Apple Will No Longer Fix the $17,000 Gold Apple Watch (theverge.com) 101
An anonymous reader shares a report: It was never clear who the $10,000 to $17,000 18-karat gold Apple Watch was for, beyond celebrities and the ultrarich, but I hope whoever bought one way back in 2015 expected Apple to stop supporting them at some point. That day has come. Apple has now internally listed all first-gen Apple Watch models, including the solid-gold Edition, as "obsolete," MacRumors reports.
Apple's obsolete label doesn't just mean the end of software support. 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. The solid-gold Apple Watch Edition was something of a passion project for Apple's former lead designer, Jony Ive. When it launched, it was seen on the wrists of influential celebrities, including German fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld, who, like Beyonce, wore it with a gold link bracelet that was never available to the public.
Apple's obsolete label doesn't just mean the end of software support. 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. The solid-gold Apple Watch Edition was something of a passion project for Apple's former lead designer, Jony Ive. When it launched, it was seen on the wrists of influential celebrities, including German fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld, who, like Beyonce, wore it with a gold link bracelet that was never available to the public.
If you own a $17,000 Gen 1 iWatch... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
They'll wear a dead watch in a display of conspicuous consumption.
Re:If you own a $17,000 Gen 1 iWatch... (Score:4, Insightful)
Karl Lagerfeld's Apple watch outlasted him, so it's all good.
Re: (Score:1)
the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation describes their marketing division as "a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes"
Re:If you own a $17,000 Gen 1 iWatch... (Score:5, Interesting)
Karl Lagerfeld was photographed with it in pairing mode, and in other photos it is widely believed to be completely dead.
The man may well have never set it up or used it, and just wore it as piece of jewelry, which is really what it was.
Kind of epic really, to wear the most expensive apple watch ever made "ironically", with no care or regard for it being a smart watch at all. :P
a watch? (Score:4, Insightful)
A wizard is never late, nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to.
Re: (Score:1)
This right there.
If you are really important, you need no watch. Any meeting you attend will start no sooner than your arrival.
Same for people who are in a constant hurry because they're important and have planes to catch and people to meet. If they were really important, planes and people would wait for them.
Re: (Score:2)
Sort of true. At work, the meetings dont technically start till the boss gets in, but that doesnt mean we arent furiously working out what were going to present to him. In some ways the most important part comes before he gets in.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh yeah, I've been in companies where the most productive part of the meetings was the breaks because that's when no protocol was kept and that's when people could actually talk freely.
Re: (Score:2)
"If you are really important, you need no watch."
Or if you have any smartphone, even the worst, oldest, cheapest.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That depends entirely on why you're important.
Re: a watch? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
That's nice for you, but this isn't what this is about.
Re:If you own a $17,000 Gen 1 iWatch... (Score:4, Informative)
Paying $17k for a smart watch qualifies it as a stupid watch, perhaps.
Re: (Score:3)
Really, like this is supposed to be a serious own on somebody? Like saying their $250k S class benz has depreciated. Yeah they know and don’t care.
Re:If you own a $17,000 Gen 1 iWatch... (Score:5, Interesting)
and yet I can still get my 1960s vintage Omega worked on and repaired.
You can probably get parts for just about any Benz ever made, EVER too, at least if you are willing to pay.
Apple watch parts - not available at any price quite possibly.
Re:Vintage innards jut replaced with today's innar (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, you can get a 1960's Omega factory serviced. They keep a part inventory going back much further, and pride themselves at having speicalists capable of repairing old watches. They guarantee it will retain the original mechanism.
It's not cheap, but Omega does offer the service.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I did this about five years ago. It did cost a several grand. In the grand scheme of things I probably have some buyers remorse over it. However they told me they disassembled and cleaned everything inside, replace a few worn gears.
It keeps perfect time and self winds like its supposed to again, for what that is worth. I would have spend a lot more a new watch if I wanted something that was truly as nice as both a functional item and as jewelry. However now that work from home almost exclusively I am not s
Re: (Score:2)
Probably not. Send in your vintage and the broken innards will probably not be repaired, they will just be totally replaced with today's innards. Destroying any vintage value of the watch. But it will work.
No they won't. High end swiss watchmakers very specifically only use the correct parts for the movement and style. In fact you can't even ask them to upgrade something because they will rightfully say modifications reduce the value of their watches, and that is something they will not do.
These aren't production line toys slapped together with whatever the latest intel chip is from a production line. Most of the items were specialist made to spec and continue to be specialist made to that spec. There's a rea
Re: (Score:2)
and yet I can still get my 1960s vintage Omega worked on and repaired.
You can probably get parts for just about any Benz ever made, EVER too, at least if you are willing to pay.
Apple watch parts - not available at any price quite possibly.
You could probably get parts from a donor watch but Apple is notorious for not allowing components to be interchangeable.
Re: (Score:2)
No kidding. Not only that, you know very well that 20 years from now that solid gold Apple Watch series 0 is going to be sold at auction for like $10 million
Re: (Score:3)
The thing about antiques is that people like them because they are vintage and remind them of the times when they were the craze. And that requires them to be in the condition they were when they actually were the craze.
A dead Apple watch will only remind the owner that they have been duped by a tech/fashion company into buying something ridiculously overpriced. That's not exactly something collectors are looking for.
Re: (Score:1)
It's a comment on how much you should trust Apple. Paying them lots of money doesn't mean they'll support you later.
Re: (Score:2)
Really, like this is supposed to be a serious own on somebody? Like saying their $250k S class benz has depreciated. Yeah they know and don’t care.
A watch is not a car. My dad's Rolex didn't depreciate. In fact he could sell it today for *more* than he bought it for 35 years ago. Likewise with my Navitimer. The 1970s watch just got returned by Breitling after a major overhaul which took them 3 months, and it keeps time better than it has the past 10 years. They also replaced the hands and indicators so it glows in the dark again.
Not everything people buy that is expensive is expected to have its value annihilated. That said anyone who didn't expect th
Ironic about people comparing it to Rolexes... (Score:1)
I remember when the Apple Watch Edition first came out that people were comparing it to Rolexes or other timepieces of the price range. The biggest thing tilting away from the Apple Watch edition was the fact that it was an electronic watch, and thus had no real value for the long term. Rolexes can be bought and sold and hold their value, not to mention keep perfect time with some upkeep over the years. The Apple Watch Edition? Brick.
Re: (Score:1)
> I remember when the Apple Watch Edition first came out that people were comparing it to Rolexes or other timepieces of the price range.
That isn't really a fair comparison. Digital watches keep far more precise time. :)
Re: (Score:1)
Well...until they don't....forever.
Re: (Score:2)
Rolexes can be bought and sold and hold their value, not to mention keep perfect time with some upkeep over the year.
Yes Rolexes keep their value compared to Apple Watches but no they do not keep "perfect time". The cheapest quartz watch keeps better time than a Rolex. The cheapest quartz based watches lose about 1 second a day whereas mechanical Rolexes lose about 5 seconds a day. Watches that can access GPS and Internet like an Apple Watch can autocorrect their time every single day.
Re: Ironic about people comparing it to Rolexes... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Rolex are for poor schlubs who cannot afford Richard Mille [chrono24.com].
Sponsorship for Formula 1 and grand slam tennis doesn't come for free after all.
And yet my 1980s casio just works (Score:4, Interesting)
As does the cheap 1980s knock-off.
Even better, neither one of them supports the deprecated webp image format.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
WebP is deprecated?
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
Oh, and that oh so practical Casio watch will get you put on a terrorist watch list. [wikipedia.org] Douglas Adams was right. [dyop.info]
Re: And yet my 1980s casio just works (Score:1)
I have the terrorist Casio watch. My dad gave it to me. He tried to give me his sawed off Mossberg too, but I turned it down, I only have legal guns.
Luckily I am not brown, so the watch is not an issue
Re: (Score:3)
webp is not deprecated.
Re: (Score:2)
webp is not deprecated.
Send one to some people. See how many reply with "How do I open this $)^(*_%^^?"
Re: (Score:2)
People being idiots doesn't mean it's depreciated. All major browsers have supported it for years.
Re: (Score:2)
All major browsers have supported it for years.
Not everyone reads e-mail with a browser.
Re: (Score:2)
It just means there's not wide adoption of webp when there's already a slew of image formats that are perfectly fine for most uses. Now try to upload an HEIC image to just about any website and see it complain about the format...
Re: (Score:2)
Browsers, yes, but most OS and their default built-in apps don't support them (yet?).
False. All OSes have native support for WebP, as do their default apps. And even if they don't, the inability to understand a file presents a user with a list of possible programs to display the file ... such as the browser they have installed.
No one with a single functioning braincell can't open a webp file on whatever device they sit down in front of in 2023.
Re: (Score:3)
I just did an experiment and went to imgur (which serves up everything in webp) and downloaded the first image on the homepage, which was this:
https://imgur.com/gallery/HL8T... [imgur.com]
Downloaded it to my Desktop (RockyLinux 9 with kde), and it shows up as a thumbnail just fine. Double click it and it's open in Gwenview just fine, too. Right click, open with and choose from the list of image editors and GIMP works fine.
Copied it to my Windows 10 vm, it shows up as a thumbnail on the desktop, double click opens the d
Re: (Score:2)
Send one to some people. See how many reply with "How do I open this $)^(*_%^^?"
WebP is supported by Android and iOS. It is supported by Windows, MacOS, and all Linux image viewers. It's supported by Chrome based browsers and Firefox.
No one has ever replied to me saying they can't open a webp image because while I do know a lot of stupid people, none of them are THAT stupid.
Re: (Score:2)
I still wear my rad(ical) dumb Data Bank 150 calculator watch. Also, changing its battery every other year.
Re: (Score:1)
Nobody said that people not buying these watches are required to be more intelligent.
Apple is a disposable fashion company (Score:5, Insightful)
They hate repair and have no interest in backward compatibility
They want their fanbois to keep buying new stuff and tossing the old stuff in the trash
Re:Apple is a disposable fashion company (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't Apple better at keeping older models viable than nearly anybody in the mobile space?
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
That's fair. Although I think it's a bit more of a nuanced argument than that. The form factor matters. Do I want the device I have, for all it's relative impenetrability, or do I want something easier to repair, but less streamlined? To each their own, of course.
I was objecting to the part about backward compatibility, rather than that on reparability.
Re:Apple is a disposable fashion company (Score:5, Funny)
They hate repair and have no interest in backward compatibility
They want their fanbois to keep buying new stuff and tossing the old stuff in the trash
Wait, a $20,000 gold watch is just a fashion accessory for people that can afford to burn $20,000?
No, no I don't believe it, watches are for time keeping, there's no way they could be mere accessories, and a $20k watch, by god, should tell time for a thousand years, there's no way a watch can be just for fashion. This revelation is such a gut punch, I need to lie down, what's next, ties are useless? My cuff links don't hold my suit on? My non prescription glasses don't make me smarter? As useless as the dually in my suburban driveway? No, I've had enough, good day sir.
Re: (Score:3)
They hate repair and have no interest in backward compatibility
They want their fanbois to keep buying new stuff and tossing the old stuff in the trash
Funny you should say that, the iPhone 6S released in 2015 is still getting OS updates. Same for my current iPhone 8. Find me an Android phone from 2017 that still gets OS patches from the manufacturer. Best you can do is unlock the bootloader and install your own OS.
They can still sell them to Appletards cultists... (Score:1, Flamebait)
At a profit.
Those morons will by anything by Apple.
Re: (Score:3)
*buy anything by
Though "buy anything buy Apple" would also be valid in this case.
Re: (Score:1)
You sound like a person who wears New Balance shoes and jean shorts.
Re: (Score:3)
At a profit.
Those morons will by anything by Apple.
Like people that buy $20,000 gold watches are the "Apple Cult"
Re: (Score:1)
'Like people that buy $20,000 gold watches are the "Apple Cult"'
People who buy $20,000 gold Apple watches are the very *definition* of the "Apple Cult".
Re: They can still sell them to Appletards cultist (Score:2)
Doubt it. Most of them are probably just rich and wanted to own the poor. People whose lives are empty enough to fanboy Apple aren't that rich.
I'm sure there are some exceptions, but I'll bet that most people who bought it have other people to do computing for them.
Predictable but avoidable (Score:3)
This is pretty much what everyone expected. I was always surprised that Apple didn't give themselves a workaround by offering -- at least for the very high end -- the option to put new guts into the old case. Not really their usual MO, but it might have helped sell some more of the super expensive models, if that was important to them.
Re: (Score:3)
I was always surprised that Apple didn't give themselves a workaround by offering -- at least for the very high end -- the option to put new guts into the old case.
They likely sold so few of these $17k watches that it isn't worth it to support them. Full refunds would be cheaper.
They discontinued them after one year, and they wouldn't have done that if they were selling enough to make a profit.
They were mostly a publicity stunt to establish Apple as a fashion brand.
Re: (Score:2)
You're assuming they weren't simply given to celebrities as inexpensive marketing. A $300 device in $500 worth of gold is cheap for the value it provided in establishing it as a "luxury" device which can demand luxury pricing.
Re: (Score:2)
I was always surprised that Apple didn't give themselves a workaround by offering -- at least for the very high end -- the option to put new guts into the old case.
They likely sold so few of these $17k watches that it isn't worth it to support them. Full refunds would be cheaper.
They discontinued them after one year, and they wouldn't have done that if they were selling enough to make a profit.
They were mostly a publicity stunt to establish Apple as a fashion brand.
A trial balloon mainly, but I don't think it was a well thought out one.
Apple has a very weird and enviable brand status, it's a stylish trendy brand and it's affordable to the general public.
An A-list celebrity isn't really going to do better than the same iPhone owned by members of the upper middle class, and a lot of members of the upper middle class probably liked the idea that they owned as good an iPhone as whatever celebrity.
I'm not sure why Apple risked breaking that.
Re: (Score:2)
I was always surprised that Apple didn't give themselves a workaround by offering -- at least for the very high end -- the option to put new guts into the old case.
They had to change the curvature of the rounded edges enough to make the product feel innovative.
Apple just devalued future bling (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Nah, people who buy this kind of stuff will no doubt come to the defense of Apple and keep buying their stuff.
Re: (Score:3)
No one who bought the original gold Apple Watch still wore or used it after a year anyway. It accented a few outfits and had some neat features to play with. Then the neat things are standard and boring. Then one day they take it off to charge and the next morning they don't even think to grab it. Because it isn't a good device that people actually want.
lol (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Who buys an Apple watch, full stop.
Re: (Score:2)
They only sold 50 million last year.
Re: (Score:1)
I didn't ask for the number but for the name of these idiots. How am I supposed to mock and ridicule a number?
Is there any need for repair? (Score:3)
Do we really think that the people that could afford that watch are actually still using it? Something tells me those folks have moved on 8 years later.
Do we think anyone that bought a super fancy iPhone 6 in 2015 are still using it? Doubtful.
Re: (Score:2)
Do we really think that the people that could afford that watch are actually still using it? Something tells me those folks have moved on 8 years later.
Funny, most people who have watches that expensive do use it 8 years later. Or in some cases 80 years later (today's fashion accessory is my grandfather's Tag Hauer which predates the demise of Hitler)
Curious to know how many were sold (Score:2)
Apple Fucks Over Willing Customers. (Score:2)
Customers flock to get more fucking. News @ 11.
Beyonce visits Tim Cook at Apple HQ (Score:2)
Beyonce visits Tim Cook at Apple HQ
Apple's marketing department is put on suicide watch.
Tim Cook has an engineering team locate working series 0 innards and put them in Beyoncé's gold case.
Beyonce leaves with a working Series 0 gold watch.
Apple's marketing department is taken off suicide watch.
Re: (Score:2)
How much is that suicide watch? It sure sounds like something I would like a couple of people to have.
Provided I get to execute the shock, though technically, that wouldn't be a suicide... but let's not bicker about technicalities.
Marketing (Score:2)
These were never 'real' products, they were marketing gimmicks to increase he appeal and make the "cheaper" (but still-exceedingly-expensive) consumer products look both like a bargain and like the luxury goods they are.
I'd frankly be surprised if the influencers who wore them and were seen wearing them actually paid for them. They may have sold some, but that wasn't why they were produced.
As for the gold, that's still worth the under-$1k-dollars in melt weight (assuming it's solid gold they used). The elec
A warning to future VisionPro adopters (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
And Intel Mac Pro adopters, who spent over $50,000 on their Macs only to get replaced by the ARM Macs. Remember that G5 supercomputer? It's been broken up decades ago.
Well a friend only :-) spent about $6,000 on an Intel Mac Pro. He still uses it, he's pretty happy with all the years he got out of it, and is still getting out of it. It's still his goto machine for Mac development. He has an M1 mini to test on Apple Silicon.
Those ARM Pros have not completely replaced the Intel Pros. You can't just drop PCIe video cards into the ARM Pro like you can the Intel Pro. The ARM Pro has PCIe slots but you can't really put video cards in them. They are really just for video c
Re: (Score:1)
Luxury watches are a scam... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
From a more accurate source,
18k Rolex Submariner 16618
Year Price Price w/ Inflation
1973 $2,000 $10,967
Yes, still an unrealistic markup but nowhere near your quoted numbers.
Nobody buys a Rolex as an investment (well, nobody sane) and nobody buys a solid gold Apple smart-watch (well, nobody sane) and expects it to run in 20 years. All luxury goods are by definition artificial exclusivity, as by definition China could make a million Hermes bags, but they'd hardly be luxury in those quantities.
Solid Gold? (Score:1)
Solid gold?
Hell, I'll give you a hundred bucks for your worthless broken ewaste solid gold Apple Watch.
Probably still can get 3rd party batteries (Score:2)
Now the fact is that a current Apple Watch is incredibly more useful.
Will probably sell for more in the future (Score:2)
I bet someone will hack them to just work and then it will become a weird collectors item.
It's an investment first, a toy second (Score:2)
Whether it works is irrelevant. It's 1.0. Just put it in a box on a shelf for 20 years and then sell it for 100x what was originally paid.
Only old people wear watches... (Score:2)
Most of us just look at our phones to see what time it is.
If you spent your ladt nickle (Score:2)