Slouching towards Utopia

“It was thirty years ago today…”

Three things happened this week

I read this sentence: “Why has every year since 1870 seen as much technological and organizational progress as was realized every four years from 1770 to 1870?”

I’ve been reading a birthday gift, J. Bradford DeLong’s book “Slouching towards utopia, an economic history of the twentieth century”, and he poses the question

Then, looking through some folders in my filing cabinet, I came across a full-page ad, published in 1992, for the Timex Ironman Indiglo watch, which I had clipped out and saved.

I remember the Timex slogan ‘takes a licking and keeps on ticking’ from a series of Timex television commercials where product spokesman John Cameron Swayze (a distant cousin of actor Patrick Swayze) would place a Timex watch in a perilous and unlikely situation, such as strapping it to the propellor of an outboard motor, submerging the motor into water, and then firing it up, which the watch would then survive

Third, at 10:31 one fine Wednesday morning, I got a text message about a product I didn’t know existed. The message read as follows:

“Apple Watch ultra!!!”

So, I turned on the TV and took a look.

In 1992, after seeing the full-page Timex magazine ad, which shows their droplet-covered watch illuminated in the dark, I did get an ‘Iron Man indiglo’, and ran off right away to perform various iron man endeavors. For example, it influenced me, after passing the appropriate swimming tests and sanity checks, to appear at the UCLA boat dock before dawn, and push off into the inky blackness where pelicans dove and seals surfaced, to join them for a nice bit of never-very-extreme rowing.

The watch sported a stopwatch, 8 lap memory with splits, start and stop buttons, and a blue backlight. No calculator, no apps. And, if you can believe it, no internet connection. It cost $37.95 in 1992, so with a 117 percent cumulative inflation (I looked this up somewhere on the internet), it would be 2.11 times that today in 2022: you would spend eighty dollars.

But what about the new 4X speed technological progress? What has happened in the 30 years, that would be equivalent to four times that – 120 years – in the century and a fifth before 1870?

Since I just started reading “Slouching toward Utopia”, I don’t have a handle on the numeric inputs to DeLong’s calculations, but maybe a list of a new watch’s capabilities can provide an idea of how far we have come.

For one thing the Timex had 50 meters water resistance, and the $799 Apple Watch Ultra, announced yesterday, is good for 100 meters.

But let’s do the list(s)

Sensors vs. what the sensor enables. It can be difficult to separate the sensors from what the sensor enables, especially in the case of multiple sensors, or a capability that requires computation or connectivity, so bear with me. Also, some writing does not seem definitive on what is actually in the watch, so … some information here may be incorrect or incomplete

Apple Watch Ultra

Illumination: display is always on
Red night mode: doesn’t wreck your night vision
- (rotate digital crown at low light to make red)
Ambient light sensor
GPS (L2 and L5) and cellular radios
GPS/GNSS enabling the Compass app?
Always-on Barometric altimeter (didn’t find this yet on Apple.com)
Depth guage to 40 meters
Bluetooth 5.3 radio
86 decibel siren plays 2 patterns: distress & SOS
- (press and hold orange action button for siren)
Compass with way points. Press to activate a waypoint so you can backtrack
Built in Accelerometer & gyroscope which enable
- crash detection
- fall detection
temperature sensor(s)
- one on the front
- one on the back
- is one of these the water temperature sensor?
Two speakers
three-microphone array
Blood Oxygen app,
Electrocardiogram app
An app that takes your pulse
100 meters water resistance
there is something Apple calls the ‘S8 SIP processor’
the watch has 32G of memory

radios for positioning and communication

It’s not that I can’t count, but does this device appear to have 5 or 6 built-in radios? I think WiFi is one of them too.

The thorough and detail-oriented blog Appleinsider notes:

“The L5 frequency band is exclusively reserved for aviation safety services, as shown with the helicopter rescuing people in Apple’s example during the iPhone event. It’s the most advanced GPS signal available for civilians and its accuracy is good enough for less than three feet of detection.”

So that, along with the ‘normal’ L2 GPS, the L5 can be used to communicate with your rescue helicopter, should you be unfortunate enough to require one.

The U1 chip is used in location-aware tracking

Thus the watch can locate iBeacons, iPhones and iPads with a U1 chip, to use in AirDrop recipient selection. It can be use to provide contextual information so that augmented reality images may be positioned correctly, but it is hard to imagine what an augmented reality app for the watch would do. I guess if there’s a compass you could overlay an image of some kind, but the screen seems kind of small for that.

Augmentation

You yourself can write an app that will run on the Ultra. It doesn’t even have to use any of the capabilities in the long list above, it can just use the existing watch buttons, the winding stem, and the display. There is a new button that is designed to be attached to ‘shortcuts’, so you can probably use the watch to automate something without even writing an app.

Other standards

In addition to the various radio standards, there are standards of testing and safety.

European standards (EN) are technical standards drafted by a variety of European technical organizations

EN 13319 describes functional and safety requirements, test methods for depth gauges and devices which combine measurement of depth and time at depth.

The Depth App on this watch will have time, current depth, water temperature, duration under water, and maximum depth.

MIL STD indicates a US Department of Defense standard, which may describe test methods and specifications for device or system characteristics.

Specific examples of Test Methods called out in MIL-STD-810 are listed below:

Test Method 500.6 Low Pressure (Altitude)
Test Method 501.6 High Temperature
Test Method 502.6 Low Temperature
Test Method 503.6 Temperature Shock
Test Method 504.2 Contamination by Fluids
Test Method 505.6 Solar Radiation (Sunshine)
Test Method 506.6 Rain
Test Method 507.6 Humidity
Test Method 508.7 Fungus
Test Method 509.6 Salt Fog
Test Method 510.6 Sand and Dust
Test Method 511.6 Explosive Atmosphere
Test Method 512.5 Immersion
Test Method 513.7 Acceleration
Test Method 514.7 Vibration
Test Method 515.7 Acoustic Noise
Test Method 516.7 Shock
Test Method 517.2 Pyroshock
Test Method 518.2 Acidic Atmosphere
Test Method 519.7 Gunfire Shock
Test Method 520.4 Temperature, Humidity, Vibration, and Altitude
Test Method 521.4 Icing/Freezing Rain
Test Method 522.2 Ballistic Shock
Test Method 523.4 Vibro-Acoustic/Temperature
Test Method 524.1 Freeze / Thaw
Test Method 525.1 Time Waveform Replication
Test Method 526.1 Rail Impact.
Test Method 527.1 Multi-Exciter
Test Method 528.1 Mechanical Vibrations of Shipboard Equipment (Type I – Environmental and Type II – Internally Excited)

Sand and dust are mentioned for testing, and there is another standard called “Ip6X”, which I had thought was related to Internet Protocol V6, but which is actually a level of dust-proofed-ness.

Much of the commentary on this MIL-STD revisions through sub section H relates to how testing may be ‘tailored’ to the particular device in question. A footnote on Apple’s description of the Ultra notes that It has been “Tested against subsections for Altitude, High Temperature, Low Temperature, Temperature Shock, Immersion, Freeze/Thaw, Shock, and Vibration.”

What this means is that the the enumerated test methods for various forms of shock, temperature or pressure extremes, contamination, or circumstances of use (‘rail impact’), have not all been applied. In a way this is somewhat of a relief, as it means that no workers have been required to test the Ultra against the wide range of fungal contamination that surely must exist with respect to equipment that is likely to be infested. Thank God your watch is (probably) not. The same applies to gunfire shock, ballistic shock, and rail impact. Multi-exciter? Cannot say.

Anyway, nothing that I remember in 1992 had 32G of memory, aside from maybe IBM mainframe disk drives. In the mid-nineties PCs had 1G drives.

It seems clear that Apple, with this durable watch, has its eye on more than a niche exercise-adventure marketplace. Others will have to analyze positioning, direction, and success, but in the meantime, it’s a terrific technological waypoint to examine.

References

Mil spec info on wiki

List of EN Standards on wiki

AppleInsider comparisons with other Apple watches

John Gruber Review & experience with the Ultra

--- title: "Tick Tock" author: "George Girton" date: "2022-09-08" categories: [throwback] image: "../images/IndigloAd1992.png" --- # Slouching towards Utopia "It was thirty years ago today..." !['Thirty years ago today'](../images/IndigloAd1992.png) Three things happened this week I read this sentence: "Why has every year since 1870 seen as much technological and organizational progress as was realized every four years from 1770 to 1870?" [I've been reading a birthday gift, J. Bradford DeLong's book "Slouching towards utopia, an economic history of the twentieth century", and he poses the question]{.aside} Then, looking through some folders in my filing cabinet, I came across a full-page ad, published in 1992, for the Timex Ironman Indiglo watch, which I had clipped out and saved. [I remember the Timex slogan 'takes a licking and keeps on ticking' from a series of Timex television commercials where product spokesman John Cameron Swayze (a distant cousin of actor Patrick Swayze) would place a Timex watch in a perilous and unlikely situation, such as strapping it to the propellor of an outboard motor, submerging the motor into water, and then firing it up, which the watch would then survive]{.aside} Third, at 10:31 one fine Wednesday morning, I got a text message about a product I didn't know existed. The message read as follows: "Apple Watch ultra!!!" So, I turned on the TV and took a look. In 1992, after seeing the full-page Timex magazine ad, which shows their droplet-covered watch illuminated in the dark, I did get an 'Iron Man indiglo', and ran off right away to perform various iron man endeavors. For example, it influenced me, after passing the appropriate swimming tests and sanity checks, to appear at the UCLA boat dock before dawn, and push off into the inky blackness where pelicans dove and seals surfaced, to join them for a nice bit of never-very-extreme rowing. The watch sported a stopwatch, 8 lap memory with splits, start and stop buttons, and a blue backlight. No calculator, no apps. And, if you can believe it, no internet connection. It cost \$37.95 in 1992, so with a 117 percent cumulative inflation (I looked this up somewhere on the internet), it would be 2.11 times that today in 2022: you would spend eighty dollars. But what about the new 4X speed technological progress? What has happened in the 30 years, that would be equivalent to four times that -- 120 years -- in the century and a fifth before 1870? Since I just started reading "Slouching toward Utopia", I don't have a handle on the numeric inputs to DeLong's calculations, but maybe a list of a new watch's capabilities can provide an idea of how far we have come. For one thing the Timex had 50 meters water resistance, and the \$799 Apple Watch Ultra, announced yesterday, is good for 100 meters. But let's do the list(s) [Sensors vs. what the sensor enables. It can be difficult to separate the sensors from what the sensor enables, especially in the case of multiple sensors, or a capability that requires computation or connectivity, so bear with me. Also, some writing does not seem definitive on what is actually in the watch, so ... some information here may be incorrect or incomplete]{.aside} #### Apple Watch Ultra - Illumination: display is always on - Red night mode: doesn't wreck your night vision - (rotate digital crown at low light to make red) - Ambient light sensor - GPS (L2 and L5) and cellular radios - GPS/GNSS enabling the Compass app? - Always-on Barometric altimeter (didn't find this yet on Apple.com) - Depth guage to 40 meters - Bluetooth 5.3 radio - 86 decibel siren plays 2 patterns: distress & SOS - (press and hold orange action button for siren) - Compass with way points. Press to activate a waypoint so you can backtrack - Built in Accelerometer & gyroscope which enable - crash detection - fall detection - temperature sensor(s) - one on the front - one on the back - is one of these the water temperature sensor? - Two speakers - three-microphone array - Blood Oxygen app, - Electrocardiogram app - An app that takes your pulse - 100 meters water resistance - there is something Apple calls the 'S8 SIP processor' - the watch has 32G of memory ## radios for positioning and communication It's not that I can't count, but does this device appear to have 5 or 6 built-in radios? I think WiFi is one of them too. The thorough and detail-oriented blog Appleinsider notes: "The L5 frequency band is exclusively reserved for aviation safety services, as shown with the helicopter rescuing people in Apple's example during the iPhone event. It's the most advanced GPS signal available for civilians and its accuracy is good enough for less than three feet of detection." So that, along with the 'normal' L2 GPS, the L5 can be used to communicate with your rescue helicopter, should you be unfortunate enough to require one. The U1 chip is used in location-aware tracking Thus the watch can locate iBeacons, iPhones and iPads with a U1 chip, to use in AirDrop recipient selection. It can be use to provide contextual information so that augmented reality images may be positioned correctly, but it is hard to imagine what an augmented reality app for the watch would do. I guess if there's a compass you could overlay an image of some kind, but the screen seems kind of small for that. ### Augmentation You yourself can write an app that will run on the Ultra. It doesn't even have to use any of the capabilities in the long list above, it can just use the existing watch buttons, the winding stem, and the display. There is a new button that is designed to be attached to 'shortcuts', so you can probably use the watch to automate something without even writing an app. ### Other standards In addition to the various radio standards, there are standards of testing and safety. European standards (EN) are technical standards drafted by a variety of European technical organizations EN 13319 describes functional and safety requirements, test methods for depth gauges and devices which combine measurement of depth and time at depth. The Depth App on this watch will have time, current depth, water temperature, duration under water, and maximum depth. MIL STD indicates a US Department of Defense standard, which may describe test methods and specifications for device or system characteristics. Specific examples of Test Methods called out in MIL-STD-810 are listed below: - Test Method 500.6 Low Pressure (Altitude) - Test Method 501.6 High Temperature - Test Method 502.6 Low Temperature - Test Method 503.6 Temperature Shock - Test Method 504.2 Contamination by Fluids - Test Method 505.6 Solar Radiation (Sunshine) - Test Method 506.6 Rain - Test Method 507.6 Humidity - Test Method 508.7 Fungus - Test Method 509.6 Salt Fog - Test Method 510.6 Sand and Dust - Test Method 511.6 Explosive Atmosphere - Test Method 512.5 Immersion - Test Method 513.7 Acceleration - Test Method 514.7 Vibration - Test Method 515.7 Acoustic Noise - Test Method 516.7 Shock - Test Method 517.2 Pyroshock - Test Method 518.2 Acidic Atmosphere - Test Method 519.7 Gunfire Shock - Test Method 520.4 Temperature, Humidity, Vibration, and Altitude - Test Method 521.4 Icing/Freezing Rain - Test Method 522.2 Ballistic Shock - Test Method 523.4 Vibro-Acoustic/Temperature - Test Method 524.1 Freeze / Thaw - Test Method 525.1 Time Waveform Replication - Test Method 526.1 Rail Impact. - Test Method 527.1 Multi-Exciter - Test Method 528.1 Mechanical Vibrations of Shipboard Equipment (Type I – Environmental and Type II – Internally Excited) Sand and dust are mentioned for testing, and there is another standard called "Ip6X", which I had thought was related to Internet Protocol V6, but which is actually a level of dust-proofed-ness. Much of the commentary on this MIL-STD revisions through sub section H relates to how testing may be 'tailored' to the particular device in question. A footnote on Apple's description of the Ultra notes that It has been "Tested against subsections for Altitude, High Temperature, Low Temperature, Temperature Shock, Immersion, Freeze/Thaw, Shock, and Vibration." What this means is that the the enumerated test methods for various forms of shock, temperature or pressure extremes, contamination, or circumstances of use ('rail impact'), have not all been applied. In a way this is somewhat of a relief, as it means that no workers have been required to test the Ultra against the wide range of fungal contamination that surely must exist with respect to equipment that is likely to be infested. Thank God your watch is (probably) not. The same applies to gunfire shock, ballistic shock, and rail impact. Multi-exciter? Cannot say. Anyway, nothing that I remember in 1992 had 32G of memory, aside from maybe IBM mainframe disk drives. In the mid-nineties PCs had 1G drives. It seems clear that Apple, with this durable watch, has its eye on more than a niche exercise-adventure marketplace. Others will have to analyze positioning, direction, and success, but in the meantime, it's a terrific technological waypoint to examine. #### References [Mil spec info on wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIL-STD-810) [List of EN Standards on wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_EN_standards) [AppleInsider comparisons with other Apple watches](https://appleinsider.com/inside/apple-watch-series-8/vs/compared-apple-watch-ultra-vs-apple-watch-series-8-series-7) [John Gruber Review & experience with the Ultra](https://daringfireball.net/2022/09/apple_watch_ultra)