“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.