.” And to do that, the companies have collaborated on an analog watch that has no hands.
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What is The Clock by Jonathan Ive?
Instead of using hands to tell the time, The Clock uses LEDs in a system that Balmuda calls “The Hour of Light.” It illuminates the number for the hour and then illuminates ticks around the perimeter of the face to show the minutes. Another tick becomes the seconds hand that moves around the screen.
Jony Ive really likes aluminum (or aluminum, as he proudly pronounced it throughout his Apple years despite the accent pressure around him), and here he’s used an aluminum unibody housing for The Clock, like so many of his Apple creations.
It’s 7.5cm wide and tall and weighs just under 260g, and it charges via USB-C. Apple Magic Mouse users will be relieved to see that the Watch’s USB-C port is on the back instead of underneath, so you can still see the time while its 24-hour battery recharges. And yes, 24 hours seems a bit short for a watch battery to last for us too.
In addition to the time display, The Clock also features ambient soundtracks composed specifically for The Clock’s Relax Time mode, including “the sound of rain, the rumble of a boat on a river, and the crackle of a lodge fireplace” played with “stunning realism.”
International pricing hasn’t been announced, but The Clock is currently available in Japan for around $373 / £279 / AU$529.
According to Gen Terao, Balmuda CEO, The Clock was designed to solve a personal problem. Listening to the sounds of rain on his phone while trying to fall asleep, “he started to wonder if having these social devices by my bed might be related to my sleep. And then it occurred to me: Wouldn’t it be great to have a personal watch made with modern technology that plays the gentle sound of rain, a really nice sound to fall asleep to?”
The movement of the lighting used was apparently based on Foucault’s pendulum in the National Museum of Nature and Science, and the moving lights during the Relax Time soundtracks were “inspired by the flickering lights of distant cities and the twinkling of the stars.”
It’s nice that Terao found a solution to his concerns, but I think the Watch’s design is a step back in terms of readability: for me, at least, it’s slower to read than a traditional watch face, and I suspect that the choice of white illumination on a light-colored aluminum dial will be difficult to see in even mildly bright sunlight.
That said, I’m not the target audience for The Clock: I much prefer (and own) Braun watches inspired by the designs of Ives’ idol Dieter Rams, such as the Braun BC02 and the Classic wall clock. Braun’s cute Classic travel watches cost less than a tenth of the price of The Clock – and the price includes a solid set of good old-fashioned hands.
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