How Sam Catchem davens Mincha
And how you can win a watch that would make Dick Tracy proud
We’ve been reading the reviews of the Apple Watch from trendsetters who have been using the season’s hottest gadget for a few weeks now. The device offers the promise, first conjured by the Dick Tracy comic strip back in the 1930s, of wrist-based video chats. Alas, reviews say the watch’s tiny speaker makes conversations sound tinny.
Yet if the Apple Watch doesn’t quite meet Dick Tracy’s needs (it’s only version 1.0, after all), a new update from Jewish software developer RustyBrick would make the phone very handy for one of Mr. Tracy’s partners, Sam Catchem. Catchem, introduced in the comic strip in 1948, is Jewish. RustyBrick has released a new edition of its Siddur App for the iPhone, which links up to the Apple Watch. The watch now can remind you to pray Mincha before sunset, Ma’ariv after sunset — the text of both prayers are on the watch — and locate the nearest (Orthodox) minyan. Perhaps best of all for the busy detective on the beat, if you are about to recite Grace after lunch and your boss calls with the latest bulletin on Flattop, you can press a button and the watch will remind you about benching in 15 minutes. It’s a snooze button for praying, in other words.
The RustyBrick Siddur app is $9.95 for the iPhone, with the Apple Watch functionality thrown in for free. The Apple Watch starts at $349 — but with luck, you can get one for free by entering our annual Readers Choice survey at jstandard.com/survey.
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