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Original Apple Watch is Now Obsolete, Including $17,000 Gold Model

That's why I can't grasp all this babying of devices, and buying those extra fancy finishes: Yes, it looks and feels nice, and it will probably be close to immaculate when you treat it like that.

But it's still no more or less just another consumable product, made to be used up and thrown away.

I'm not saying it's ideal.

But you're not going to make any Apple product last a lifetime or somehow turn into an asset.

Only the 1st gen factory sealed never opened never used products might be assets one day.

But the ones you've used, forget it. That's just another thing that'll soon be trash.
 
I have three of these in the original box in my closet.

Two were given to John Kerry when he was Secretary of State by the ruler of Dubai at the time, Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Secretary Kerry didn't know the Shiek had gifted him the watches, and I squirreled them away in my diplomatic pouch so no one would know. They're still new in the box. Never been touched.

The third one was given to me by Sir Jony Ive one night when we ended up staying at the same hotel in Dublin simply by happenstance. I was hanging out at the hotel bar with a Guinness and a 12 year old Jameson on Sir Ive sat down next to me. It was funny, because I confused him with comedian Jim Norton, and he said "Oh, I get that ALL THE TIME". He told me to wait at the bar, and headed up to his room and came back down with the watch as a gift. I told him I couldn't accept it, but after looking around and over his shoulder, he confided that he had 12 more of them in his room, and that he was going to spend the night putting them on the wrists of people passed out at bars in Dublin.

Shortly thereafter, my TDY assignment ended and I returned to MI6 to finish out my career.
 
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I still have and occasionally use my stainless steel series 0, it did suffer the bloated battery issue but apple kindly repaired it out of warranty. Daily driver is a space black series 5 now.
 
Gengar said:
I wonder if legendary singer Beyoncé still uses hers...

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What's amazing is that a celebrity would even wear an Apple Watch as a fashion accessory -- gold or not. After all, it still looks like the same thing everybody on the planet seems to be wearing, even the little people...
 
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stocklen said:
Absolutely right.

Who, in their right mind, would pay that for technology.
Everyone knows that technology is quickly superseded and that watch as a Gen 1 product would quickly become obsolete.

Im sure nobody actually bought that gold one and it was just created for publicity and freebies to celebrities for advertising purposes.
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I don't think it was so much about sales, but the watch market is not all sub-$1k pieces. In fact, the $10k-$25k segment in the watch market is reasonably crowded. By saying they were selling a $17,000 watch, they were trying to establish themselves as a watch brand instead of just tech.

If you go to the largest watch owner and collector forums, you can see the reaction to that strategy. It wasn't as much negative as it was just laughing at them for thinking the $ cost associated with the pieces is what made you part of that club.

True, some people buy luxury items for the street credit you get by flashing it, and this might have worked on a few of them.
 
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Mac mini power user said:
People scoff at such an expensive watch being obsolete already, but given the profile of the purchasers, and its relative low sales, it will earn a pretty penny at online auction within a couple of decades. This is basically the 20th Anniversary Mac of the Apple Watch series.
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I doubt they will ever come close to recouping their outlay. The iPod was an iconic piece of equipment, the AW not so much. Scrap value, maybe for this gold-ish thing. A prototype would do better as a curio.

The best prices fetched for Mark 1 iPods are those which are shrinkwrapped in their original packaging and never used. Maybe there are a few shrewd people who bought the some of the first batch of watches and put them aside as an investment. We'll see.
 
tgwaste said:
no it wasn't, you know some rich guy bought one and never took it out of the box, itll be worth way more than 17K someday.

i still have my original series 0 in the box, wish it were gold.
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You haven't checked? It might be gold and you don't even know it!

golden-ticket.gif
 
For all the credit Jony Ive gets, he completely missed the boat on the watch launch - Actually thinking the Apple Watch would compete with Rolex, AP, etc. and be a high-end watch. Yikes. Thank god they converted it to a fitness accessory instead of a fashion accessory.
 
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Mac mini power user said:
People scoff at such an expensive watch being obsolete already, but given the profile of the purchasers, and its relative low sales, it will earn a pretty penny at online auction within a couple of decades. This is basically the 20th Anniversary Mac of the Apple Watch series.
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Nice, they only have to wait a couple of decades for their terrible investment to "make a pretty penny". I'm sure Warren Buffett would approve!
 
nutmac said:
It's too bad AW "Series 0" Edition cannot be retrofit with newer AW components, not even AW Series 3.

One of my friends (works for Apple) gave his wife a Gold Edition with employee discount. It does look more "yellow gold" than stainless gold, but it is not even eligible for battery replacement service, making it largely useless.
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I am sure someone on YouTube will have a 7 part video on the process of updating the the gold S0 with new parts. I would totaly watch it too.
 
NewYorkRanger said:
For all the credit Jony Ive gets, he completely missed the boat on the watch launch - Actually thinking the Apple Watch would compete with Rolex, AP, etc. and be a high-end watch. Yikes. Thank god they converted it to a fitness accessory instead of a fashion accessory.
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Luckily, my Rolexes, Patek's, Omega's, and VC's will never be "obsolete".
 
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Buy an Apple product, use it for a few years, toss it in the dumpster. Buy an Apple product, use it for a few years, toss it in the dumpster. Buy an Apple product, use it for a few years, toss it in the dumpster. Buy an Apple product, use it for a few years, toss it in the dumpster. Buy an Apple product, use it for a few years, toss it in the dumpster. Buy an Apple product.....
 
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TheNewLou said:
It's too bad. Apple could be a real innovator for Climate Action (beyond what they're already doing), and show that technology doesn't have to all be recycling.

As we all know, re-use is better (less waste, less energy) than recycling.
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To be fair, the thickness has changed in iterations between Series 0 and Series 3.

But Series 0 and 1 are identical, and Series 2 and 3 are also identical. And Series 7, 8, and 9 are also identical. So at the very least, Apple could offer component upgrade for higher-end Apple Watch configurations (e.g., Edition, Hermes).
 
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Gold Nokia phones are also worthless now because the are SOS only or completely off network these days.

Don’t buy technology made of gold…
 
dazey said:
Ah but can you? My brain isn't what it once was but if I remember correctly didn't they use some odd alloy of gold to make it harder wearing or something? That could possibly make it hard to melt down for scrap? Could just have been sales BS of course.
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Yeah they used a mix of gold and ceramic to make it harder. Don’t know enough about materials to know how to reuse it
 
Somehow, I imagine the fabulously wealthy people who bought the 17k gold Apple Watches have already moved on from the Series Zero. :p
 
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