It’s Friday. It’s five o’clock here in London. I say, it’s time to down tools, pour yourself a drink and look back at what A Prodigal Week it has been.
Here’s your bite-sized helping of news and views.
WATCHES
Come in, B&R, come in…
Bell & Ross is such a strange watchmaker. So many of their designs are…how to put this politely…somewhat derivative. But they also make some of the most visually distinctive watches in the industry. Yesterday, they released something in the latter category: the BR-0392 Red Radar.
As usual, Hodinkee has the details but the short version is that it looks like a radar ripped straight from an airplane cockpit. Not my cup of tea but I salute them for originality, use of ceramic, and reasonable pricing.
CARS
Not so fast, Tesla
Tesla canceled the Model S Plaid+ this week, a model it’s been teasing since 2019. And it did so in the most Tesla way imaginable: a tweet from CEO Elon Musk declaring the regular Plaid model “just so good”.
Musk also tweeted that the Plaid could go from zero to 60 mph in under two seconds and - to be fair - that does sound like fast enough. Uproar followed of course - but the complaints from prospective customers were around the extended range the Plaid+ was supposed to provide rather than the extra performance. And that, my friend, is where the EV battle will be fought: range. The performance box has already been well and truly ticked.
If you’d prefer something more traditional while the EV guys work on that, you can’t get any better than the new Rolls-Royce Ghost. I spent a week with the previous model and still think about her from time to time…
GADGETS
Eye in the sky
Sony has had a busy week. After releasing the WF-1000XM4 ear buds which The Verge hailed “a sonic triumph”, the Japanese company announced its first ever drone. And the Gadget King didn’t disappoint. As Gizmodo reports,
not only can the Airpeak S1 hit a top speed of 55 mph in just 3.5 seconds (which Sony claims is faster than any comparably priced drone from DJI), it’s the smallest drone that can be equipped with a full-frame interchangable lens mirrorless camera.
Nothing’s perfect of course and the somewhat awkward downside to all that power is that the Airpeak S1’s max flight time tops out at 22 minutes, and goes down to just 12 minutes when fully loaded. That and, you know, the price. It’s £6,500. Without camera.
Don’t miss…
👨🏻💻 Apple’s keynote at WWDC 2021 was a disappointment to those of us who had convinced ourselves that we would see the new MacBook Pro - but was full of clever, incremental software improvements that are much more than the sum of their parts.
Read the highlights >
🚗 What would you sacrifice for driver involvement? That’s the question we ask in the latest episode of Prodigal Persiflage. Eric favours driver involvement above all else. I demand some home comforts. Who’s right?
Decide for yourself >
⌚️ Why I buy watches, what stuck, what didn’t, and why. If you’ve never been interviewed about your watch choices, in terms of introspection, it’s not disimilar to visiting a psychiatrist - or, if Eric Drosin is doing the interviewing, a proctologist.
Have a listen >
Welcome to the weekend, folks. 🍸