Apple will no longer fix the $17,000 gold Apple Watch
theverge.com
theverge.com
Celebrity owners would have got a brief sparkle from it. Perhaps also some of Apple's marketing budget too. And they continue to own a legacy item which will have notoriety beyond mere function.
Collectors of rare historical firearms presumably don't actually fire them.
I also suspect that given enough time those are the watches that will become collectors' items and will sell for multiple times their original cost so it's not a total loss for the buyers.
Yeah, like with high fashion, Chanel's runway show is there to make sure people come to buy the perfume, the only high margin thing they sell. It never made a ton of sense with Apple because they're like Warhol's thing about Coke: there is no luxury Coca-Cola; everyone gets the same product because it's the best. Similarly, there's no better phone or smartwatch than the highest end made by the mass market companies.
For example - an M1903 is an antique by any definition, and you'd be hard pressed to buy one today that's unfired.
Source: Forgotten Weapons and Royal Armory youtube channels
...And modern replicas tend to be safer when you pull the trigger.
https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=40...
As a buyer, you would need to decide for yourself whether you want a guaranteed working firearm or not.
And in many cases, the owner will test fire the firearm before putting it on auction anyway.
Old Martini Henri rifles, dueling pistols, even muskets in some cases.
Ummm I think it was for celebrities and the ultrarich.
It's not clear whom crutches are for beyond those with broken legs or atrophied muscles.
It's not clear what an eraser is for beyond removing pencil traces from a paper, or any purpose benefiting from a small block of rubber/elastomer.
...
It’s not a special watch. It’s a Series 0 with $16k of gold.
We don’t even know if anyone ever bought a single one (as opposed to being given one by Apple/an Apple exec).
In 2015, gold was approximately $1250 per oz.
Perhaps someone who has a gold Rolex can correct me, but it seems unlikely that there is more than 3/4 lb (362 grams) of gold in it, even counting the band. That would probably be very tiring to wear.
https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/karl-lagerfeld-audemars-pi...
I heard about somebody who has actually done that... but their main interest was porn.
They could call it Category A, B, C, and D for all it actually matters.
In your analogy that would be like Apple declaring the Smartwatch category obsolete, which they have not done.
You cans till right now use a model year 4000BCE wheel if you want to and if it suits your purpose. You decide when your property is no longer useful to you. That is not the case with the apple watch, or with a plethora of other devices out there. The device belongs to the company that made it, not to its supposed owner, if the owner has no say in when it becomes useless.
Nope. It's a device. Presumably much of the technology in the now 'obsolete' Apple Watch is still in use in more recent models.
Is any of that OK? No. It's just not surprising.
On any watch.
There are some collectors that will buy timeless watches and expect their value to stay or go up.
There have been specially expensive editions of the iphone before, and they were chucked on the bonfire of e-waste long before.
They do this by presenting an aura of exclusivity to certain products, usually gating it by being expensive and hard to acquire. Trying to suggest to people that "if you buy this: it is a signal that you are wealthy! people will like you more!"
New wealth tends to fall for it, especially those that become wealthy quickly like lottery winners. This also disproportionately affects hip hop artists who become famous (or used to).
"Flexing wealth" is yet another way that people are trying to extort money from the gullible, but it's effective.
Because there are some signals of wealth that rich people could use to distinguish each other, but it's never flexing brands or bling.
> There is a trick the fashion industries pull […] convincing new wealth that they need to flex their wealth.
Do they? Do they “convince them” that they “need to flex their wealth”?
> They do this by presenting an aura of exclusivity to certain products, usually by gating it by being expensive and hard to acquire.
I think you’re trying to describe Veblen goods but without the necessary vocabulary.
> New wealth tends to fall for it.
It’s just baseless assertions (and a dog whistle about “hip hop artists”) all the way down, I guess?
Like your name on a college building or prominent museum, or building a 400+ ft superyacht.
What do you mean by "cost"? They both have to pay the same price, one might have to spend less time to make that amount if that's your point, but that's kinda obvious.
At $100k, $17k after tax is maybe 30% of your income (and I don't mean disposable) for a year.
I think you would be hard pressed to find financially stable people in this income bracket who would consider this deal "affordable".
Probably affordable was a bit of a stretch, I meant that it's not out of the question of buying, like a $50k Rolex.
Then I'd guess you either don't live in the US or make far more than 100k.
And even so, at 100k, the effective tax rate there is under 30%
Maybe if there were no taxes or utilities, food, housing, etc.
$50-60k in taxes (my take home is about 40% of my salary). $2k/month in rent/mortgage, so about $25k/year. $1k in utilities and food ($12k). So, we are up to $96k and haven't even touched on car payments, clothing, entertainment, etc.
Hmm, I'd disagree.
$100K salary takes home $78K, i.e. $6,500/mo.
I don't know that a watch that costs nearly 3 months of every cent of my take home pay is "in the affordable range".
Nice flex, but you don't need to spend Wolf of Wallstreet money to enjoy the fun and diversity of traditional analog and digital watches.
You can build an entire watch collection for every occasion, of high quality Casios, that will last ~forever, for the price of one new Apple watch who's lifespan will be less than the CR2016 battery on those Casios, while having more features that a Rolex.
Casio even had the audacity to build an analog knock-off of the Apple watch and IMHO they nailed the design better than Apple (the moon phase indicator is a functioning complication, not a design element): https://down-th.img.susercontent.com/file/th-11134207-23030-...
Yes, they can tell the time but there are better ways of knowing the time nowadays. Especially if you care about accuracy, a smartwatch connected to a smartphone connected to an atomic clock is more accurate than your Rolex.
So what's the point of jewelry? Fashion, and signaling your wealth mostly.
> So what's the point of jewelry? Fashion, and signaling your wealth mostly.
That's a sweeping generalization, pun intended... I guess "expensive" is relative but I own a few four-figure watches and appreciate them for their aesthetic and the engineering that went into creating them. Being able to tell the time mechanically without cellular service or an Electron app is a welcome reprieve in today's world. I suppose my Casio F-91W is more accurate but it's also much less whimsical and doesn't really feel like "my" watch the way that my Damasko does. Ditto for the Rolex that I inherited from my Grandpa - the German watch that's worth 15% (but still 50 times the cost of the Casio, i.e. "luxury") and has zero brand recognition gets worn way more often because it's my jam.
My next purchase will likely be a Seamaster Professional not because I want to signal that I can afford a $4000 watch but because I like the aesthetics and the movement. Obnoxious Rolex bros are certainly a thing (I see them in public fairly regularly) but that doesn't mean that everybody that enjoys nice watches does so for the sake of conspicuous consumption :-).
It gives me an ambient sense of the time because I end up glancing at it randomly. I lose track of how far along I am in the hour if I forget my watch.
I agree that expensive watches are mostly status symbols, but a quartz watch is accurate to about 15 seconds a month, which unless you're in the military is good enough accuracy, may I ask what you do day-to-day that requires you to have atomic-clock levels of time accuracy?
Simply to catch a train it's important to have a precise watch.
The biggest problem with longevity of modern portable electronics (watches, phones, etc) is that they usually use the internet. That generally means they need security updates when bugs are found, protocol updates as the net evolves, and sometimes they depend on specific network services that the provider drops.
Sometimes the electronics themselves fail. For example I've got a Casio MG-510 guitar [1] that I bought in the late '80s. It still works great as an electric guitar, but its MIDI functionality no longer works.
From what I've read this is almost certainly due to a bunch of bad electrolytic capacitors. Someday I'll have a go at replacing the capacitors, which other people have reported fixed theirs.
[1] https://spinditty.com/instruments-gear/The-Casio-Midi-Guitar...
Yes, almost no one needs a watch to tell time. I counted the clocks in my house a few years ago, counting anything that displays the time as a "clock" including things such as my microwave oven, my stove, computers, phones, tablets, DVCR, thermostat, TV, etc, and found something like 20.
But no, there are still functional reasons to have a watch. I do not want to deal with keeping all the aforementioned clocks actually set to the correct time. Some aren't a problem, such as computers and phones, because they automatically sync to time servers over the net.
With a watch I can reduce my clocks to those on my computer, phone, and tablet, and my watch for when I'm not using those, plus any clocks on things that actually need the correct time.
That all said the fact that they are wearing a rolex isn't to tell time, it's to wear a rolex.
So it's a question of what utility or value you derive from it.
Personally if I didn't have a smart watch that tracked activity, showed me the weather forecast, let me glance at a notification without taking my phone out of my pocket etc. I would have no watch. That's what I had before my first Apple Watch.
If you find value and enjoyment from your mechanical watches, then that is the point, and they don't need to do anything else to justify it.
It’s like comparing a wired phone to a smartphone because they’re both “phones”.
Oddly enough, I think this - wearing both a smart and an analog watch - is actually a trend [0], which I think makes sense, since analog watches could nowadays be considered purely attire complements.
[0] https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/double-wristing-a-guide-fo...
Maybe I'm just becoming a graybeard, but I'm tired of software updates, constantly charging devices, and throwing away good hardware because it's not supported by software anymore.
They knock off famous watch designs. Their whole Patriot line is meant to look like Richard Mille. I'm showing my bias but if you want a mechanical go right to Seiko instead of this company putting Seiko cases that are meant to make you look like a soccer player who just got his signing bonus.
Finally, she turns to an older lady and asks, what she uses.
The older lady just smiles and says that when her jewels get dirty, she just throws them away.
The gold Apple Watch is a status overpriced, impractical good for signaling and technological obsolescence is not really something that a person who buys it cares about.
If I'm a celebrity people are paying me to wear their crap.
That said the GP’s point is also completely true. No one who bought one (assuming they exist) is mad it fell out support 9 years later. It’s chump change, and if they like Apple Watches they upgraded long ago.
I run quite a few ntp time sources at sub milli-second and generally better accuracy (at work). My watch is quite decent for drift. It is far better than I actually need for a wrist watch.
Now, $17,000 for a thing on your wrist for time telling? Apple wankery involved ... please tell me it ain't so!
Quality does not always involve a sodding huge price tag and in this particular case Apple's S&M dept took their eye off the ball and went for a trot around noddy land waving their hands and looking a bit silly.
My gosh. Wait until you discover how much you can spend on luxury watches from the "established" watchmakers. You might want to be sitting down.
But they basically serve as jewelry.
The problem with the Apple Watch is it tried to be that, but it has absolutely no premium value at all.
Which is unsurprising considering you can get the same brand, same look, etc with a little less gold for 1/200th the price.
Also, it doesn’t help that there is no handcrafted precision work involved with the Apple Watch. It flowed out of the same Chinese assembly line the other $200 Apple Watches did.
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/08/apple-invent-the-mechanical-...
They might creep higher in a decade or so, like a first gen iPhone has.
Almost certainly much less than 17k.
That said, it's a custom case & their movement wouldn't slot into an actual Apple watch without a lot of machining. But it would be a cool way to immortalize one of these Series 1 watches https://www.h-moser.com/product/swiss-alp-watch-5324-1205/
The writing was on the wall the next year when they dropped gold and there was no way to upgrade it.
It was clearly someone’s vanity product. We don’t ever know if they ever sold a single one. Sure celebrities got them, but did anyone ever pay? It’s possible the answer is no. We also don’t know how many they made.
It was a laughing stock from day one, even among Apple lovers (like me).
One watch I got rid of immediately was my first generation Apple watch. I felt it was a completely useless piece of crap.