Apple isn't going to cheapen the Edition line by also offering gold-plated and there's no evidence they'll do this (all Edition models say "18-karat gold").
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The gold one IS the cheapest!
- Thread starter Tanegashima
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Apple isn't going to cheapen the Edition line by also offering gold-plated and there's no evidence they'll do this (all Edition models say "18-karat gold").
Thank you for correctly pointing out what I said.
You know, sometimes I wonder if people actually read exactly what others write, or skim read and jump to a wrong conclusion about what s being said.
As I wa pointing out, there are many many watches on the market right now. Very nice ones, from perfectly respectable watch brands that offer a gold plated model.
There is nothing wrong at all with gold plated watches, or gold plated anything for that matter. Sure, you want the gold plating to be well done, which I believe means other layers of plating go onto the base metal 1st, and also you would like. Nice deep, thick layer of gold plate to give a nice quality look to the final piece.
I know apples current high end watches case is not plated, but is a shell machined out if a solid piece of gold. Hence it's going to be expensive, and beyond many many people's reach simply due to this, but there is no reason at all why, in the future Apple could not also offer a, say 9ct gold plated model, with quality plating, to allow those who do like the look and colour or gold to be able to own an apple watch they like, and perhaps matches other items they wear. A thin gold neck chain, a gold wedding ring etc.
As we stand right now, we shall have many ladies who have some nice dainty solid gold earrings, a nice thin, fine neck chain and a gold wedding band, all of which they love, and they are going to have to accept either aluminium or stainless steel if they want an apple watch as the gold one has far too high a price tag.
A gold plated model would have been, and would be a very very popular choice for such people who love the look, and wish to match, but who's budgets do not stretch to the figures that many have suggested.
If, and I know we all currently think is unlightly the gold model was say $1000 thats still way outside many peoples budget for a watch, but I guess is reachable for some who really want it, if you are going to be looking at the $3000 to $5000 range, which I think is unrealistic, then it's going to shut the option of a gold model off to the vast majority.
Seeing as Apple is a mass market device maker, to the masses! To shut the vast majority out of a look/finish they want by simply pricing it so far out of budget seems a strange option, ESP, as I said there is no cheaper nice quality plated version being offered to those in a more typical spending budget.
I totally agree. Perhaps even just a gold colored version, like the gold color models of the current iPhones and iPads. Maybe if the watch is successfull, Apple will offer gold colored aluminum models in the future. Not sure if it is possible to do with stainless steel. Maybe those will have to be gold plated?
Not sure what you were seeing but it is incorrect. Spot is $1283
1283x0.75=962.25/31.1=$30.94 per gram x 14= $433.60
Also in all likelihood the
Watch will contain closer to 1oz (31.1grams) of gold. All 'experts' who have held the Watch Edition comment on how heavy and substantial if feels in comparison to the SS.----------
Apple could make a gold anodize Sport in the future. However Apple will NEVER make a gold plated
Watch. Gold plating is considered poser junk in the fashion/jewelry business.
However Apple will NEVER make a gold plated
Personally I don't agree with this view, as it strikes of snobbishness, Class and Money related, and tied to view that someone with money is in some way a better human being that someone else, which I'm sure most people would disagree with.
Saying that a nurse who devotes herself to others for a average wage should not be allowed something that looks nice, when some teenager who'd father happens to own a large company can have something they like the look of as their father can afford it, it just wrong.
Of course, not everyone can afford everything, we understand that, and life it not fair we all have to accept that.
But to say that, someone who has, say currently, what they like.
Let's say a £300 Rotary Gold Plated ladies watch in the UK, is simply wearing "Poser Junk" is a horrid statement to make.
Sure, you can take GIANT things, and give them a super thin layer of cheap gold plate and many would think they look nasty and tacky as it's over done.
But you go overboard on anything, even thick solid gold can be made to look tacky if it's over done.
I personally don't like the concept of if you cannot afford very high priced gold, then you should not have any gold, and be banished from having something you like the look of.
Apple could easily offer a good quality gold plated watch in the future for those who wish to look but cannot afford the top end models.
And I'm sure most normal reasonable people would feel happy they would have the choice to own something they liked the look of.
We will see if you are correct and Apple NEVER considers a quality plated gold model ever, unlike many many other watch brands do.
You are of course welcome to continue to hold your own personal view that anyone wearing such a device as a £200, £300 or £400 classical looking gold plated watch is just, in your eyes, wearing "Poser Junk"
You clearly don't know Apple then. We have this huge stereotype that Apple themselves as well as their users are smug/snobs.
It's easy to expect Apple to think if you want the Edition, you'll have to shell out the bucks for it. Otherwise, there are the SS and Sport models that are more affordable. They most obviously do not think the way you do.
Well, I see people that think they are in some way special or better than someone else due to a physical possession as very sad individuals who are lacking something in their lives.
If they need to own a product to make themselves feel worthy in society that's so incredibly sad and they need help or some counselling to find out what is lacking in their lives in general to cause them to feel this way.
I could go out tomorrow and buy, with cash, a top of the range Mac Pro, iMac, iPhone 6 Plus, iPad 128GB, MacBook pro, iPod, the lot, all bought in one day for cash.
Financially I'd have no problem with doing that at all.
But you know what I have?
An iPad 1
Why don't I go out and buy those products, many would dream of owning tomorrow?
Quite simply: 1: I have no need of them, and 2: I don't like the restricted control Apple has over them. So I have my own Windows 8.1 PC I put together that I can do as I want with, software and hardware wise.
I love to pull out my Cheap Candybar Nokia Dumb phone, when others are showing off their smart phones and desperately trying to show how amazing they are to each other.
It all strikes me as so sad people need to do this.
That has been my observation as well. Quite a number of members here who were going to get the iPhone 6 opted for the iPhone 6+ when they heard it'll have OIS, because they couldn't bear not to get the top of the line (regardless of whether the bigger size fits their needs). But that's how they think and we can't change that.
Apple is also in the business of selling as many of the highest end products they can. Offering a gold-plated version would defeat that purpose. We also can't change that.
Mad Mac Maniac
macrumors 601
Are you familiar with the concept of "profit margin"? This is an extremely important concept in business. It's the profit made on a device compared to the revenue. For example, if Apple watch components cost $200, then the $350 model has profit $150 for a profit margin of $150/$350 = 42.9% (a very respectable number). Now imagine Apple only adds material cost (your estimated $1,200) to the gold watch. Profit will still be $150, with revenue increasing to $1550. $150/$1550=9.7% (a terrible profit margin). There is absolutely no way Apple would do this. None.
Now Apple has to spend $1,350 on a gold watch to make the same $150 profit that they would on spending $200 to make a sport watch. If nothing else, Apple will want to keep the same 42.9% profit margin. Doing some quick calculations (assuming cost's quoted above), that would require a price of $2,364. This is without any "fashion tax" at all.
I do think Apple will instill a slight fashion tax on top of my above calculations, I'm guessing that total price will be around $2,999. Sure there will be some backlash due to the initial shock, but that will subdue. This is how gold is sold. Apple doesn't need to sell millions of them, Apple doesn't expect to sell millions of them, Apple shouldn't sell millions of them. There is a very respectable segment of the population that spends $2k-$5k on watches. And I would imagine an amazingly large percentage of that segment owns iPhones. The edition collection is just as much to satisfy their richest customers as it is to be a profitable product line. Apple probably is expecting 5% of watch sales to be in the edition collection.
Thanks for the interesting post.
Regards the profit margin, yes, I do get what you are saying.
However, much of normal thinking along this line can be seen to be, let's say a little more fluid when it comes to:
A: This is Apple we are talking about.
B: It's a totally new market, they are not used to, they are entering with a new product.
C: Many are thinking they wish to shake up this market.
For me, those 3 aspects have the potential to totally shake up the normal maths on profit margins and mark ups.
Say, for example, there is a market, which has a 1000% mark-up, and I have money and I want to burst in as a new company and shake the "old school" to their roots.
I could come in, with my BIG money behind me, and only stick on a 200% mark-up and really disrupt the market for the old school players.
Do Apple want to do that, or just slip in behind the current big names out there.
I actually think Apple want to shake it up a bit.
It's hard to get right.
You can be looked at, as too expensive for what you are
(it's just a cheap toy watch in an expensive case) some could say.
So you price it right down cut throat, then you could be looked upon as too cheap, and those who want something high end, will look elsewhere as yours is too easy to buy for too many people.
Given Apple is a mass market product company that sells in the tens of millions.
And the gold watch is on their website for "normal" people to see and look at, along side all their other mass market products.
I still am not sure, given all of that, it's going to be priced way outside the vast majority of normal people's price range as Apple, up to now, has been a normal people's product maker.
If they really wanted to make something up that end of the price range, I almost feel they would/should have a separate side to their brand.
Apple Luxury
with it's own web site and collection of products that are in a totally different league to their other array or products.
In a way it's like having a $100 item in the middle of the $1 dollar store.
If you had $100 items you have another store elsewhere.
We'll see.
However, given, as I say, Apple are mixing this edition watch into their normal website with normal products, it would seem odd to do it all that way and they price it out of reach.
Regards the profit margin, yes, I do get what you are saying.
However, much of normal thinking along this line can be seen to be, let's say a little more fluid when it comes to:
A: This is Apple we are talking about.
B: It's a totally new market, they are not used to, they are entering with a new product.
C: Many are thinking they wish to shake up this market.
For me, those 3 aspects have the potential to totally shake up the normal maths on profit margins and mark ups.
Say, for example, there is a market, which has a 1000% mark-up, and I have money and I want to burst in as a new company and shake the "old school" to their roots.
I could come in, with my BIG money behind me, and only stick on a 200% mark-up and really disrupt the market for the old school players.
Do Apple want to do that, or just slip in behind the current big names out there.
I actually think Apple want to shake it up a bit.
It's hard to get right.
You can be looked at, as too expensive for what you are
(it's just a cheap toy watch in an expensive case) some could say.
So you price it right down cut throat, then you could be looked upon as too cheap, and those who want something high end, will look elsewhere as yours is too easy to buy for too many people.
Given Apple is a mass market product company that sells in the tens of millions.
And the gold watch is on their website for "normal" people to see and look at, along side all their other mass market products.
I still am not sure, given all of that, it's going to be priced way outside the vast majority of normal people's price range as Apple, up to now, has been a normal people's product maker.
If they really wanted to make something up that end of the price range, I almost feel they would/should have a separate side to their brand.
Apple Luxury
with it's own web site and collection of products that are in a totally different league to their other array or products.
In a way it's like having a $100 item in the middle of the $1 dollar store.
If you had $100 items you have another store elsewhere.
We'll see.
However, given, as I say, Apple are mixing this edition watch into their normal website with normal products, it would seem odd to do it all that way and they price it out of reach.
No reason to expect any differently from what they did with the iPod, iPhone and iPad, all of which were a new market to them at the time and eventually shook up.
I noticed Tiffany's is doing this now. They have some "gold alloy" they sell in their stores that looks nice, like a deep gold, but it's something like 18% gold, and the rest is a mix of copper and aluminum.
How nice of you to hope other people don't get the chance to buy a colour combination they might like.
Anything else you hope other people can't have?
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Meanwhile, back in the, it would be nice if customers had the choice world, I put this together
And you know what.... I personally think this matt champagne colour/tone looks vastly, and I mean VASTLY better and more tasteful than the nasty cheap tacky looking real shiny gold version.
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I mean, just look how nasty and tacky these real shiny gold ones look in comparison.....
Now, I'm in the UK, Perhaps my taste is different to many in the USA. And I don't know where you are from, but these look like something out of a Christmas cracker in comparison.
Even when people put real gold plate onto iPhones etc. most people go yuk that's so tacky, so I don't think it's a UK / USA thing, I just think a lot of people think too much shiny gold actually looks the opposite of tasteful and classy these days.
Now, I'm in the UK, Perhaps my taste is different to many in the USA. And I don't know where you are from, but these look like something out of a Christmas cracker in comparison.
Even when people put real gold plate onto iPhones etc. most people go yuk that's so tacky, so I don't think it's a UK / USA thing, I just think a lot of people think too much shiny gold actually looks the opposite of tasteful and classy these days.
Not sure what you are seeing (do you have a link) but that is only 4.3K. That would be such a low percentage of gold in the alloy that the color would be copper instead of gold. Also depending on the percentage of copper to aluminum this would tarnish.
How nice of you to hope other people don't get the chance to buy a colour combination they might like.
Anything else you hope other people can't have?
----------
Meanwhile, back in the, it would be nice if customers had the choice world, I put this together
And you know what.... I personally think this matt champagne colour/tone looks vastly, and I mean VASTLY better and more tasteful than the nasty cheap tacky looking real shiny gold version.
Image
Ok now that I see that mockup it looks pretty nice....with the white band. I'm guessing Apple didn't do that because 1)they had to stop somewhere or SKUs would be totally out of control and 2) aluminum is reserved for the sport watch and Apple considers champagne more dressy than sporty. I don't think real gold looks tacky though I prefer the rose gold myself.
As far as me hoping what other people can't have, some have argued that choice is a bad thing and if Steve Jobs were around we'd have one watch and it would be the perfect watch for everyone.
That's not me. I think what will set Watch apart from the competition is choice.
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I'm not sure what a Christmas cracker is but sounds interesting. I rarely see gold color in the US. Gold isn't really popular in the US except among darker skin tones, which is where I think it looks best. So those of African descent/SE Asians tend to look better in gold than those that are more on the pale side.
Mad Mac Maniac
macrumors 601
I feel like you are really reaching. First of all, Apple has been known to be an expensive, quality product maker (at least for the past decade or so). Mac's, iPhone's and iPads are all absolute top of the line. ASP for the Mac is probably around triple windows PC's ASP (and 5x Chrome OS). Similar remarks can be made for iPhone and iPad. Sure you can find luxury top of the line PC's, smartphones, and tablets for a similar price (usually just a little bit cheaper) to their Apple counterpart, but those products are exactly that; their luxury, showcase items.
Now I agree their product prices have been within reason. Apple hasn't released diamond studded Mac's or anything like that... But nobody else did either. Now they are entering a market where $2k-$5k products are routine. Why wouldn't Apple enter that?
Now if Apple only released a $3k watch that'd be a different story... but Apple IS releasing a $350 for the "normal people". Why would Apple want to discount a gold watch so the "normal people" could buy a luxury item, when Apple is already selling 2 other collections of less expensive watches?
Are you really suggesting that Apple would create a new brand and a new website solely to sell the Edition Collection Apple Watch?
It's tricky to know how to answer the various points you have raised here as you obviously have a fixed viewpoint about Apple products which may be a little distorted.
When you say "top of the line" that's very debatable when it comes to computing, and to be honest many things.
It would be so easy to show how poor an iMac is, even the "top of the line" model when put up against a PC.
The PC would outperform it in function / speed and technical ability on every single count, and you could mount all of these components into a higher quality case than the iMac has.
You could select a larger better screen, faster CPU, Vastly faster GPU's More, Faster memory, Larger faster SSD's and so the list goes on, and yet you state the iMac is better than a PC, when its simply not as you are creating a false level of which to judge something by.
When it comes to computing, how will you judge it?
Speed? How much you can cram into what sized case?
What's the best computer in the world? That would generally lean to what's the most powerful computer in the world.
I don't think "looks nice" would general come into that equation for most people.
Please note: Apple is NOT luxury.
Its a nice, upper end general consumer brand.
They charge a little more than other big electronics brands so they can give a little higher quality of finish to their products, that all.
They make a very limited range, which for anyone would make it easier to produce a slightly better finish as you can focus all your efforts onto a few models.
We all know Apple is major mass market sales, and that, by it's very nature tends to be almost the opposite of luxury.
Luxury is a hard thing to quantify, but it general means a very high price, and limited quantities.
What I meant was, Given Apple is no, and never has been a Luxury brand.
Nice yes, but still very much mass market, general consumer.
Given this. To have a website that it totally aimed as the mass consumer market at the mass consumer pricing, and mixing right into the middle of all these products, 1 item, that is priced vastly different for a different market, some are saying, seems to clash a bit to me.
Even if it was the same web site, but a different tab, or something to pull it away from being missed in with the affordable models.
Then again, this all depends on the price.
If Apple are being sneaky in some way with the gold and we are miscalculating the amount of gold, and the gold watch is say $1000 to $1500 then fair enough, I can accept it being mixed in visually with the $349 and perhaps $499 models. As gold is more but it's still in the same ballpark, just up the high end of it.
If however we have the watches all mixed together on the same page and we go $349, $499, $5000 then to me that really clashes from a marketing to the general public point of view. It's too much of a jump to be mixed together with the others.
We will of course see soon enough.
Oh and no, I'm not suggesting a different BRAND.
But if you make things, even say cakes
Under the MMM Cakes brand.
And you had been making $5, $10 and $20 cakes, for a long time, then you thought, I'll make a super amazing luxury cake for $500
Would you place it on the same page, photo'd next to the $5, $10, $20 cakes?
Generally no.
You'd probably make a MMM Luxury range and place this one there, together with some other Luxury cakes you will put together. It's just a separate range under your MMM Brand.
As with the Watch pricing. If your luxury cake was $50 then you would probably keep it on the same page as the cheaper ones, as it was dearer, but not THAT far away.
Jumping to $500 for 1 cake would seem odd to have it alongside all the others in your range at a fraction of the price.
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