Where there is a new piece of technology for people to get excited about, there is usually also a Luddite faction singing "Let's get ready to grumble" to the tune of PJ & Duncan's Let's Get Ready To Rumble.

It happened first with power looms, then it happened with CDs, then it happened when supermarkets started selling cheese ready grated. And now it is happening again with the unveiling last week of the Apple Watch.

If you missed the news, it is a watch made by Apple, which means it tells the time as well as telling your friends when you post a status update. It can also unlock hotel room doors, apparently, has all the tap, swipe and pinch-and-zoom capabilites of an iPad, and can even monitor your heart rate and transmit the beat as a pulse to another Apple Watch wearer - which is as close to Woody Allen's Orgasmatron as I ever want humanity to get.

The new device also has voice recognition, so you can shout at it and it might actually respond. That is a terrific innovation. I wish more inanimate objects had that sort of functionality. I have a temperamental lawnmower and our relationship would be greatly improved if it could only give me a decent reason for why it won't start. Like: "I need petrol" or "Pull the dangly thing harder" or "There's bits of that frog you ran over last year still lodged in my fuel pipe".

These days we talk about neo-Luddites rather than Luddites, meaning those who are opposed to digital technologies such as tablets, smartphones, Apple Watches and those urinals that flush as you approach them. Generally, I have no truck with neo-Luddism. But where watches are concerned I confess I have some sympathy, and so should you - how can you not when you learn there are 1728 tiny parts in a Patek Philippe Calibre 89 fob watch. Okay, it is one of the most complicated watches ever designed , but even a basic mechanical wrist watch contains well over 100 parts, each one with a groovy name like hairspring, dial train or balance wheel .

Of course where technology and neo-Luddism meet you can usually find fashion types and I do not imagine things will be any different this time round. So I am expecting to see a return of the fob watch. Only four Patek Philippe Calibe 89s were ever made, which explains the 18-carat gold housing and the accompanying price tag. But at the more manageable end of the price scale things are starting to happen. Hip young French company FOB, for instance, has begun making fob watches that are also fashion pieces and cost from about £350. They have model names such as Rehab and, taking their cue from the way people accessorise their smartphones, FOB offers snap-on backs made in everything from wood to sharkskin. You don't need a waistcoat either - the three young Parisian co-founders wear theirs tucked into their jeans.

So do not let us get fobbed off with change for the sake of it. If it ain't broke, keep winding it up.