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Apple Watch Sport will Support 'Non-Sport' Bands
- Thread starter iBreatheApple
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I think DravenGSX may have been alluding to the video on Apple's site, which is the same one shown at the press event.
It's the one called "Introducing Apple Watch".
At around 6:50, Jony Ive said:
"We have designed six different straps and a mechanism that makes the straps easily interchangable."
Yes, that's why it's anecdotal (i.e., from a narrative) rather than hard fact that you find in print on the Apple website. Nothing wrong with deriving your fact from that.
They did explicitly say it. Ive explicitly said it in the film that is on http://www.apple.com/watch/ at the 6:50 mark.
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It is not anecdotal when it comes from the mouth of the guy responsible for designing the product.
I didn't mean it in that sense, but someone could be hard nosed about it and suggest he's was only talking about the Watch (stainless steel) collection, blah, blah...
Well, that's how we got the rampant, senseless debate about it in the first place, due to the absence of official evidence (in print) on the Apple website. Otherwise, someone could have cited it as an official source and put an immediate stop to people pulling things out of their butts.
This is an excellent point that I hadn't considered. I wanted the Space Grey Sports Watch, with hopefully a brown leather strap modern buckle - looks like this isn't an option
Probably would have been a fugly combo
You know, the way Apple shows off the different finishes on the Watch Design page puts a lot of emphasis on that over the different bands that come along with it.
I feel as though we'll be surprised - Apple has said very little about the sale about bands. Maybe we'll get lucky and when they announce the sale and availability of bands, that'll offer sell to a larger cross section of band to metal colors.
I feel as though we'll be surprised - Apple has said very little about the sale about bands. Maybe we'll get lucky and when they announce the sale and availability of bands, that'll offer sell to a larger cross section of band to metal colors.
9to5Mac has up an opinion piece up saying if any Watch is going to be thousands of dollars Apple needs to start communicating that and explain why. While I agree Apple needs to avoid sticker shock as much as possible I think it's highly unlikely we'll ever get them to explain their pricing.
One thing I think is off in all the analysis is the comparisons to traditional watches in terms of pricing. There is a huge mark-up when it comes to luxury watches. I'm very skeptical that Apple is going to incorporate those types of margins in this product. The WSJ rumor on how many watches Apple was planning to have available at launch suggested around 1 million Edition versions. Of course we don't know how accurate that rumor is but if it's anywhere close to being accurate are we really supposed to believe Apple will be charging $20K for the Edition watch? That's just lunacy.
One thing I think is off in all the analysis is the comparisons to traditional watches in terms of pricing. There is a huge mark-up when it comes to luxury watches. I'm very skeptical that Apple is going to incorporate those types of margins in this product. The WSJ rumor on how many watches Apple was planning to have available at launch suggested around 1 million Edition versions. Of course we don't know how accurate that rumor is but if it's anywhere close to being accurate are we really supposed to believe Apple will be charging $20K for the Edition watch? That's just lunacy.
"Style" watches run in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Even "mainstream" style watches can run tens of thousands.
In style, *NOTHING* needs to have its price justified - it's the "style" that does that.
If the "Watch Edition" watch is released at $20,000, but doesn't sell at $20,000, then it'll come down in price.
In style, *NOTHING* needs to have its price justified - it's the "style" that does that.
If the "Watch Edition" watch is released at $20,000, but doesn't sell at $20,000, then it'll come down in price.
The issue is that a "standard" timepiece doesn't become outdated and lose support. In 20 years, this watch will, more than likely, be completely useless. It's not really the same, in my opinion.
That's my thinking, too. There will always be a number of people who are way too rich and have too little taste who will throw $20k on a product like the Apple watch. But will there be a million of such people? And that's just for launch -- WSJ thinks Apple plans to make Editions at a similar rate throughout the year. So we are looking for millions of tasteless filthy rich people with a liking for the latest tech gadgets. Either the WSJ rumor is wrong, or the $20k price speculation is wrong. Those two things can't be both right.
9to5 Mac is reporting that all straps/bracelets will be sold separately. This makes the ONLY sense since Apple is not about to give up a ton of FREE money to 3ed party strap makers. I think Gruber misunderstood or misinterpreted some info he was told.
http://9to5mac.com/2015/02/20/apple-watch-straps-accessories-available-separately/#more-366127
http://9to5mac.com/2015/02/20/apple-watch-straps-accessories-available-separately/#more-366127
I agree with you. They're at least protecting the prestige of the more expensive Watch and Watch Edition collections by making the bands in the respective collections aesthetically incompatible with the lower trims. This will drive people to shell out the bucks for the higher models.
I don't think Gruber got bad information I think he's just guessing wrong. But Phil Schiller is a lover of the "upsell" so I'm sure they'll have ways of getting people to upgrade to the SS watch.
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They've already figured this out by making the SS bands aesthetically incompatible with the Sport models.
Can't up this enough times.
Pretty sure that I could be convinced to pay $799 for it, but any higher is ludicrous.
As an owner of AAPL I'm a lover of up-sell.
I'm an AAPL owner too. Though I do think storage should start at 16 and 32 GB, not 8 and 16 GB. But that's a discussion for a different thread.
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Well how could they make them aesthetically compatable with both? To me the upsell is not offering any of the leather bands with aluminum connectors.
I'm saying all the bands in the Watch (stainless steel) collection are aesthetically incompatible with the Watch Sport models, so they're up-selling the SS models in this way.
But even some metal straps don't visually match the SS models very well either.
How many people are going to go for the more expensive watch body, just so the band accents will match the case? Isn't it lmore ikely that they will just settle for the Sports band, or just shrug and use the leather band with the aluminum case, even though the metals don't match?
I'm not denying that some people will be upsold to the steel case because they want the leather band, and they want the metal accents to match the case. But I'm just wondering if people who think like that is the majority.
Well the sport model is aluminum and the regular model is stainless steel so how could they match?
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I guess it depends how expensive the SS watch is. I do think were starting to veer off to silly territory with some of the predictions. Mark Gurman predicts the watch will stop working in 3 years with Apple no longer supporting the software (that's what they did with the original iPhone and iPad). Yeah, because whatever Apple has done in the past will always be what they do in the future and the Watch is just like any other product they've ever released.
As someone who works and is involved with metals every day I am puzzled by your view here.
We use, every single day of the week the exact same Stainless Steel that Apple are using for the Watch Body.
Also we use Titanium, Cobalt Chrome, Aluminium and a range of lesser metals from time to time depending on customer requirements.
We also give these metals a variety of finishes, from brushed finishes, thru high mirror polish and also a variety of bead blast finishes.
You can give many metals a whole variety of finishes, dependent not only on the metal but the final finishing process after machining.
It's not just a case of Aluminium is one colour/look and steel is a different look. That's far to simplistic.
Just look at that picture from yesterday at how bad the Apple brushed steel strap clashed in looks against the highly polished steel body.
they don't match in the slightest due to the finishing of the metal.
You could I'm sure get Steel and Aluminium to match better with the right surface finishes, than the brushed steel strap and polished official combination match.
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Very quick google search photo:
Aluminium casting with steel bolts, bead blasted, and looking the same tone.
Obviously you would want a much finer finish but shows how totally different metals, look the same after the process:
https://dumelows.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/manifold-blasted-close.jpg