Apple will no longer fix the $17,000 gold Apple Watch
Apple will no longer fix the $17,000 gold Apple Watch
The gold Apple Watch Edition was a completely different luxury watch flex.
Apple will no longer fix the $17,000 gold Apple Watch::The original Apple Watch models, including the $10,000-plus 18-karat gold Edition that Beyoncé wore, are now officially obsolete and won’t get parts, repair, or replacement services.
Even before they were unsupported, how have they not been “obsolete” for some time. Cannot imagine how slow a gen 1 watch would be. I can see the appeal of a timeless heirloom watch, but this is such a brain dead purchase.
143Well, it’s not a brain dead purchase when $20k doesn’t even register for you.
Got $500,000,000 in the bank? Who cares?
You family has billions and you just have an unlimited alllowance. Who cares.
That’s who this is for.
With that being said, Apple did it for one year and I think it was just a marketing stunt. Everyone talked about it and now people know what an Apple Watch is.
125Apple did it for one year and I think it was just a marketing stunt
That's exactly what it was. They never expected to sell many, just get the headlines for making a "luxury" watch that could "compete" with the likes of Rolex. That some ultra-wealthy people went out and bought one was just a bonus.
31That’s accurate I think but the departure point here is where Apple was making noises about delivering ‘premium jewellery’ or some such spiel.
Rolex, Omega, etc. all support their products for life and beyond. I’m still able to get my dads Speedmaster from the 60s serviced, heck my daily driver Seiko Pepsi from the 80s still has parts available.
Apple can easily afford this level of support which makes it kind of iffy that they don’t.
2
Is there really a reason to need faster smart watches? I can understand shrinking the internals to pack in a larger battery, but I'm kinda confused about what newer smart watches do that requires a more powerful processor (I don't own a smart watch).
It seems like you could support backward compatibility pretty easily by having basic software running on the watch with a program-agnostic API to send and receive info from the watch (kinda like midi or osc). I doubt the processor necessary to send, receive, decode and display information in this format would require that much power. If smart watches honestly get slower over time, the only thing I can think is that the software itself is getting less efficient at doing the same tasks it previously did.
15Software is a gas: it expands to fill the processor and memory you give it. That's a goofy way of saying that, as manufacturers cram faster processors and more memory into devices, software developers will use the extra facilities.
If you're on an old device with limited CPU/RAM, you'll be forced to upgrade to a newer OS that was built with newer devices in mind.
21Mostly new sensors rather than larger battery I think. For instance, newer Apple Watches can monitor temp and oxygen (at least in some capacity).
10I have a S3 Apple Watch, and while it's stuck on an older version of watchOS, it serves my purposes perfectly. Sends me notifications, lets me control my music and tracks my exercise. That's pretty much all I need from a smart watch at this point. The battery isn't amazing, but if I charge in the evening when I'm watching TV, it'll last me through the night. I give it a little bump while I'm drinking coffee and reading in the morning and it'll still be on 40/50% when I get home from work.
3It seems like you could support backward compatibility
Good one lol. I'm sure apple will think about it haha
0
I wonder how much of that price is just the value of gold.
I’m seeing a 24k bracelet no watch and similar shape is $5k to $10k
11Very little of the price is the gold.
An actual gold watch case (excluding the bracelet and the movement inside it) weighs about 20g.
At about £50 a gram that's £1000.
And I doubt the amount of gold in the case of the Apple watch is anywhere near the same amount as in a traditional gold watch case.
3
Cannot imagine how slow a gen 1 watch would be.
It's a fucking watch. I mean it can also monitor bpm and stuff like that but I can't imagine it's doing any complex scientific calculations on there.
0
The irony of building something so expensive, opulent and heirloom worthy around one of the most rapidly depreciating assets you can buy (technology)
125I mean, a 17k$ (back then) workstation from the 90s would still be fine. People love their SGI and Sun machines.
Not sure how much they did cost back then, I was born in 1996, but you get the idea.
0And yet a $17k apple power Mac g5 today barely functions for YouTube
13
I mean is at the end is a watch... at worst case the basic function will work. Although I admit that the battery is still a problem in this case. And that's even if you look at the hour and isn't just an accessory that you barely use it's function.
-6
The big luxury watch brands will service their watches for many decades; a Rolex will last a lifetime, if not longer.
71Rolex buyers are smart enough to not buy another if theirs breaks after a few years. Apple's, not so much.
24
For +$17,000, that shit better have a lifetime guarantee on it, though I guess anyone with $17,000 to throw away on a watch probably doesn't care anyways, they've probably forgotten that they own the thing anyways.
63Anyone who has 19,000$ to blow on a watch needs to be taxed a additional 18,000$
24
Honestly, good. Fuck the people who have this sort of money to throw away. They deserve it.
40Unfortunately they funded the richest company in the world.
17They've probably stopped using it years ago and got a new one
4Weak attidude grounded in jealousy.
-11I'm not jealous of someone who throws away $17,000 on a useless toy. Maybe you think that's impressive, but I don't.
8
Listen, anyone who had one could probably afford a brand new gold watch instead of repairing it anyway and doesn't care about anything except as a status symbol.
37On the other hand gold watches are the kind of thing that are proudly passed around as family heirlooms, only the trashiest new money would buy one every two years and throw the old one away.
17And if someone bought an apple watch thinking it was going to be an heirloom, well, uh..
Ok, that just brought me right back around to your point. Nevermind.
15
This. Anyone with a 17k watch stopped using it 2 days after they bought it.
9
I thought her fingers were her lips & chin
24Thanks for the haunted thumbnail. 😂
2
Oh boy, it sure sucks to suck.
19I still use the original sport band from 2015 on a 7th gen watch, and it fit the 4/5 gen before that. Unless the gold band was non removable from the watch I don’t see the issue.
Also the fact that this was never publicly available means these were gifts to celebs for PR, ain’t nobody losing any money on this.
16The body of the watch was also gold, not just the band.
11
I had to look up that Apple Watch came out in 2015. I feel old...yet again.
13The Covid years really did fuck with my perception of time. I feel like I should be three years younger
15
This is the best summary I could come up with:
That ship has sailed; the original Apple Watches (widely referred to as Series 0) never updated beyond watchOS 4.3.2 in 2018.
It means the end of hardware support: the company will no longer provide parts, repairs, or replacement services.
When it launched, it was seen on the wrists of influential celebrities, including German fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld, who, like Beyoncé, wore it with a gold link bracelet that was never available to the public.
Even folks who do drop five figures on watches tend to want something that’ll still tell time (and hold its value) in a couple of decades.
You could spend $10,000 to $30,000 on a Cartier Tank, still get a square watch, and not worry about whether you could get it serviced eight (or 80) years later.
As long as luxury watch manufacturers like Cartier exist (or Patek Philippe, Rolex, etc.
The original article contains 327 words, the summary contains 144 words. Saved 56%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
9You know what? Good.
If you want to buy something fancy you could buy an expensive "dumb" one that won't lose its value in a year or so. It's the buyers fault.
Unless you want it for working out I find smartwatches stupid. Are you so busy that you can't pull your phone out of your pocket?
Edit: I take it back, yeah seems that there are some specific reasons like those below for wearing a smartwatch.
I still find spending 17k in a luxury watch dumb, a Rolex (I have no idea how much they are worth) still seems better because it won't lose it's value like when the smartwatch OS becomes obsolete.
8In addition to using it for tracking my workouts and bluetoothing to my earbuds, I also found my smartwatch super useful while working as a teacher for surreptitiously checking texts and also for setting timers
9Mine are pretty specific but:
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I'm a bartender. I can get messages if the door person/security is having a problem customer while I am elbow deep in an ice well (plus phones are dirty so I'm not touching gross phone and then your lime wedge even if I am super religious about washing my hands with everything I touch behind bar.) I don't wear it all the time but it is a useful tool.
-
I monitor my heart rate cos I'm having health issues
Butttt.. I don't feel bad for these folks, mine came with my phone.
5-
In the case of the apple watches, you're right. Android watches are actually quite stylish, though.
3
but why though? why would you do that?
6If you’re smart enough to ask the question, you are not the target of this product
4
I wonder if Cash4Gold would take them. Lol I remember seeing this commercial as a kid.
6It's not really pure gold. So you'd get surprisingly small amount of money for "gold" watch.
6
Apple is a brand perfectly positioned at the intersection of clueless but snobby.
5So Apple will no longer fix the watch that came out 8 years ago? I mean, how long should they have fix products for? You buy a $17,000 dollar watch don’t be surprised if the company that no longer sells the watch and hasn’t sold it in 8 years, won’t fix it. There are legitimate things to criticize Apple for. This isn’t one of them.
4Permanently Deleted
1
If you bought a Rolex instead, it would have doubled in value in the meantime.
2I mean, Apple is currently supporting a 5 year old phone and it will probably be supported more years. Additionally, with last years iOS, they supported a 6 year old phone. So I don’t think support is an issue. In general, Apple supported the watch for several years. And the only thing they won’t don’t do is be able to repair it. However, since you want to talk about Google repair, let’s talk about how the Google Watch cannot be respired…by anyone. Literally if it breaks you throw it in the trash. So, maybe Google isn’t the best comparison.
1Why would you even buy an 17K Apple Watch? Just buy an actual Luxury Watch instead.
1