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.
this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
500 points (96.8% liked)
Technology
68244 readers
5099 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Well, 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.
Apple 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.
And now its built-in obsolescence is being paraded around pointing out why no one should buy such a thing ever again.
They didn’t even carry them at all of their stores.
I did get to wear one once, and only did so I could say I wore a watch that cost more than my car.
It is for those with more money than sense, 100%. No matter how much money you have, it’s not going to solve the problem of it being incompatible with a newer iPhone. And that makes anyone who bought this a clown.
The point is that for them, it doesn't matter if the watch is obsolete and ends up in a drawer after a few years. They'll just buy a new one.
For them 20k is like $20 for you.
You’re actually off by a lot more than you realize.
Average US income is about $31.2k, Beyoncé (who bought one) has an income of about $90m.
Meaning $20k to her is around $0.64 in relative wealth to the average person.
Literally pennies.
load more comments
(1 replies)
That’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.
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.
Software 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.
Mostly new sensors rather than larger battery I think. For instance, newer Apple Watches can monitor temp and oxygen (at least in some capacity).
I 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.
load more comments
(1 replies)
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
Very 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.
I was talking about the bracelet, the watch itself is essentially e waste I think it’s only 18k gold anyway seems like the price of just branding/exclusivity
There is almost no gold in it. 18k gold is 75% gold by weight, not volume. Apple created an alloy that, in addition to the normal metals, is mostly lightweight ceramic.
At the time I was surprised there wasn't a class action suit. They were charging an amount that was in line with real gold watches and yeah the "gold" part was 75% gold by weight but it was such a departure from anything else ever called 18k gold it just seemed like a straight up scam to me.
load more comments
(4 replies)
The irony of building something so expensive, opulent and heirloom worthy around one of the most rapidly depreciating assets you can buy (technology)
load more comments
(13 replies)
For +$17,000, that shit better have a lifetime guarantee on it, though I guess anyone with $17,000 to throw away on a watch probably doesn't care anyways, they've probably forgotten that they own the thing anyways.
Anyone who has 19,000$ to blow on a watch needs to be taxed a additional 18,000$
Honestly, good. Fuck the people who have this sort of money to throw away. They deserve it.
They've probably stopped using it years ago and got a new one
load more comments
(2 replies)
Oh boy, it sure sucks to suck.
I 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.
I had to look up that Apple Watch came out in 2015. I feel old...yet again.
The Covid years really did fuck with my perception of time. I feel like I should be three years younger
You 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.
In 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
I don't doubt that your smartwatch is useful, but why can't you just pair to your phone? I can be like 30 yards away from my phone with my earbuds.
Oh i don't like taking my phone when I go running so it's a game changer
load more comments
(1 replies)
Mine are pretty specific but:
-
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.
In the case of the apple watches, you're right. Android watches are actually quite stylish, though.
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!
but why though? why would you do that?
If you’re smart enough to ask the question, you are not the target of this product
I wonder if Cash4Gold would take them. Lol I remember seeing this commercial as a kid.
It's not really pure gold. So you'd get surprisingly small amount of money for "gold" watch.
Apple is a brand perfectly positioned at the intersection of clueless but snobby.
So 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.
load more comments
(1 replies)