Why the Gold Apple Watch Edition Must Cost $10,000

From a watcher of the very expensive timepiece market rather than a techie. Basically to make an Apple Gold Edition watch will cost at least $7000, because that's how much the weight of 18 karat gold to make the face and buckle will cost. He's guessing $9999 for the larger face and $7999 for the smaller one. That translates roughly to £6500 and £5200 UK price (probably ex VAT, so bump them up 20% from there!)

Prepare for various grades of head explosion from people comparing a solid gold piece of jewelery to a $200 android watch make of plastic.

The problem is, if you buy a proper watch for that price, it is an investment and will last for decades, you can hand it down to your children.

With the Apple Watch, the electronics will be superceded in a year, in two or three years it will be obsolete and within a couple more it will probably stop working altogether...

You'd assume the battery will have a limited lifespan at least, yes.

If they are smart, Apple will sell the most expensive models with a 'lifetime warranty' - basically you keep the frame that's made of precious metal and every so often you can have the internals upgraded to the current model for a relatively reasonable price - say twice the price of the base model. However I suspect the Apple Watch Gold will be purely for people who literally have more money than they know what to do with; people for whom the idea of spending another £6K in a few years doesn't actually worry them all that much.

From rumours that I have heard combined with the details that apple gave the insides would be relatively straight forward to upgrade.

The main computer is a new "computer on a chip". It does everything and can be taken out and potentially replace with an updated model.

Same for the battery.


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Apple are well known for their upgradability after all :massive-sarcastic-wink: