Seventeen months ago, the Apple Watch went on sale. At the time, I wrote some Thoughts on the Future of the Apple Watch Edition (the Gold One). I said:
Here’s what I think will happen. After this first Apple Watch model, the Apple Watch Edition will fade away. We won’t see a version 2 of the gold watch, though we may see other metals in the future.
And I went on to say:
I think the gold Apple Watch is a very un-Apple product. I think it was approved because Jony Ive wanted it to show off to his millionaire friends, and, perhaps, for some of the other millionaires that run Apple. But that type of product is not in Apple’s DNA (to borrow an expression from Steve Jobs).
I recall how many apologists there were for the gold Apple Watch among my fellow tech writers, how they compared it to the prices of other luxury watches and went on and on about how Apple was tapping into a new market. It seemed so obvious to me what was going to happen.
It’s interesting that they retained the name Apple Watch Edition for the ceramic model, which, while expensive, isn’t ridiculously so (and isn’t the most expensive Apple Watch, with some of the Hermès models having slightly higher prices). To be honest, the ceramic Apple Watch Edition isn’t that nice; it looks like plastic. But it does offer a more “limited” edition of the device.