In 2015, Apple released gold Apple Watches for $10-17,000. They are now orphans.

[thewayne]

As of the end of September, they will no longer receive OS updates. They can no longer be repaired: no parts, no support, no nuthin'. They are gold-plated worthless paperweights, truly monuments to conspicuous blingy consumption.

And owned by Beyonce and Karl Lagerfeld, Karl apparently never set his up.

$10-20,000 will buy a heck of a nice real mechanical watch that will keep accurate time and will hold its value, if not appreciate. And can continue to be serviced 50+ years from now. I have a friend in Mexico who can rebuild French carriage clocks that are two hundred years old! An Apple Watch that's eight years old? Sadly, now rubbish.

Still, slightly better than that Google watch with the all-glass face that has no parts available for it.

Shortly after the gold Edition was released, a Ceramic and then a Titanium version released. And they'll hit the same end of life wall since they have old electronics in them. It's a sad and inevitable state of affairs creating more ewaste. No idea how recyclable these things are, I wonder how thick the gold plating that a $17,000 watch has. I'm pretty sure gold has increased in value in eight years: strip out the battery and electronics, melt it down, filter out the other metals and you might be able to recover a few thousand bucks.

I have no idea if Apple is still doing these special Edition Watches, I don't keep an eye on their product line that closely.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/10/the-10000-plus-golden-apple-watch-is-now-obsolete-according-to-apple/

Comments

[disneydream06]

WOWZA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Talk about expensive paper weight. :o :o :o
Hugs, Jon

[silveradept]

Eight years isn't bad, I suppose, but this was going to be inevitable, with the way that Apple routinely decides that some of its perfectly functional products no longer deserve to receive updates or support. So, it's likely that all of these watches have long since been abandoned for some other fashionable timepiece accessory, because the people who would buy these watches at those prices probably have that kind of money to drop on a new timepiece as soon as it becomes the fashionable thing to acquire.

The least they could do would be to put out a recall to see what of the components they can recycle.

[thewayne]

It would be nice if Apple was serious about recycling.  But, like third-party repair, they're not.