First, the big announcements from this week's Apple Unleashed event, which include everything from new Home Pod Mini colors to next-gen AirPods to the re-introduction of various ports on new MacBook Pros. (Finally...) Then, we'll discuss the just-revealed, supremely quick, and still sort of mysterious Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 RS. It's likely the last internal-combustion variant of the Cayman we'll see before the lineup goes all-electric. Lastly, some controversy: watchmaker Bremont has revealed its first in-house movement, the ENG300 in a new line of limited-edition watches. But… is it actually an original movement? The watch community can't seem to make up its mind.
Apple's huge new slate of products, the Porsche 718 Cayman RS melts the 'Ring, and Bremont *may* have a new in-house movement.
Nick Caruso:
This is the Gear Patrol podcast for Friday, October 22nd, 2021. There's a lot of T's in there. I'm Nick Caruso, and I'm glad you're here because first we're going to go over the big announcements from this week's Apple's “Unleashed” event, which include everything from new home pod, many colors to next gen AirPods, to ports on new MacBook pros. It's kind of like a what's old is new again kind of thing.
Nick Caruso:
And then we're going to discuss the just revealed and supremely quick, but still kind of mysterious Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 RS, which is the last internal combustion variant of the Cayman ever before the lineup goes all electric. And then lastly, watchmaker Bremont has revealed its first in-house movement, the ENG300, but is it actually an original in-house movement?
Nick Caruso:
Some say it ain't, we're going to suss it out. But you're going to have to wait for that special little discussion, because we're going to do it last. But I want to introduce who is with me today. You're very familiar with them by now. I'm joined by associate director of production design, Henry Phillips. Hi, Henry.
Henry Phillips:
Hello? Hello, hello?
Nick Caruso:
And also with us platforms editor, JD DiGiovanni here as well? Hello?
JD DiGiovanni:
We're bringing the energy today.
Nick Caruso:
What's that?
JD DiGiovanni:
We're bringing the energy today. We're really hot, we're talking about ports. We're talking about cars and talking about watches. Let's go.
Nick Caruso:
That's right. I know JD has been literally mainlining coffee for the last 10 hours. I've got I think a leaf blower back here, we've got all sorts of stuff going on and just adds to the fun. We've got a lot to discuss, a lot of details, I said this right before we started. There's a lot of like technical stuff and a lot of little intricate details to all these stories and interesting that we try to kind of talk about some conceptual stuff on here, but we're talking about straight forward products for the entire episode this time, which is kind of cool.
Nick Caruso:
And for many reasons, so let's get right into it. Apple, we've been talking a lot about Apple lately because they have been making a lot of news and everything from Apple's event this week called Apple Unleashed is pretty exciting. It was the second of the brands sort of product release events in just a handful of weeks.
Nick Caruso:
And hopefully the stuff was displayed in there beautiful marketing videos and presentations. I'm going to list all of them right now, but be very light on the details, be very brief, but still hold tight and we'll chat about highlights when I'm done in an hour or so. Here we go.
Nick Caruso:
First, we have new 14 and 16 inch MacBook Pros with all sorts of new features or old features, depending how you look at it. We have AirPods, the regular version of Apple's buds haven't been updated in a while. This generation, third generation sees shorter stocks like the little ear piece parts and better touch controls, plus spatial audio. Apple's spatial audio tech, longer battery life and sweat and water resistance. There are a couple of new chips for their hardware, the M1 Pro and M1 Max, suffice it to say the pro is very fast and the max is much faster.
Nick Caruso:
And then we'll talk about some of those specs in a second. There are also new colors for the HomePod Mini, which is the little sort of a smart speaker, a little globe sort of thing. Yellow, orange and blue colors are now available and there's a new Apple Music Voice Plan that gives people access to Apple Music via Siri and voice commands for $4.99 a month. And lastly, macOS Monterey, the operating system for your computer launches next week. I believe that's it in-
JD DiGiovanni:
Very impressive.
Nick Caruso:
Thank you. I did that in one breath, I don't know if anybody was listening.
JD DiGiovanni:
Around a podcast [inaudible 00:04:31].
Nick Caruso:
Yeah, right. I can't taste anything, but I want to go to JD. I want to go to you first, from your point of view, there's a lot of stuff. What's the biggest story here? What are you most drawn to?
JD DiGiovanni:
Watch your back baby? Let's go.
Nick Caruso:
Watch your back?
JD DiGiovanni:
I think for me it was just like, I don't know, I wrote a couple of things down like AirPods seem cool. An Apple Music Voice, seems like it's going to be great for lobbies. HomePod looks cool. If I lived in a space that was larger than a room, I might think about buying one. But the main thing is just the laptops. I mean, they look so, so much, I don't know, I mean, the most tangible thing I can say would improve my life is having more ports.
JD DiGiovanni:
I have a couple of thunderbolt ports in a dongle with one USB. And so it makes juggling some things sometimes at work actually a bit of a pain. And then all the stuff about the chip seems fascinating, but I'm maybe not smart enough to know about what exactly that means. I have more, I want to ask about the chip later, but I think that's my kind of first take there. I'm excited about the ports.
Nick Caruso:
There are as everyone is likely aware, recent iterations of MacBooks, MacBook Pros rather have done away with most ports, got a lot of USB-C stuff on there, but not much else. And that's been sort of controversial for a lot of reasons. Namely, when you want to use stuff with your computer and you got a dongle it up, also it should be noted on these, the touch bar, the little digital button display bar thing at the top of the old key keyboard has been replaced with real keys.
Nick Caruso:
Again there are thinner bezels, there are nice new displays and more speakers in these things. And there's a notch at the top around the fancy new-ish camera up there to the front facing camera, kind of like an iPhone. A lot of newness, a lot of oldness and MagSafe is on the charger. Henry, what do you think? What's the big stuff here?
Henry Phillips:
Yeah, MagSafe is great. I am so happy that that's back. But I can't actually recall when the kind of two or four port MacBooks were introduced. But I don't know what the kind of statute of limitations is for getting used to kind of radical change on a piece of tech. But I feel like I'm there, the ports are cool. I'm excited for the ports, I think, but I've learned to live without the ports.
Nick Caruso:
So you're saying you have adjusted to the lack of ports?
Henry Phillips:
Yeah, I like living in zero G or something. I have the dongles all my things are USB-C now. I suppose it doesn't matter but.
JD DiGiovanni:
I did appreciate the joking that was going on at Apple's expense about how this company's removed a bunch of stuff. And then years later put it back and it was just like, look at how innovative we are. And it is kind of funny to think that like, oh, cool, all the things people have been complaining about, it seemed pretty obvious fixes are now fixed. Casey Johnson who was on a few episodes back, she had written a lot about the Apple keyboard and how bad it was, and was one of the first people to call it out, that was years ago.
JD DiGiovanni:
And they're finally getting around to it. But I feel like the spiciest tape that's come out of any of this stuff, is Alex Webb's piece in Bloomberg. Where essentially, he's making the argument that maybe Apple's better without Jony Ive. That his impulse to make everything so minimal and so pared down in beautiful at the expensive actually, I don't know, use when I have to charge my Apple mouse, I have to flip it upside down. Like it's, I don't know-
Nick Caruso:
I'll never forgive him for that.
JD DiGiovanni:
And then removing all the ports off of your Mac and making these very slim keyboards and all this other stuff it's like, now that he's gone, they can just get back to focusing on making products that are also very useful, which is quite a take.
Henry Phillips:
I like that. I mean, I think it's weird and I'm conflicted, I think, but the idea that a pro laptop wouldn't have various features that are widely requested by pros is wild to me. And I mean, I think I haven't seen anybody, a single person say that they're upset that it's heavier or thicker.
Nick Caruso:
Right, I mean, thicker computer than what is currently on offer is really not that big of a deal. I think we just recently talked about this on an episode that came up, I know I was just talking to my 15 year old nephew about what I used when I was in college, like a Dell laptop that was literally two inches thick and I could barely run like GTA, whatever, Miami, whatever, it doesn't matter.
Nick Caruso:
But everything is thin, a little extra bulk isn't going to make or break anything at this point. These things are so capable and so loaded down. Speaking of loaded down Henry, you did the exercise of maxing out these things in terms of price. Can you talk about that little a-
Henry Phillips:
Yeah, they get really expensive, the kind of adage about Apple products being incredibly expensive for what they are. This is hugely impressive performance wise, but also you could top it out north of $6,000, which is wild for a modern laptop, wild for most things, but that's got quite a few weird specs on it. My kind of rough guess was that, a well specked one for someone who can't bear the idea of not having the M1 Max like myself for no good reason at all, would cost, $3,200 or so, which is still about-
Nick Caruso:
About load of money.
Henry Phillips:
Pretty much more than you need. Yeah, it's a ton, it's a ton, but for all of the kind of physical changes and ports, and kind of concessions to people who have raised very legitimate issues with Apple stuff before, the processors and the systems on a chip are really impressive.
Nick Caruso:
I'm in the same boat as JD, I'm not super adept to understanding chips. Are you able to give us that? Can you school us a little bit?
Henry Phillips:
Absolutely not, but-
Nick Caruso:
Oh yeah, you can Henry.
Henry Phillips:
We've seen this with the M1, when it kind of came out a couple years ago, but it's a really amazing kind of efficient design that's pretty much perfectly suited for laptops. It draws a comparatively tiny amount of power and produces a ton of processing power. And so you end up with on the lower end ones on the air and the 13 inch pro it meant that you could have great battery life and not use fans like the MacBook Air doesn't have a single fan in it.
Henry Phillips:
Maybe that's exaggerating, but the idea that now you can ramp that power up and increase the cooling and you have something that's hugely impressive. Maybe it'll take some time for those performance skins to actually be visible as companies like Adobe or whomever try and catch up. So you don't have to use iMovie and GarageBand to actually see it. But no, I mean, based on all the tests that they're sharing, it's really impressive.
Nick Caruso:
Go for it JD.
JD DiGiovanni:
I had this moment when I was watching this presentation and they were talking about how fast their chip is, and it was like, "Oh, cool." I run these programs on my Mac that they don't seem like they should take that much energy, but I guess you kind of think about it and they do, and some kind have Chrome open for a bunch of web apps, like Google Docs. And they have me Slack open and have iMessage open and have my iTunes open and listening to stuff.
JD DiGiovanni:
I was like, "Man, it'd be so cool to have that stuff up and not have to worry about any laggy stuff going on as I'm working or kind of popping from one thing to the next." That currently happens with my MacBook Pro from 2017. And then after I kind of thought about that for a second, I was like, well, I bet they're a bunch of dev teams at Adobe and Google and at Apple or wherever, and just like, "Oh cool, we can use all this new real estate to just like-
Henry Phillips:
Exactly.
JD DiGiovanni:
"Pump a bunch for features in this thing and make it slow again." I don't know, I am totally ignorant when it comes to this stuff. Is this something that is well known that this is something that happens? Or am I just imagining this in my head? And I'm making life worse than it needs to be, because I want this to be a total panacea for my productivity, but I'm afraid it's just going to be this weird warmup war of attrition, where it's just like everyone just went up in one another.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah, it's just like moving the goalposts every time. It's like how-
Henry Phillips:
Yeah, exactly.
Nick Caruso:
How much space can we make and how much can we fill? It's kind of like, I don't think there's anything malicious to it, but that's definitely how it works. I mean, if you've got runway, you're going to take it.
Henry Phillips:
Oh, totally. I mean, I think the idea of software bloating is totally legitimate. I'm doing a lot more stuff on my computer in terms of what I'm now able to do, but the idea that Chrome is using eight gigs of memory or something is absurd for a variety of things.
JD DiGiovanni:
Yeah, no, entirely we need an armistice. I need to bring all of the people who make tech together. That's I'm sure that term as well, that the people who make tech and just get-
Henry Phillips:
A resting element.
JD DiGiovanni:
Yeah, I want a photo that they at the end of World War II, everyone getting to share and wear cool outfits, agree not to do anything bad.
Nick Caruso:
Going to be a photo at the end of the shining, more like it with that kind of, it's a horror story waiting to happen. There are a couple other things just to make sure we touch on. Well, first of all, I should say, I can speak to some of the performance of those chips. A couple of stats here, the M1 Pro has a 10 core CPU and it's 70% faster, CPU performance is 70% faster than the M1, right?
Nick Caruso:
And the M1 Max has up to 400, I'm just comparing stats here, so these are the big ones, M1 Max has up to 400 gigabytes per second of memory bandwidth versus 200 and the M1 Pro. The pro is much faster than the M1, and the M1 Max as much more powerful in other ways than the pro. So there they build up on each other. Did that clear anything up? Good. Good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good. What about... Couple quick reactions to stuff like the notch. How do we feel about the notch coming in on the display?
JD DiGiovanni:
I don't know why people are so mad about it.
Nick Caruso:
Because it's dumb, it's just in the way.
JD DiGiovanni:
It seems fine.
Henry Phillips:
It's the same as you had before, but just get rid of bezels on the like left and right and bottom side. It's good.
Nick Caruso:
Fine.
JD DiGiovanni:
It's just we've lines over here.
Nick Caruso:
What a hairy joke. I've never been an AirPods owner, never wants, I've never even had AirPods in my ears, which seems really weird at this point. And to me, this update to AirPods seems really satisfying and tempting. Do you guys have any opinions on these? Yeah, shrug.
JD DiGiovanni:
They seem cool. I mean, I bought a pair of cheap in ear earbuds worth $67, three, four years ago, and they still work. The being the thrifty man I am, I'm going to keep with them until they break and maybe then I'll consider it. But I'm not, if at this point I haven't gotten the earbuds than AirPods rather than I don't know what's going to make me do it. It's obviously not this.
Henry Phillips:
Maybe when Apple out innovate themselves and put some sort of strap that goes over your head to connect them?
JD DiGiovanni:
They're probably going to innovate some strap or some wires cores together [crosstalk 00:18:21].
Henry Phillips:
Yeah, wires where you don't need to worry about batteries and then you're in business.
Nick Caruso:
It would be cool.
Henry Phillips:
I hate being like the conspicuous consumption guy here. Yeah, no, I have had say for the Max, I've had all of the AirPods and the Pros are really great. And the shape is really nice and they're kind of objective better. But everything about the third generation ones seem really cool. And what they do kind of weirdly make me excited for is what the next generation of pros might look like. Because I feel like in some way or another, the differentiating form factor is part of the thing, the pros are supposed to look different than the pods. Maybe there's some sort of interesting, larger scale shakeup to the pros coming at some point.
Nick Caruso:
It's a good attitude to have Henry, I like that. My last thing, last thing you want to bring up, because I'm not super clear on and this is not something I should admit in public, which this technically is, but it's because I didn't really read into it. The Apple Music Voice Plan is essentially not a full plan, right? You can just access it via Siri.
Henry Phillips:
Well, it's super full plan. Except you don't have an app.
Nick Caruso:
Okay, there's no app, so you have to do it through Siri, that's the difference.
Henry Phillips:
I wonder if you could fire up like Apple Music to play and pause and maybe find a radio station or something, but-
JD DiGiovanni:
It's all voice controlled. I read there's a good piece over the verge about it, but it's always controlled. So it's all just through Siri connected speakers and or I don't think your phone, so it does seem like it's perfect for a dentist office. Like truly if I have my cute little Tangerine HomePod, I want to eat them, I want to peal them and eat them bite into them.
JD DiGiovanni:
You just kind of plug in one of those and say for $4.99 a month you have your lobby has Apple Radio on or something like that? Or it's my guess as to like what the thinking is there is, is it really is for people who can say, "Hey, put this on radio," or, "Hey, play this particular song." And or okay to not have their library there for them to browse through digitally.
JD DiGiovanni:
And because I know that they go to gyms or places that have Pandora on or something like that. I'm speculating wildly here, but I'd be interested if mid part of the thinking there was, yeah, sure, we're getting a more affordable option to consumers, but I wonder if it's like weirdly good at B2B play almost in terms of software. Just like edging out other Spotify or a Pandora or something like that, it's often kind of using to be played there.
Nick Caruso:
It does seem weird, I think that may be one of the reasons I sort of was, I don't know, avoided, maybe subconsciously I was just avoiding wanting to know about it. But I do like the visual of you accidentally eating an AirPod, like it's a like wax fruit or something and a screwball comedy.
JD DiGiovanni:
I can only do it intentionally. I want to peal the HomePod, the little tiny HomePod and I'll eat it.
Nick Caruso:
We can do it like a TikTok unboxing except you're just eating slowly eating technology.
JD DiGiovanni:
And then go to the hospital.
Henry Phillips:
That would be great on TikTok, I think actually.
Nick Caruso:
Friends, we're pivoting to TikTok.
JD DiGiovanni:
Yes, guys.
Nick Caruso:
Well, speaking of going, we're going to move on to something that really goes back, I'm back on my transition BS.
JD DiGiovanni:
It's pretty good, actually.
Nick Caruso:
Thanks.
Henry Phillips:
Oh, that's pretty good.
Nick Caruso:
Thanks guys. Porsche, ever heard of it? Is that a better transition? I don't know.
Henry Phillips:
I think.
Nick Caruso:
We'll let the people decide. The person outside honking liked it. Okay, Porsche, the 718 Cayman is the most recent generation of what I refer to as the Boxster coop. But Porsche files will know that GT4 signifies a phenomenal car, the 718 Cayman GT4, a phenom. But Porsche has just given us a taste of the Cayman 718 Cayman GT4 RS, and it is wildly fast.
Nick Caruso:
RS in this case stands for Rennsport, which in English, that's German, Rennsport, in English means Racing Sport. And that of course, means it is a track focused version of this car, or it's meant for the track at least. It lapped, so they sort of revealed this version by revealing that the GT4 RS came in 718 lapped the Nurburgring Nordschleife in Germany, the famed race track there where Henry and I have driven together. In seven minutes, and just over four and a half seconds.
Henry Phillips:
It's about as fast as we drove it.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah, I believe we were in an Opel Zafira, the minivan.
Henry Phillips:
I could actually tell you this. We were in a Skoda Yeti.
Nick Caruso:
Okay, fine.
Henry Phillips:
Maybe it was as a Zafira, I believe it was Skoda Yeti.
Nick Caruso:
Agree to disagree, I don't know. It was a total strange day. Anyway so seven minutes, four and a half seconds, that is just under 24 seconds faster than the regular GT4. And that is astonishing. I mean, that was a humongous leap. The GT4 is powered by this 414 horsepower naturally aspirated four liter flat six. I did say that in one breath.
Nick Caruso:
And the thing is we don't have any real specs on the RS yet. So we're not definite on what exactly gives it such a boost in performance, but there is almost definitely a huge weight reduction in materials usage and all that, plus a track ready Aero kit, including a wing and stuff. Lots of possibilities there, but Henry partially because I know that you have kissed the ground of the Nurburgring and-
Henry Phillips:
Very literally.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah, we spent a long time just lip in the lap, I don't know, I couldn't come up with any. Even though we're light on Dietz here, how's this feel as the last sort of internal combustion kind of a Swan song for the internal combustion Cayman?
Henry Phillips:
I've always loved the really, I mean, I've loved the Cayman to some degree in all of its guises, but I find that the really high end version super interesting, because there's a threshold where they start to get more expensive and sometimes significantly more expensive than 911s. And I can really respect someone who buys a really fast Cayman over similarly fast 911, because they're just, they're really cool. I love this car and I'm sure the RS is going to be great and it's going to have a huge wing on it.
Henry Phillips:
It's going to be really fun. And they're going to get driven around London and New York with huge frequency. But I like to think that because it's a Cayman, somehow people will be slightly less precious about it and go really fast and nearly crashed them, but not crash them.
Nick Caruso:
It's oddly specific hope.
Henry Phillips:
No, no.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah, the one of my favorite sort of qualities of the Cayman since it's existed, is that in certain specs it outperforms the 911, like a similarly to respect 911, I believe. I don't think I'm getting that wrong, but it's a cool car. JD, what about you? You're going to hop in one of these soon as you can?
JD DiGiovanni:
You want to give one to me?
Nick Caruso:
Yeah, I'm sending one your way.
JD DiGiovanni:
Thanks man. I can be like the guys I said in my apartment late in the night driving very, very fast to the BQE. I mean, the car looks very cool and very fast. There is something though about this stat of this thing did the Nurburgring in this number of seconds that if you know it, very cool, it's a good benchmark, but I hope people who do buy this, just driving on the track, but there is something kind of funny about, I don't know, buying a car this that fast and driving them on the street, right? And if you're driving it anywhere close to that, you should be in jail.
JD DiGiovanni:
But there's something kind of odd to me about, you're buying a car with this much power. I really do hope you're going to the track every weekend and really opening it up and trying to find the limit and get a really good lap in. But I know that ultimately this is knowing the stat like that would just be kind of the equivalent of buying, I don't know, some kind of huge AR for your home, just for no other reason just to have it there, even though you live in the suburbs of Sacramento or something. I don't know, I frankly have very few intelligent things to say about cars, but this one looks very fast and I would love to be in it.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah, that's true. I saw, I mean, similar to this, the 911, there's a variant called the GT2 RS, which is just a bonkers car, right? I mean, I just face melting kind of performance. And the last time I saw one was in Monterey during Monterey car week. The only other time I remember seeing one on the road was the previous month right here by my apartment on the BQE, like you're mentioning, this guy just sorta like idling by me in my Jeep. And I'm sitting there, I'm like, "I can't even get performance out of this old ass Cherokee, there's no way you're enjoying yourself driving that car, you fool." You guys watched the lap at all?
JD DiGiovanni:
Yeah, it's mesmerizing. Watching people do hot laps like that is like watching waves crash on a beach or fire in a fire pit. It's totally mesmerizing.
Nick Caruso:
So wonderful, and they have the full telemetric sort of thing. And they can either track you or they track the car on the map. Very cool to watch, and-
JD DiGiovanni:
It sound amazing.
Nick Caruso:
We'll drop a link down there. All right. Well, we all agree that there's going to be a big wing. It's going to be really fast and cool. And it's just, I don't know, something so, I mean, this is always the way it is with performance cars, like the new NSX type S that just came out was a more powerful, better performing version of the NSX before it's gone.
Nick Caruso:
And this is another one, the Cayman won't go away, it's going to be electric, but as like the last one that'll burn gas, really a really interesting way to go out with a bang.
Henry Phillips:
Successional bangs.
Nick Caruso:
Not a bad [inaudible 00:30:13]. Oh, Succession. You guys watching in Succession?
Henry Phillips:
I'm actually just restarted their first season.
Nick Caruso:
Oh my gosh. I can survive on it, I think I could forego food for a month and just watch succession and I'd last. Speaking of expensive things and people in Succession have expensive watches, we're going to talk about watches now, and there's a very sort of controversial story going on here to say the least. And I'm going to give JD a little time to really get himself pumped up, because we're going to let him loose.
Nick Caruso:
But here's the story, Bremont has introduced the longitude limited edition collection of watches, they are really pretty. Comprising these 40 millimeter watches, they're three variants. Very classic looks inspired by vintage marine chronometer. But the real story is inside, it's the guts. The company introduced a new in-house automatic movement, that's designed at their new facility in England called The Wing. And the movement comes in a few different complications which are really cool. And it's called the ENG300.
Nick Caruso:
ENG, England. Get it. It's exceedingly rare for a watchmaker to successfully build its own custom movement, just because there are so many specialized demands of production and assembly, it's a really tiny little precise parts, all this stuff. But Bremont specifically has always vowed to bring watch manufacturing back home to England, where it once thrived in a manner of speaking.
Nick Caruso:
And with this, they have, right? Well, the long story short is that Bremont didn't literally design every piece of the ENG300, instead the company purchased the, let me see, "Intellectual rights and plans from a Swiss brand called The Plus." I think it's pronounced The Plus, it's the word The and then a plus sign.
Nick Caruso:
Then Bremont took the design and modified about 80% of it. So a lot of it to fit these new watches. And now it's this magnificent time piece. We're going to talk about that and by which, I mean, I'm going to cue JD now to just start talking about the watch nerd uproar that he has already sort of spoken to Henry and me about personally.
JD DiGiovanni:
And I want to be clear at watch nerd, use that in a very affectionate way. I am one as well. But yeah, this movement is a big deal for Bermont. Something they worked on for very long time, worked very hard on, they're very proud of it, and I think they have every right to be. It's impressive to see a company pull this off, and frankly it looks gorgeous. I mean, and the watches themselves look very attractive.
JD DiGiovanni:
I think kind of raises my hackles a little bit about this, or what frustrates me about the kind of quality of the conversation surrounding this release, in about some of the folks who were saying that this isn't really an in-house movement is this, it seems to me like these definitions are such a moving target that it doesn't seem to actually be an agreed upon static set of criteria for what makes something an or in-house, or other movement, right?
JD DiGiovanni:
What's the kind of classification and kind of absent that, it can feel like it's just at the whim of a bunch of people who were very disconnected from the actual manufacturing process as to what they think is the most pure version of an in-house movement. And the fact of the matter is, and this is very similar to the conversation that goes on a lot about what American made constitutes, right?
JD DiGiovanni:
There's a lot of vagaries around this stuff, I mean, people who will say it's American made because it's built in America, or it's not American made because the materials it's made out of are themselves sourced from American soil, right? And there are a lot of different kinds of gradations from there. And so in a lot of ways, this is a kind of version of that same conversation without the kind of nationalist vibe to it.
JD DiGiovanni:
That's the kind of lay of the land. And I think some of the frustration there, I would just say that, I think it's too bad that this is kind of where things get to, because let's say that we did have this very agreed upon idea as to what is an in-house movement and what isn't. When you read about the length of time and the amount of effort that Bermont put into making this to begin with, you would be insane to say anything other than it's impressive, that it's an accomplishment.
JD DiGiovanni:
And look, I'm not like a huge Bermont stand or something like that, I think that it's very easy to get caught up in the fights around definitions and lose the forest for the trees when you're talking about what has actually been accomplished here. I don't know, I think that's just my take on it, and I think I probably have more to say here, but I'm kind of getting tripped up over myself. But that's kind of my read on it ultimately.
JD DiGiovanni:
I do think it's very cool, and I guess, I'll just say one more thing before I kind of shut my trap. There's something to be said about the fact that COSC, which is this body in Switzerland that certifies watches and certifies like a chronometer for instance. They won't certify these watches because they're not sufficiently made in Switzerland. The only do this for Swiss watches.
JD DiGiovanni:
This is enough of an English watch that this body won't certify them. And so a result, Bermont has their own testing steps and facilities that they've invested into, so they can make sure these are really up to snuff. And I don't know, as far as an objective measure goes as to what constitutes a watch that's like... Or a movement that's produced in-house versus not, that feels like a pretty good one. I'm sure listeners or readers will have ideas as to what other ones are. I'm just kind of want to point out, there's a lot that's coming to this thing. And I just think it's damn impressive.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah, I mean, very well said and very complete too. I commend you on being restrained. One thing you mentioned then I'll go to you, Henry, is that how long it took the company to sort of develop this. They put like 20 years into making this happen, and this is for a limited edition watch so far, at least. There will be like 300 examples, right? 20 years for 300 watches is pretty freaking wild.
Nick Caruso:
And in terms of the debate about where things are made, it reminds me of cars, right? What is an American made car anymore? You hear that all the time, but maybe not quite as vehemently as our watch friends. What do you think, Henry?
Henry Phillips:
Yeah, it's a deep rabbit hole, man. I kind of made the mistake of going down it just now or earlier, and it pushes any sort of idea that you may be an enthusiast about somethings, watches in this case to the absolute limit. I read three or four comments and I find myself just throwing my hands in the air and saying, "I just don't care. I just don't care."
Henry Phillips:
I think there is some interesting merit to the idea of just the kind of general idea of an independent watchmaker making the thing from scratch. I think that's cool. I think there's something really noble about that. And I imagine as an employee of Bermont, it would be incredibly cool to try and just do it. As someone owns and uses watches, I just don't care, I just don't care. If I get a pizza from a pizza place and the pepperoni is not made in-house, it is sourced from somewhere else. I don't care. I don't know.
JD DiGiovanni:
I mean, there's something to be said about that. I think that, I don't know, it raises this talking about deep holes. I mean, it raises this question, they bought the intellectual property from the Swiss brand that made this movement and they built on it. They customize it, and they said about 80% of it, they really kind of customized. And there's even more that they kind of worked on to just in terms of the just transparent case back on these washes, and so you can see more of the movement.
JD DiGiovanni:
And so they did a lot to just make it look the way they want it to look as opposed to just customizing outside of that. It's like where does knowledge come from? Right? That's almost where I get to, where it's like yeah, and there's a commercial transaction at the heart of this, where they bought the property and intellectual property for this movement.
JD DiGiovanni:
But you do end up in this weird place, where if you saying like are my thoughts original, because I paid for college? There's probably too much of a stretch, I think I'm going way too far out on a limb here, but you do get in these weird places where if you want to be the person who discounts and exclude somebody from some made up club, it's really easy to do it, it's really easy to say no, because this out of the other thing, this doesn't count.
JD DiGiovanni:
And so it's really easy to exclude and it's a lot harder to be in a position where you're trying to make the argument for something. And I think that's the kind of difficult position that Bermont put themselves in. It was difficult to make this to begin with, but the kind of added difficulty is that they have to then defend it a bunch about what they did, why they did it, because in addition to this being something they wanted to do almost for the soul of watchmaking, if you could probably wave your hands about that kind of stuff, it's a commercial enterprise, right?
JD DiGiovanni:
And if you have an ability to work off of the knowledge of another group and be able to still add enough of your own heart and soul into something to make it different enough, and to make it as much your own so much so that some Swiss certification won't actually certify your watches as chronometers. Then I don't know, you got to take it and they'll still take 20 years.
Nick Caruso:
It is too bad, right? That sounds like it's such a cool product, it's such an impressive benchmark for any company, so it's overshadowed by some naysayers, I guess, but it does, like the car analogy comes up to me naturally for one, but the Shelby Cobra back in the '60s, that was a British car that Carroll Shelby ripped the guts out of and put American stuff inside, like a big old V8 and big tires and all sorts of stuff.
Nick Caruso:
And that this is an amazing car, it's an icon. It changed everything, and if you're discounting something, because it's not pure. I mean, that is, of course, I think we know from history problematic for many reasons, but it's just sort of unfortunate at best, that like I say, overshadowing such an accomplishment. Henry.
JD DiGiovanni:
Yeah, I mean, go ahead.
Henry Phillips:
Yeah, I think it's again, it's very admirable. I'm glad that they're doing it and found someone to fund them doing it. More innovation is always a good thing, but I can't quite pin down the why. I guess, it's kind of been Bermont's ultimate goal is to make watches in England. I don't know, I'm not the person to ask this. I just want to give [inaudible 00:43:51].
Nick Caruso:
Well, that's kind of the thing though. You're like, JD, you brought up that essentially certifying these watches, there isn't a uniform process across the board. Such that at a have a problem, if I wanted to start making completely American made in-house movements for watches, like I want someone to tell me my watch is good too. And then it sort of like dismantles this whole system, everything gets shaken up and then the watch world is notoriously kind of stodgy. And if this is a way to evolve it into being a little more globalist, maybe that's a good thing.
JD DiGiovanni:
I mean, who knows? I mean, there could probably be an entire other episode about the kind of the political undertones to all of the different certifications for different things being made in different countries or cartels around what can be made, where and why, and the kind of protectionism that happens with certain industries and it becomes calcified over a long period of time.
JD DiGiovanni:
I think a lot of that stuff is stuff I don't quite understand completely. But for the why for this Henry, for when I was reading on this stuff as well, there was a period in which England was the place where the watches were made. That was kind of strong history there. And with GMT, right? Greenwich Mean Time is being running right through there. There is a kind of history there, and I can see why there'd be kind of in the same way that folks like to make selvedge denim in the US and sell it for way too much.
JD DiGiovanni:
So does watchmakers, man, there's this element of nationalism and pride there, that's nationalism often gets a pretty negative connotation, but in this instance, I'm not sure if that deserves it. I think that's the why, but I don't know, I don't know where I'm the one going with all this, it's just interesting. It seems like a really cool watch. I'm happy for me.
Nick Caruso:
Can we all just get along? Yeah, I mean, we can wrap it up. And like I said, 300 examples of this whole thing. There are three variations of steel, 150 of which will be made. And then rose gold there will be 75, and then white gold there will be 75. Each has a different dial execution and steel examples will be $17,000. The white gold versions will be $25,000.
Nick Caruso:
On top of all the other, just sort of amazing qualities is wash, clearly Bremont stands behind their product. They're pricing it accordingly as a thing that they made and are proud of. And no doubt people are going to cherish these regardless of controversy over the pond. All right, final thoughts, Henry, which are you going to get, do you think?
Henry Phillips:
I'm going to get all of them and preserve them in a kind of bulldog shaped watch winder box.
Nick Caruso:
As a Churchill reference?
Henry Phillips:
That was a Churchill reference, though, I will say, if you're not particularly tied to the aisle of England or of Great Britain, there are some really amazing independent smaller watchmakers that do in-house movements and truly in-house and truly impressive. I keep coming back to our glorious autumn holiday years ago, Nick, when we went through Germany and hung out with the folks at NOMOS, who have done-
Nick Caruso:
Unbelievable time.
Henry Phillips:
An independent and fully in-house movement. It's truly impressive. I don't want to discount any of the work that Bermont has done. It is really cool and I'm glad that they have the resources to do it and can continue to do it. But there are some really cool independent watchmakers, and I don't want to sell anybody short based on where they're from.
Nick Caruso:
[inaudible 00:48:27], that's a good final word. NOMOS, we toured the whole kitten caboodle, met everybody, saw them do their thing, regardless of who is making a watch. That is just an astonishing process and so beautiful and really cool. So like you said, JD, lots more to come. We could probably talk about this for a long time, but we're not going to, because we've already been talking for a long time and it's time to stop.
Nick Caruso:
So thank you both for being here. Thanks everybody for listening in. If you want any information about anything we talked about, including that video of the Porsche lapping the Nurburgring, a story I wrote about the Nurburbring, all of our coverage of the Apple releases and a bunch of stuff about this new limited edition collection of in-house movements from Jolly Old England.
Nick Caruso:
Check out the show notes and the posts there. Make sure you hit us up on social media at Gearpatrol, one word, hit us up email that is podcast@gearpatrol.com. Ask us questions, drop us comments, weigh in on what we were just talking about. I'm sure there are a couple friendly watch nerds out there who want to give us what for or props.
Nick Caruso:
And if you like what you hear, subscribe to the pod, you can rate on Apple podcasts, give us five stars that'll keep us going. Henry, JD, thank you both for your time. JD, I hope you can snack on a HomePod Mini sometime soon. And we'll have you guys back, I guess, sometime, and we'll do this again.
JD DiGiovanni:
[inaudible 00:50:11].
Nick Caruso:
Yeah, for sure. And for Gear Patrol, I am Nick Caruso and until next time, take care.