Nothing to be wound up about. I know you have no love for Panerai and your Panerai bashing will just continue. Nothing to be sensitive about, there will always be haters.
No love - yes, hater, perhaps just a maybe at the maximum.
One of the most intriguing part of the panerai watch offering is the lack of minute markers in most of the watches. Now, if I were a true hater, I would have just stuck to the view that it's just down to bad and lazy design. But I have told you what my theory is on the omission of minute markers - minutes markers are virtually illegible under dim condition, hence they were unnecessary. Tough wartime economy also justified the omission to reduce costs. I truly wonder if any panerai lover would bother to give a neutral explanation for any deficiency in the panerai watches.
I have no issues with the dial design of Panerai watches. That said, I too wonder why the minute markers were removed when the initial offering to the military had the markers. We can only speculate the reasons back then.
Fast forward to today. Yes, it is great that Panerai has decided to maintain the dial design in its modern interpretation of its watches. Some people like them, some don't. As most of the people who buys the watches now would hardly use them for its intended use, ie diving, most would not care if it had the minute markers or even a rotating bezel to time dive time (as a back up to a dive computer).
I agree that in the Submersible, perhaps having minute markers would be more relevant to others, but again (speculation at best), Panerai is of the opinion that staying true to the roots is more important and that perhaps most of the buyers would not use the watch for the intended design.
To me, it is strange that on earlier GMT models, there were the minute markers, but subsequent models no longer have the markers. The need to stay true overrides the need for the watch to be practical? Same with earlier chrono models. In this case, the opposite applies. In the earlier offerings, there were no intermediate markers between minute markers. That changed in the later offerings, but only one intermediate marker between the minute markers.
I can only guess that accurate time keeping was not an important thing.
There are much that I like about Panerai as there are much that I don't. Panerai of past, and that was not so long ago, and Panerai today has changed. I don't like their distribution channel or what they have planned, I don't really like the current SE/LE thing that they do, but it was great that the 372 was not a single run, allowing true collectors access to it. I don't deny or try to hide there are issues with the watch, look at my interest on the Radiomir crown issue that one of the guys is having.
There are lots to talk about actually, once you can leave behind the strap thing, the ever larger 47 is the new 44 mantra and a host of other things. If you want to know, I have sold my collection before because I was not happy with the way things were going. But later I realised, the loss was mine. I like the watches, not really what the brand was doing. So, I got back in, buying what I like, collecting what I want and ignoring what I did not like about what was happening. And you will be surprised as to how many out there are like me.
As dpkong said, once we can have an open mind (which I try very hard to do), we can have a lively open discussion about the watches, the brand, etc, which others can join in, without the fear of someone lurking, waiting to pounce to bring down the brand or the watches. As you said, I truly wonder if any Panerai lover would bother to give a neutral explanation for any deficiency in the Panerai watches. How would or could that happen when the other party itself is not neutral?
