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Apple’s Corporate Definition Part Deux
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[Tim Wilson] “I disagree completely. Does this Apple store look a place to buy a $5000 watch? In fact, it looks like the best place to buy a $5000 watch in the history of the world. It’s insanity NOT to sell $5000 watches there.”
Until you get inside and are greeted by a scruffy 20-something in a blue t-shirt and jeans with a lanyard name tag that can’t tell you anything about the product that isn’t already printed on the box. 😉
I agree with point that for watch connoisseurs/collectors going to the Apple store is probably going to be off putting. Not just because there will be the all around chaos of tweens milling about and little kids playing in the kid’s corner but the level of service will most likely be far below what they are used to. Maybe Apple will go to a store-within-a-store concept staffed with a specially trained watch expert. Or watch-geeks will just do all their discussing online w/other watch geeks and only go to the Apple store to get hands on with it before making a final purchasing decision.
I’m not a watch guy, but when I started building computers as a hobby I quickly realized that retail employees exist to answer only the most basic of questions, work the register, and up-sell you. Trying to talk shop w/them is pointless (unless you find a hole-in-the-wall shop that’s run by computer geeks for computer geeks).
For rich people with f-you amounts of money it won’t be a problem because they don’t really care about what they are buying (it could be a gold Apple Watch, it could be Ferrari) they just care about getting a status symbol. I’m sure LA will be flooded with gold Apple Watches in short order. haha
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[Tim Wilson] “I disagree completely. Does this Apple store look a place to buy a $5000 watch? In fact, it looks like the best place to buy a $5000 watch in the history of the world. It’s insanity NOT to sell $5000 watches there.”
I feel like really expensive watches require to walk up to a door, get buzzed in, met with dim lighting, and aaddressed by an employee who’s outfit appears more expensive than everything in my entire closet.
Even in stores like Macy’s, you ask for the gold watch, they bring out microfiber cloths to hold and rub down the watch, before placing it on a pad on top of the glass so as not to scar any surfaces.
This isn’t the extremely utilitarian, touchy/feely Apple store model where you can try anything and most assuredly don’t have to be buzzed in, or wait for a set of keys to unlock the glass cabinets, and the super friendly staff is in a casual uniform.
There’s no one question that Apple is a retail company. I am not doubting that. I am also not doubting that this device will be pretty popular, and it will lead to other technologies for Apple. I’m just not understanding the high-end luxury part of it. Apple was seen as “premium brand” for quite some time, and then they worked hard to put as many devices in to as many hands as possible, and now, it’s also a luxury brand because they wrap the exact same technology in stronger than gold, gold? It just seems a little weird.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “I am conflicted. I get it, and then I really don’t get it.”
yep yep me too. part of me really does suspect that watch may represent the baroque apple period as after echo from the iphone cataclysm tho – it’s too on the nose – that 2007 iphone is starting to look increasingly like a neutron bomb in historical tech terms.
bar the ipad – which they knew prior they would do – post that supernova, as the world’s wealthiest company, you’d wonder if even apple know exactly where in the hell they are. as in they may be waiting for impressionism or something.
https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics
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The problem I see is that you guys are using one extreme to write off the absolute mainstream of the thing.
Apple isn’t building a business on $5000 watches. They’re building a business on extending the iOS experience for less than the cost of a pair of Beats headphones.
It’s like computers. They’re building the business on iMacs and MacBook Airs, which are still by far their most popular computers. The Mac Pros are a niche business, and taken opportunistically.
And I really do believe they’ll take the same approach. In Times Square and Palm Desert, and dozens or hundreds of other locations, you’ll be able to walk out with a gold watch. In the thousands of others, you can walk out with a $500 or $1000 watch…more than an iPad, less than a MacBook Air, and something that will get much more use than either of those.
It’s a problem for people who still view Apple as innovators to think of products like this as having no precedent. Apple’s not even fifth in line. These products absolutely do, and they’re successful.
Apple will do what they did for music players and phones: show up late, grow the market for everyone, take only a small-ish share of that expanded market, and it will be vast piles of money.
You get that, right? Apple has around 20% of the smartphone business? And it’s a freaking fortune.
iWatch isn’t Apple TV, which really does have next to no use whatsoever (I say glaring at my own Apple TV: “DO something, damn you”). There was no real audience for something like that, and the goals still aren’t all that clearly defined.
Wearables DO have a meaningful prior audience. People who have them like them. As I mentioned in my previous post, those drooling inbred Android slobs (like me) have wrapped their heads around it. I have no doubt that good lucking, intelligent Apple users with control over their salivary glands will figure it out too.
Apple has been able to take the last three years to watch — WATCH!! GET IT??? — the other guys, analyze what went right and wrong, and by Brendan Behan I swear that Apple will use their giant brains, giant resources, and giant retail footprint to make crazy money from this.
But NOT because they’ll sell millions of $5000 watches. Because they’ll sell TENS of millions of ’em at $300-500.
Look, all they have to do is be as good as Beats at selling $400 pieces of plastic, and they have a billion dollar business on their hands in a year, 18 months TOPS — the big difference being that, unlike Beats, this thing has iOS in it: apps aplenty, massively customizable, and well within the financial reach of almost everyone buying an iPhone 6. A staggering number of people will buy both at once.
Fortunately, Apple has a great many trucks cleared and waiting to cart off the money.
You boys are thinking way, way too small. I assure you that Apple is not. Neither is Apple delusional that this market exists. It does, and Apple will grow it exponentially in a year, and with their small slice of it, they will make a fortune.
BTW, have not you Daring Fireballs been reading since 2012 about Apple working on this? I’m sure Apple and the stories about it started much earlier than that, but that’s when I can definitely remember regular coverage of it. Timmy has been making public presentations about for a long, long time, including the All Things D conference in May 2013. People like the New York Times and the Wall St Journal covered it, along with every tech site I can think of (Mashable, engadget, Tech Crunch, etc etc etc.)
Did this really catch you by surprise? Did it seem precipitous to you? I’m amazed that the Apple watchers — WATCHERS!!! GET IT??? — haven’t been all over this for AT LEAST 18 months, if not much more. Some have of course, but I’m amazed that people like DF are so widely missing the mark from a story they should have zeroed in on by 2012.
Not that I’ll buy one before the sun goes nova, mind you. But this is slam dunk money that Apple has been leaving on the table. Not for long, my friends. Not for long.
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[Tim Wilson] “Look, all they have to do is be as good as Beats at selling $400 pieces of plastic, and they have a billion dollar business on their hands in a year, 18 months TOPS “
yes that’s almost certainly bang on. the problem is that, circumstances aside (to a ludcicrous degree), those are the decisions of john scully.
apple just tried to cram an iphone, your caller list, your photo album, all your apps, your messages and your emails onto a watch on your wrist. they also tried to make it a heartbeat communicator, a sketchpad, a payment device, and a health and fitness tracker.
that is a samsung device.
with s-health, s-hearbeat, and s-sketch. Apple have no clue what they made – they just know they really want to charge insane margins on it.
apple didn’t actually make anything here – they just made luxury coke – they made roughly the same market device and asked for a lot more money. and then they made a solid gold version.
on some level we can all feel the mirror cracked here.
https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics
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[Tim Wilson] “Apple isn’t building a business on $5000 watches. They’re building a business on extending the iOS experience for less than the cost of a pair of Beats headphones.”
I get the Watch. I get what they may do with it, I get what it’s supposed to be, and yes, it was obvious that “wearables” were imminent in the Apple Store.
What I don’t get is the ostentatious veneer. A MacPro varies greatly in price, but it looks exactly the same on the outside. The lowest cost MacPro is $2999, the highest is $9600, roughly 3 times as much. It’s a tool used for work, and some may use it for play.
At $349 and $4999 (or $9999 as the fireball dares) is ~14x (or ~29x) as much.
If this is about money, why not make gold iPhones? Not the gold aluminum ones, but the harder than gold, gold ones that are made of gold. I’m sorry, Tim, I’m having a hard time with it.
I don’t mind the watch concept, I just find the luxury “edition” a weird choice.
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[Aindreas Gallagher] “as in they may be waiting for impressionism or something.”
You’re on fire, sir!
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ROFL Tim that post made my day. Just wondering if Neiman Marcus will start selling a gold plated Mac Pro cover in diamonds and other precious jewels with a complimentary $5,000 gold watch. 🙂
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I hope you don’t think I’m kidding. This will be the easiest money Apple ever made.
The reason I haven’t replied to posts questioning this is that I am quite literally speechless. I can’t come up with something to say that doesn’t look condescending in print or isn’t laden with profanity. I am stupefied that there would be the least doubt about this. This is the absolutely definitive Apple product.
For the third time in composing this post, I just wrote and deleted a massive block of text to follow that. For now, I’ll leave it deleted. THAT’s how strongly I feel about it. I’m afraid to let myself say much more about it, unsure how I’ll be able to wipe my own exploded brains off the screen.
Carry on, lads. I’ll try to keep myself together.
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Have yet to see the Apple watch but very interested, not to mention, even a bit curious. This is big news and I sense big sales from this. Apple innovates and goes in a bold, new direction but in a very good way.
My comment about a gold plated Mac Pro was a tongue and cheek response, sprinkled with a bit of humor. 🙂
Now if I only had the champagne budget to buy that watch . . .
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