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An In-Depth Look at Apple Watch Band Options and Potential Pricing
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yeah let's see
Alfa Romeos, especially the new ones, are very good looking cars, fun to drive and they sort of have a personality BUT they have a well deserved reputation of being unreliable and not as well made as German or Japanese Cars.
Ford is not German but American but also have a European devision that normally builds cars specifically for Europe. They are excellent cars like the Ford Fiesta and Ford Focus that are constantly at the top of the reviews or close second to VW.
Opel (Vauxhall in the UK) are good cars especially the new ones. You probably won't have many reliability or quality issues but you have to live with the fact that's it's an Opel. They have a reputation that's hard to describe but car people know what I mean. They are pretty good cars with a terrible batch.
Fiats newer cars are petty good, me personally (well my parents overseas really) having owned the fiat bravo for 7 years. It is a very good car that has also been pretty reliable however it does have some quality and design issues.
Japanese cars are very reliable and very well made but most of them are very boring and bland while also sometimes not ideal for people that are not tiny.
VW are obviosuly excellent cars that are very well designed and made however they also sometimes suffer from the boring and clinical syndrome.
The car enthusiast in me would buy an Alfa Romeo for all the drama and stuff but the realist in me would buy a VW, Ford, or a Japanese Car. I'm obviously excluding high end brands like BMW, Mercedes etc since I am assuming you are talking about normal priced smaller cars.
To swing this back to topic remember to buy a car that has Apple Car play
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Apparently there's a Pebble press conference scheduled for tomorrow...
No touch screen, but it'll have a microphone.
Exactly. But riddle me this: Apple will be selling a watch that starts at $349. Why is everyone focusing attention on what the price of the gold watch is? Even if it is tens of thousands of dollars (which I highly doubt) why does it matter? It's not like Apple is only selling the gold watch or the gold watch will have additional functionality that the $349 aluminum one doesn't have.
Yes, but watches that last decades and are frequently passed down to family members as heirlooms and hold their value over time. Not watches that will be obsolete in 24 months. What's an iPhone4 worth today?
So for someone to buy this on the high end, it has to be someone who is so rich, they don't have to think at all about spending $3000, $5000, $10,000 or whatever the high-end fashion versions are going to be.
Unless there's going to be a way to transplant the casing and band to future models. If you spend $5 or $10K and most of the value is in the case and band and you can get next year's model for $350 and a small labor charge, that's certainly very viable.
If not, people like Ive, who are incredibly wealthy, may have finally lost perspective on what "ordinary people", even successful ordinary people, would be likely to be willing to spend. Let's not forget that the average person in the U.S. still only grosses $50,000 a year before taxes.
I think because Apple selling a high-end model that differs from the low-end only in looks and feel is something new. The $349 starting price is typical Apple, coming in at a slightly higher price than the competition. But the existence of the gold model is something new, and people don't know quite what to make of it. Hence the interest in talking about it, even for people like me, who have no intention of buying the gold model.
The problem with the Sport Edition is the lack of sapphire glass. It's gonna get scratched real quick, especially if you use it for sports.
It's a shame because given the prices now mentioned, I'd want the cheapest option for sure. Not ready to fork over $1000 for a smart watch.
I imagine there's a good reason Apple chose not to go with sapphire on the Sports watches...
...it can't be because of cost, since sapphire is used on the entry level models.
Ok fine, talk about it but some of the angst I'm seeing and some of the "analysis" I've read makes me want to shout out loud EVERYONE CHILL OUT. The latest one being an iMore article fretting over the upgrade path for the Edition watch. Prior to that was an article using Watch to suggest Apple's success lies in a widening income gap. All of this noise over something no one knows the price of. Part of me is hoping Apple is letting this wild speculation go on so when they do announce prices it will surprise people, like iPad did.
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No prices have been announced outside of the $349 sport version.
Its clear the Sport is the entry model as it starts at $349 and the
Watch is well more than that.
Oops, my mistake.
(Though, that's actually a plus for me because the model I was hoping to get is a Sports.)
I'm sure it's been covered in the last 32 pages somewhere but I only just saw this story. Gruber et al are overlooking one very important thing in their comparisons to Rolexes and other 'luxury' watches - they are engineered to last.
Buying a Rolex or (insert other luxury watch brand here) is an investment, and in occasional cases you can actually make a profit on a Rolex when you eventually sell (it's rare but it happens). However the bottom line is always that if you spend $10,000 on a Rolex, provided you keep it serviced and treat it with a modicum of respect, it will be around working just as well as the day it was bought to give to your kids, their kids, and their kids ad infinitum, or to sell off if you hit hard times 20 years down the road. It never needs a battery, it never needs a firmware upgrade, it never slows down with new software, it never runs out of space, it is never the victim of planned obsolescence.
Apple Watch... how long will it be before the battery needs replacing, how long until AW2 is released, how long before it's unbearably slow because it doesn't have a fast enough processor for the new OS, how long before they stop supporting the original Apple Watch in the newest iOS release, or latest iPhone? Judging by Apple's track record, your watch will be 'out of date' in about 2 years, and not supported after 5. That's a lot to swallow for a $10,000 watch, even a $1000 watch.
I would happily hand over thousands for a watch that I know will last a lifetime, not for something that can be made obsolete overnight on the whim of a CEO in California.
Of course, there are people out there for whom the money is no object and they will buy the high end versions, but that's the super rich that isn't a big segment of the market (maybe 10s of thousands) - and the subset of celebrities in there will probably get it free on a sponsorship deal anyway. The 'regular rich' (and there are a LOT more of them - millions) are actually pretty careful with their money, they base decisions on value and returns, this has neither at those crazy price points.
The one thing Apple has got right is the low-end, $350 is about the upper limit of what I would be prepared to pay for an 'accessory' with a limited life-span - but they've really made some bad design choices there; it's brushed metal, which is impossible to polish if it gets scratched (it's a watch IT WILL get scratched) and has glass prone to scratching too. It's going to look like crap after a couple of months!
So, you get a $350 watch that looks awful after a few months, or a $1000+ watch that is out of date in a few years... thats a tough sell.
Buying a Rolex or (insert other luxury watch brand here) is an investment, and in occasional cases you can actually make a profit on a Rolex when you eventually sell (it's rare but it happens). However the bottom line is always that if you spend $10,000 on a Rolex, provided you keep it serviced and treat it with a modicum of respect, it will be around working just as well as the day it was bought to give to your kids, their kids, and their kids ad infinitum, or to sell off if you hit hard times 20 years down the road. It never needs a battery, it never needs a firmware upgrade, it never slows down with new software, it never runs out of space, it is never the victim of planned obsolescence.
Apple Watch... how long will it be before the battery needs replacing, how long until AW2 is released, how long before it's unbearably slow because it doesn't have a fast enough processor for the new OS, how long before they stop supporting the original Apple Watch in the newest iOS release, or latest iPhone? Judging by Apple's track record, your watch will be 'out of date' in about 2 years, and not supported after 5. That's a lot to swallow for a $10,000 watch, even a $1000 watch.
I would happily hand over thousands for a watch that I know will last a lifetime, not for something that can be made obsolete overnight on the whim of a CEO in California.
Of course, there are people out there for whom the money is no object and they will buy the high end versions, but that's the super rich that isn't a big segment of the market (maybe 10s of thousands) - and the subset of celebrities in there will probably get it free on a sponsorship deal anyway. The 'regular rich' (and there are a LOT more of them - millions) are actually pretty careful with their money, they base decisions on value and returns, this has neither at those crazy price points.
The one thing Apple has got right is the low-end, $350 is about the upper limit of what I would be prepared to pay for an 'accessory' with a limited life-span - but they've really made some bad design choices there; it's brushed metal, which is impossible to polish if it gets scratched (it's a watch IT WILL get scratched) and has glass prone to scratching too. It's going to look like crap after a couple of months!
So, you get a $350 watch that looks awful after a few months, or a $1000+ watch that is out of date in a few years... thats a tough sell.
So Trip Chowdhry who last year basically predicted Apple going out of business if they didn't release a watch within 60 days now says every iPhone owner will want one and expects 100K "apps" available for it at lauch (based on 6 hackathons he attended). LOL
http://blogs.barrons.com/techtrader...one-owner-will-want-one-says-global-equities/
http://blogs.barrons.com/techtrader...one-owner-will-want-one-says-global-equities/
I'm just trying to understand how could they sell a several thousand dollars smartwatch....
Why do you care, especially if you have no interest in buying one? Sure we'll probably see ads for the Edition watch in fashion mags but it will be the aluminum and SS ones that Apple pushes in large quantities.
Ah yes - but given the range of offerings, it's not unrealistic to assume that if the LOW end watch goes for $349, the high end is going to be 1K and likely more.
Well to further - people are combating this idea with the fact that people don't resell them anyway - so who cares. Not the point. These become heirlooms. There's no price on that. What price do you put on a watch that has been in your family for 3 generations and was passed down to you at some significant point in your life?
You just have to know that if the Edition retails for $4,999 that the headline story that day will read "Apple Watch Will Cost as Much as $4,999." In fact you bet that headline, except for the exact price, is already written, and it will appear here with much the same wording too. It's just so clickable.
Apple might have made a tactical error by pre-announcing the introductory price. It's old news now. The new news will be the tall price on the Edition.
It's possible. I still don't get it, as from all we know the $349 aluminum watch will have the same capabilities as the Edition watch. The only difference will be the box they come in.
Compare that to the iPhone 6 where if you wanted the best camera you had to upgrade to the 6 Plus even if you preferred the 4.7" screen. Or the iPad mini 3 which which didn't get the same SOC and RAM as the Air 2. If there were technical reasons for these decisions Apple never said. It's basically artificial differentiation based on screen size or based on Apple trying to upsell you into a more expensive device.
With the Watch the price differences are pretty much all based on materials. If some people think they'll be looked down upon because they're rocking the aluminum watch and not the gold one then I think they have deeper issues they need to confront. I don't have any sort of complex because I'm driving a Honda Civic and not a Mercedes S-class.
Apple is crossing over into the world of fashion with this product, so they are certainly hoping to appeal to people to whom being seen to have conspicuously spent more is a feature. You and I don't have to get it, just know it's out there.