u/SlippingStar

I saw these advertised a while back, but I can’t find them anywhere. They were explicitly advertised as an alternative to cargo shorts/pants with external, side pockets.

I (ze/zem or they/them) got tig ol bitties and a good beard. I don’t bind, I am hyper binary androgynous and it makes me euphoric as hell. That said, unless someone has bi/pan/omni/polysexual (or any sub niches like berri, almond, trixic, etc) merch or in their profile, I don’t bother considering them romantically or sexually. People exclusively interested in women generally aren’t interested in beards, people exclusively interested in men generally aren’t interested in tits. So unless proven otherwise, I assume I’m not an option.

I’ll put my cat’s front paws on my shoulder and support their hind end with my arm, bit their back feet are fully on my tits 😂 When I had rats they’d always get confused on my siblings’ shoulders because ??? where shoulder bridge???

I’d love Modular to get the glass treatment on all the icons and whatnot.

If you don’t like Liquid Glass, the good news is a slider is coming to make it much less obvious (assuming you can update to WatchOS 27 😒)!

My preference for Apple products is in no small part their design. On the physical side, I love the sleekness, the rounded corners contrasted against hard edges, subtle changes in angle. The design has changed over the years, especially the edges, but I've never really been against their design choices. I prefer the UI navigation, it's just easier generally for me compared to other OSs. The Dynamic Island is a really good example of software working not just around, but with hardware, and it's something they can only do because they know the physical design of every phone the OS will be released to. I really like how much attention there is to detail, like how the edges of the Island bounce out a bit at the ends of their transition animations to give a little feeling of momentum change. That's probably why I also like Liquid Glass; the amount of design brainwork that had to go into coding that? It's doesn't seem like a lot, but think about how it's having to distort every image that comes underneath it in a believable way. A live filter that actually looks believable. That's phenomenal ingenuity. Or maybe I'm just behind on the times with live filters 😂 Definitely looking forward to the clarity filter in OS27.

Specifically on the watch faces, some are pieces of art that use the passage of time as an aspect of their medium — the fact that the image must gradually change is part of what makes the design interesting, instead of suddenly flipping over like the digital faces. For some faces, the amount of real-time calculations that goes into every time you raise the face is impressive. I don't mean faces that just need to throw up a random animation out of a pre-done set (such as Memoji, Motion or Artist(ironically)), but these are faces with gradual changes we don't notice — for example, I have never noticed the moon phase in Lunar or the sun in Solar Dial suddenly jump between positions, so that means it has to slowly change over the day enough for me not to notice it. This is something you can see in the smooth sweep of the hands for all analog faces, which I think is why I'm drawn to them. When your wrist is down in AOD you can see the minute hand click forward if you look at the right time (lol), but when your wrist is raised you have to really focus to see that hand move (something which reflects one of the diversities of mechanical analog watches - some have smooth sweep, others tick forward).

The faces I'm thinking of that have such subtlety be[sides/yond] the movement of the hands, something about each of these faces has to be just marginally different with each raise.

• Gradient, Palette, and Unity Lights - the shadow or light by the hands, and the light and shadows themselves also have to flip sides as they approach each other
• Contour - the size of the numbers
• Flux - the fill level
• Kaleidoscope - the rotation of the image
• Pride Luminance - the advancement of the colors
• Pride Woven - the rotation of the weave (spins slowly over time independent of your own moments)
• Solar Analog, Dial, and Graph - the color and brilliance of the sky and the sun's position, which also must reflect real life (and are a references to other ways to keep track of time; the passage of the sun, the phases of the moon, and the positions of the planet)

I assume the astronomical faces get their astronomical information off the internet, which could also be used to make a current weather watch face (like the iPhone and iPad background options, which could also be a thing for MacBook) or a face based on star positions, keeping with the passage of time theme. Fun fact, if you tap on the background and not any complications or the clock on Pride Woven and the Solar faces, you can roll the crown back or forward to make the faces change (may also apply to Lunar and Astronomy, I haven't tried). There's some other faces that change if you tap on them, like Pride Analog and Digital.

For other faces, the technological aspect is what makes them interesting; the way some of the faces' animations feel so one-to-one with their gyroscopic position is a coding marvel. I encourage you to apply each of these faces on full screen so you can see it for yourself, since they can't really be appreciated in pictures or video — watching it happen from your movements is the magic.

• Flow - The "bubble" under the time
• Flux - The tilt of the liquid level
• Pride Luminance - The tilt and shimmer of the colors in each section
• Pride Radiance - The positioning of the various neon lines
• Reflections - The positioning of the shimmer

These all can only be done on a screen-based watch, and many specifically a smart watch because it needs information from the internet. From what I know of all other smart watches, they don't have gyroscopic or artistically time-based faces — nothing even fun like Motion. They're more utilitarian or static along the lines of Modular, Breathe, Photos, Metropolitan, and the Numerals faces. And that's fine if you don't like artsy-fartsy, but as artist of course I like artsy-fartsy.

I'm not saying all the faces are great - I actively despise Pride Harmony, and I'm one of most rainbow-ass Alphabet Mafia queer motherfuckers you will meet. It is completely illegible to me. I understand that some people can read the face easily, but the background just distracts me from the hands too much and I always have to look really hard to read the hour that supposedly the color blocks are supposed to show. I get that they were trying to let any flag be interpreted from the blocks, but it's just... a flop, for me. Pride Threads wasn't as bad, but I still have to think too hard to understand it. Supposedly it responds to movement, but it doesn't look as good as the other gyroscopic faces — too much vertically restricted movement, it doesn't feel like it's following my motions.

Thanks for reading, I hope my thoughts help you appreciate your watch just a little more.