Will there ever be a spiritual successor to Braun's iconic AB 1 desktop clock, designed by Dietrich Lubs?

A pessimist would say "Probably not." Lubs' design is hard to beat for simplicity and legibility. Its use of form and color demonstrates a level of restraint impossible to exercise these days, where novelty and blinky-blinky features are employed in order to draw attention. Product design's remit is no longer to solve the user's problem. Instead its mission is to draw attention to itself by cutting through the signal noise of an overcrowded product landscape.

So I had high hopes when I saw that Balmuda, a Japanese product brand obsessed with good UX (the brand made its bones with a toaster that produces perfect toast) had designed a tabletop clock. Alas, I deem it a miss.

What is there is the simplicity of form. An aluminum squircle isn't groundbreaking in the era of Apple, but restraint was used with the bezel transition, and the tics and font of the numbers border on Swiss.

However, the chromed ring and knob up top are pure folly. Needlessly attempting to evoke a pocket watch introduces an anachronistic element that spoils the form, while providing only a fiddly way to pick the thing up.

Most damning for me is the lack of hands. There is a market who so prizes novelty that they are willing to decipher clocks rather than read them. I'm not in that market. I suppose this reads "8:20":

But I have no idea what time this says:

In my mind the lack of hands adds cognitive load to what should be a simple, quick and straightforward task. The added load may seem miniscule, but I believe it compounds. It also defies the essence of a product, which is that it is supposed to work for you, and not the other way around.

And, of course, you can interact with the clock through a freaking app. Because why would you miss yet another opportunity to need your smartphone to do something.

That said, design blogs are of course fawning all over this thing. The ¥59,400 (USD $376) clock will probably sell like hotcakes.