Submitted 7 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world [bot] to technology@lemmy.world
Apple will no longer fix the $17,000 gold Apple Watch::The original Apple Watch models, including the $10,000-plus 18-karat gold Edition that Beyoncé wore, are now officially obsolete and won’t get parts, repair, or replacement services.
The irony of building something so expensive, opulent and heirloom worthy around one of the most rapidly depreciating assets you can buy (technology)
I mean, a 17k$ (back then) workstation from the 90s would still be fine. People love their SGI and Sun machines.
Not sure how much they did cost back then, I was born in 1996, but you get the idea.
A $17k workstation from the 90’s would not even be able to browse the internet.
To put it in perspective, we didn’t even have multi-core CPUs until the mid 2000’s, a mid 90’s machine would have around 400 MHz on a single core and that’s being generous.
And yet a $17k apple power Mac g5 today barely functions for YouTube
The big luxury watch brands will service their watches for many decades; a Rolex will last a lifetime, if not longer.
Rolex buyers are smart enough to not buy another if theirs breaks after a few years. Apple’s, not so much.
For +$17,000, that shit better have a lifetime guarantee on it, though I guess anyone with $17,000 to throw away on a watch probably doesn’t care anyways, they’ve probably forgotten that they own the thing anyways.
Anyone who has 19,000$ to blow on a watch needs to be taxed a additional 18,000$
Honestly, good. Fuck the people who have this sort of money to throw away. They deserve it.
Unfortunately they funded the richest company in the world.
Weak attidude grounded in jealousy.
I’m not jealous of someone who throws away $17,000 on a useless toy. Maybe you think that’s impressive, but I don’t.
Listen, anyone who had one could probably afford a brand new gold watch instead of repairing it anyway and doesn’t care about anything except as a status symbol.
On the other hand gold watches are the kind of thing that are proudly passed around as family heirlooms, only the trashiest new money would buy one every two years and throw the old one away.
And if someone bought an apple watch thinking it was going to be an heirloom, well, uh…
Ok, that just brought me right back around to your point. Nevermind.
gold watches are the kind of thing that are proudly passed around as family heirlooms
Which further points the absurdity of this thing. Gold watch that has expiration date built-in and no one will look at it after that. Mechanical watches can last indefinitely given enough care and love. No matter how much you love this thing, when Apple decides it’s done, it’s done.
This. Anyone with a 17k watch stopped using it 2 days after they bought it.
Oh boy, it sure sucks to suck.
I still use the original sport band from 2015 on a 7th gen watch, and it fit the 4/5 gen before that. Unless the gold band was non removable from the watch I don’t see the issue.
Also the fact that this was never publicly available means these were gifts to celebs for PR, ain’t nobody losing any money on this.
The body of the watch was also gold, not just the band.
You know what? Good.
If you want to buy something fancy you could buy an expensive “dumb” one that won’t lose its value in a year or so. It’s the buyers fault
In addition to using it for tracking my workouts and bluetoothing to my earbuds, I also found my smartwatch super useful while working as a teacher for surreptitiously checking texts and also for setting timers
I don’t doubt that your smartwatch is useful, but why can’t you just pair to your phone? I can be like 30 yards away from my phone with my earbuds.
Mine are pretty specific but:
I’m a bartender. I can get messages if the door person/security is having a problem customer while I am elbow deep in an ice well (plus phones are dirty so I’m not touching gross phone and then your lime wedge even if I am super religious about washing my hands with everything I touch behind bar.) I don’t wear it all the time but it is a useful tool.
I monitor my heart rate cos I’m having health issues
Butttt… I don’t feel bad for these folks, mine came with my phone.
In the case of the apple watches, you’re right. Android watches are actually quite stylish, though.
I had to look up that Apple Watch came out in 2015. I feel old…yet again.
The Covid years really did fuck with my perception of time. I feel like I should be three years younger
This is the best summary I could come up with:
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.
When it launched, it was seen on the wrists of influential celebrities, including German fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld, who, like Beyoncé, wore it with a gold link bracelet that was never available to the public.
Even folks who do drop five figures on watches tend to want something that’ll still tell time (and hold its value) in a couple of decades.
You could spend $10,000 to $30,000 on a Cartier Tank, still get a square watch, and not worry about whether you could get it serviced eight (or 80) years later.
As long as luxury watch manufacturers like Cartier exist (or Patek Philippe, Rolex, etc.
The original article contains 327 words, the summary contains 144 words. Saved 56%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
but why though? why would you do that?
If you’re smart enough to ask the question, you are not the target of this product
I wonder if Cash4Gold would take them. Lol I remember seeing this commercial as a kid.
It’s not really pure gold. So you’d get surprisingly small amount of money for “gold” watch.
So Apple will no longer fix the watch that came out 8 years ago? I mean, how long should they have fix products for? You buy a $17,000 dollar watch don’t be surprised if the company that no longer sells the watch and hasn’t sold it in 8 years, won’t fix it. There are legitimate things to criticize Apple for. This isn’t one of them.
Apple is a brand perfectly positioned at the intersection of clueless but snobby.
If you bought a Rolex instead, it would have doubled in value in the meantime.
Why would you even buy an 17K Apple Watch? Just buy an actual Luxury Watch instead.
I mean, Apple is currently supporting a 5 year old phone and it will probably be supported more years. Additionally, with last years iOS, they supported a 6 year old phone. So I don’t think support is an issue. In general, Apple supported the watch for several years. And the only thing they won’t don’t do is be able to repair it. However, since you want to talk about Google repair, let’s talk about how the Google Watch cannot be respired…by anyone. Literally if it breaks you throw it in the trash. So, maybe Google isn’t the best comparison.
VelociCatTurd@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Even before they were unsupported, how have they not been “obsolete” for some time. Cannot imagine how slow a gen 1 watch would be. I can see the appeal of a timeless heirloom watch, but this is such a brain dead purchase.
MossyFeathers@pawb.social 7 months ago
Is there really a reason to need faster smart watches? I can understand shrinking the internals to pack in a larger battery, but I’m kinda confused about what newer smart watches do that requires a more powerful processor (I don’t own a smart watch).
It seems like you could support backward compatibility pretty easily by having basic software running on the watch with a program-agnostic API to send and receive info from the watch (kinda like midi or osc). I doubt the processor necessary to send, receive, decode and display information in this format would require that much power. If smart watches honestly get slower over time, the only thing I can think is that the software itself is getting less efficient at doing the same tasks it previously did.
sbv@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
Software is a gas: it expands to fill the processor and memory you give it. That’s a goofy way of saying that, as manufacturers cram faster processors and more memory into devices, software developers will use the extra facilities.
If you’re on an old device with limited CPU/RAM, you’ll be forced to upgrade to a newer OS that was built with newer devices in mind.
kobra@lemm.ee 7 months ago
Mostly new sensors rather than larger battery I think. For instance, newer Apple Watches can monitor temp and oxygen (at least in some capacity).
DJDarren@thelemmy.club 7 months ago
I have a S3 Apple Watch, and while it’s stuck on an older version of watchOS, it serves my purposes perfectly. Sends me notifications, lets me control my music and tracks my exercise. That’s pretty much all I need from a smart watch at this point. The battery isn’t amazing, but if I charge in the evening when I’m watching TV, it’ll last me through the night. I give it a little bump while I’m drinking coffee and reading in the morning and it’ll still be on 40/50% when I get home from work.
Neve8028@lemm.ee 7 months ago
Good one lol. I’m sure apple will think about it haha
korewa@reddthat.com 7 months ago
I wonder how much of that price is just the value of gold.
I’m seeing a 24k bracelet no watch and similar shape is $5k to $10k
ArghZombies@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Very little of the price is the gold.
An actual gold watch (excluding the bracelet) weighs about 20g.
At about £50 a gram that’s £1000.
And I doubt the amount of gold in the case of the Apple watch is anywhere near the same amount as in a traditional gold watch case.
pineapplelover@lemm.ee 7 months ago
It’s a fucking watch. I mean it can also monitor bpm and stuff like that but I can’t imagine it’s doing any complex scientific calculations on there.
VelociCatTurd@lemmy.world 7 months ago
And I’m sure you’re posting this comment from your eMachine? The Apple Watch is a computer. As applications become more demanding, any older computer will be “slower”.