“Apple unveiled three watches on Monday. The stripped-down Apple Watch Sport has an aluminum case, starts at $349, and aims at the fitness-band market. The flagship Apple Watch, with a stainless steel case, starts at $549 and ranges upwards of $1,000 depending on which band you choose. And, yes, the Apple Watch Edition starts at $10,000, with a top-end price of $17,000 for the fanciest version of all,” Will Oremus writes for Slate. “Oh, and you have to already own an iPhone for any of them to work.”
“Unlike iconic Apple products past, the Apple Watch is not a singular luxury product for the masses,” Oremus writes. “It’s a luxury product for the rich — and, in the case of the gold-cased Apple Watch Edition, which starts at $10,000, a luxury product for the uber-rich.”
MacDailyNews Take: $349 is a “luxury product for the rich?” Seriously?
“Apple products such as the iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Air [are] something of an oddity in the world of consumer goods. They’re at once luxury products — the finest of their kind, by many accounts — and crowd-pleasers. The iPad is the Porsche of tablets; it’s also the Toyota Camry,” Oremus writes. “Your barista at Starbucks and the CEO of your company carry identical iPhones in their pockets.”
MacDailyNews Take: Oh, but the Apple Watch offers the exact same user experience at $349 as it does at $17,000. The Apple Watch is for the Starbucks barista and for the company’s CEO. Pretending it’s just available at $17,000 and not also $349 is not a sound foundation upon which to build your little construct, Will.
“There is nothing morally wrong with charging rich people exorbitant prices for shiny things that make them feel special. Lucrative corporate empires like Louis Vuitton have been built on so-called Veblen goods, whose demand is based largely on their high price. And it makes sense for Apple to do this with a watch, which has long served a dual role as timepiece and status symbol,” Oremus writes. “The question is: What might Apple lose by getting into the exclusivity game? What it might lose is the adoration of the masses. People like a company when it makes a product that delivers on the price they paid for it. People love a company when they feel that it gives them more than they paid for. They love a company that gives them the same perfect product it gives to celebrities and millionaires.”
MacDailyNews Take: Again, the Apple Watch offers the exact same user experience at $349 as it does at $17,000 and the general public understands very clearly that gold costs more than aluminum or steel.
There’s an Apple Watch for everyone. – Apple Inc.
“People, by and large, do not love a company that ropes them off from its finest offerings,” Oremus writes. “People are not going to love walking into Apple Stores and seeing glass cases full of gold watches they’ll never be able to afford.”
MacDailyNews Take: People understand that gold costs more than aluminum or steel.
Oremus writes, “And, if I’m right, shaggy young fanboys are not going to camp out for nights on end to be the first to buy the cut-rate Apple Watch Sport.”
MacDailyNews Take: Oh, Will, you know there will be pre-orders for Apple Watch, right? And still there will be campers.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: After all is stripped away, there remains an interesting kernel left to explore:
Apple Watch is a unique Apple product in that it runs the gamut from affordable ($349) to luxury ($17,000) but the only variances are to the materials and finishes, not the ultimate user experience.
The Macintosh offers a range user experience that vary in speed, storage capabilities, RAM, graphics, etc. The user experience between a Mac mini and a Mac Pro are not exactly the same and their prices run the gamut from $499 to upwards of $14,000. The same goes for iPhones, iPads, and iPods. Different capabilities at different price points. Only Apple Watch offers the same capabilities at different price points.
As we wrote earlier today: If this works, and we believe it will, Apple Watch will be a rather unique product in that it spans from $350 to $17,000, from mid- to high-end mass market all the way up to luxury.
As SteveJack wrote in our Opinion section last night: Apple is brilliant. These gorgeous 18-karat gold Apple Watch Editions will begin showing up on the wrists of celebrities, famous athletes, and captains of industry very soon. And they will influence the rest of the world to lust after Apple Watch, too. And, here’s more Apple brilliance, unlike a $51,500 Piaget watch, your average Joe and Jane… will actually be able to partake in the same exact user experience with the Apple Watch and Apple Watch Sport.
If Apple didn’t make a gold case, someone else will. This happens for almost all mobile devices. The interesting thing here, Apple controls this to some extent, with the Apple Watch. However that’s not going to stop the bejeweling show. Just wait and see.
Exactly, the watch just gives them scope to bring more in house and make a bigger deal of it as inevitably a watch is much more into the jewellery sector than its other products and personalisation becomes an integral part of its ultimate appeal.
i’ll be waiting for the first news story of someone getting brutally robbed of their watch
Why will you be waiting for that to occur?
Schadenfreude. Some people exist only by drinking the tears of others. It’s a nasty, smelly little mindset to live in.
Why would you be waiting for that any more the someone being brutally robbed of equally (or some times more) expensive rings, watches, necklaces, bracelets,etc that people have been wearing for thousands of years.
This space (the wrist) is not virgin to expensive ornamentation. This is not new. Why would you think (or horrifyingly hope?) there would be any more theft with this expensive piece of jewelry that also happens to be a price of technology?
I always get a chuckle when MDN adds “or something” to the title.
Apple has to sell some 20 average iPhones in order to bring in same revenue as one single $17k Gold Edition watch.
The have to sell well over 30 average iPhones in order to bring in same profits as one single $17k Gold Edition watch.
Even if they sell only 500,000 of these watches, they’ll make same profit as 15 million iPhones.
These numbers look stratospheric. Anyone who has yet to buy AAPL, grab your chance today.
At this point it’s old news. No adoration lost. Waiting for apps that apply to me. I came up with one. I want an app that watches for particular items on the World of Warcraft auction house and notifies me immediately.
“what might Apple lose…..” Hopefully analysts and pundits writing inane articles! 😀
Exactly! The article is amazingly stupid. Why would I not spend $500 for a stainless steel Apple watch? There’s a $500 stainless steel Seiko in my drawer that doesn’t do anything but give me the time and date. Oh, the band’s inordinately expensive you say? There’s also a $1000 stainless Rolex in my drawer with a $500 stainless band on it. It also gives me only time and date. The point is that Apple’s pricing is not “insane” or excessive.
I think “right” or “wrong” is out of the question.
If some people have $17,000 to spend on a watch ( any watch!), good for them.
Still, no matter how rich you are, that’s something I’ll never understand. I still think someone has to be borderline insane to spend $17,000 in a watch.
Either that or I’m dumber than I look, and there’s something I don’t understand at all.
Still, every single rich person in the world will buy one. and that’s going to be a home-run for Apple.
I’m sorry. The watch just makes Apple look silly. It has nothing to do with who can and who cannot afford the watch. Few people with that kind of disposable income are so foolish as to throw it away like that. I think Predrag’s 500,000 number is way to high. I’m betting we’ll never know the actual numbers, but if 5000 people buy these watches I’ll be shocked.
Prepare to be shocked.
Polls show about 1 in 5 iPhone users want the watch.
Gotta agree with you TM, although I can see some silly women who’s husbands have money out the wazoo shelling out for them.
A knowledgable man who is going to spend this kind of money on a wrist adornment will in all likely hood go for a Rolex, Patek Phillipe, Jaeger-LeCoultre or the like. These fine pieces are heirlooms, and many hold there value quite nicely in the collectors world.
Apple Watch, not happening no matter what it’s made out of.
You are right. The AW is more of a tech bauble than an heirloom. It is just another thing to upgrade every couple of years, unless Apple has decided to slow its development pace or the hardware is just that awesome that it can survive 3 newer versions of iOS. I don’t think Apple has thought this through.
Apple and it seems most people don’t understand why rich people buy watches. It’s not only that you have money to burn, it’s about status. When you buy a watch that’s over 10k you are getting something unique, something special, that is most likely hand crafted in Switzerland with little to no machines involved in making or building it. It is a precision instrument that is carefully built and polished. It’s movement is built in house by hand it will keep accurate time and last for hundreds of years. It is practically guaranteed to be worth more money in the future irregardless of whether it has any gold in it or not. Some of the most expensive watches in the world have no gold or diamonds in them. Who assembles the Apple gold watch? Some 11 year old in China working 18 hours and and getting paid squat?
What are you buying when you buy a 10k Apple watch? Yes it may have a few thousand dollars worth of gold in it and it may be a limited but it is still the same $350 watch just with a gold casing. What happens when that watch is obsolete in 2-3 years? I’m sure you can still sell it for it’s gold, but is that why rich people buy watches? So they can sell it for it’s gold value? The is answer is a big fat no, so yes it is insane to drop 10k on a watch, but it would be even more insane to drop 10k on an Apple watch. No real watch connoisseur would go near an Apple watch, irregardless of it’s price.
So many people here seem to know best what the rich people should be doing with their money. Nobody is buying a $10,000 watch because it will last tens or hundreds of years, so as to be an heirloom. They want to buy it to wear it today, and show it off, not wait to give it to their grandchildren. It is about fashion, status and power.
Mechanical watches, beyond displaying fashion, status and power, serve only one purpose: to tell time. (And they still break down and need servicing too). Apple is offering a watch that not only displays fashion, status and power, and tells time but does a whole lot more. It is a no-brainer for anyone who wants the “best” watch that money can buy.
Someone else said it best, if you don’t already own a $10,000 watch, you’re not the target market for the Apple Watch Edition
Yeah they want to show off their Apple watch that has barely any gold in it.That’s going to show everyone how rich they are. They aren’t buying it specifically as an heirloom, that is just an added bonus? Did you even bother to read my post? They are buying handmade goods, there is premium for that. Just like when you buy a tailored suit or Italian leather shoes that were hand made. That’s the concept. Nothing about a factory churned out hunk of metal from Apple says that you are unique or shows off your status and power. All it shows is that you’re stupid for dropping 10K on 2K worth of gold.
Heh:
“The iPad is the Porsche of tablets; it’s also the Toyota Camry”.
It’s also the Toyota Pickup.
Fuck you. Don’t post auto-play videos. Have some respect for your fellows.
They didn’t auto-play for me. Check your browser settings.
-jcr
Apple adopted the marketing strategy of well known or big car companies. You make SLS or SL Mercedes to sell more C series.
GM have to make Corvette to sell more Cruse. It an image product
Gold Edition to sell more of the $359 and $399 iWatch. Kudos to Phil Schiller.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/aliciaadamczyk/2015/03/03/golden-apple-brikk-is-selling-a-75000-diamond-encrusted-apple-watch/
LET the GAMES Begin…..Watch blinged up: $75K……
Fashion and luxury are not rational realms… Neither is Ego.
But yet they all have their place in our societies !
And apple is reaching out to all markets!
I think it is a suoer smart move to have the edition.. They are testing the waters of high end luxury and creating an super exclusive fashion statment through price and extreme limited availibilty …. But yet not abandoning their mainstream .
Steves article” incensed over apple 17000 watch” provides a very nice insight on this !
I think he sounds quite well-balanced until he goes all Marxist about Apple’s relationship with the masses.
Face it, most people don’t want the entry level watch for 349/399. So yes, it now becomes an expensive watch at the next price level. Just like most people don’t get barebone macs.