Apple against luxury | Hacker News Reader

Apple against luxury

medium.com

8 pointsstass8 comments

This analysis is spot-on for iPhone, especially if you count the iPhone 5c. Apple made previous attempts at combining technology and luxury nonsensical, especially Vertu, which used trailing edge technology in what became by comparison a ridiculously conspicuously consuming package.

But, the Apple Watch is not following the same recipe: The solid gold case options for the watch are actually Vertu's model, but with up-to-date technology and what looks to be a general move up-market for Apple's retail stores.

Apple looks like they are embracing and shaping the luxury market in a bid to further extend their ability to maintain high margins for technology products.

It's not a desperate move. It's not a greedy move. They are retaining all their other strategies and almost all of them continue to work. But it sure looks like they are adding the methods of luxury brands to their arsenal.

If it works (and not everything, like sapphire, works) you'll see more of this in other products.

I think this whole article misses the point. There is no "best watch" that is being commodified here. What's the best thing a watch can do? Tell time, really really well? Then the million dollar chunk of metal loses to the $5 Casio.

Watches, as such, are not even functional devices at this point in time. They're entirely jewelry. Acceptable jewelry for men, with a historical reference, but jewelry nonetheless.

And commodified jewelry ain't gonna happen. You can't commodify fashion.

The Apple Watch, if it succeeds, will do so because it is a) not a watch, and/or b) fashionable.

A watch is a piece of technology you wear on your wrist. Jawbone and Fitbit have already been infringing on the space, but only imperceptibly, because they started at the end of the market that had already gave up watches.

Before the iPhone and even Vertu, there were a few years when mobile phones were borderline jewelry. For most people choosing a phone was completely a fashion choice. The iPhone commodified (basically removed) that choice within two years of its launch.

Apple Watch will remove the fashion choice from the watch industry. Because there's only enough room for one timepiece on your wrist.

> Apple Watch will remove the fashion choice from the watch industry.

That's counter to every bit of prelaunch press circulating about the Apple Watch. It'll be interesting to see if you're right.

"What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it."

- Andy Warhol

It's a bit more sobering when you hear how Warren Buffett eats - like a 6 year old would if he was a billionaire. Tons of soda, ice cream, a diabetic nuclear bomb of a diet really. Those with means have different conspicuous consumption choices though, and that's awful difficult to ignore. A watch isn't the same thing as food - not every billionaire would wear a watch necessarily, but we must all eat. The usual dot com millionaire might buy a nice car like any other random person would, but I really doubt that most lottery winners would buy something like a NetApp SAN to use at home for file storage (I would anyway, and I'm really lame in most of the the consumer choices I make typically).

Warren Buffett talks his book by recommending Coke and Dairy Queen, sure.

But I'm going to say that healthy 84 year olds can eat however they please, without any judgement from me.

Apple releasing their watch just makes me want this watch more:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/920064946/oscilloscope-...

Its going to be a real luxury to be carrying around a very useful toolkit with me ..

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