Yes, including the 18-karat gold model.
https://www.engadget.com/the-original-apple-watch-lineup-is-officially-obsolete-083825819.html
I’m waiting for the news that my automatic and Swiss quartz watches have become obsolete. That’d be news!
There’s always been a weird market for “luxury” tech that’s a gold-plated version of what everyone else has. I remember gold-plated pre-smartphone phones that went for ridiculous amounts of money; of course it becomes obsolete, it’s targeting those with money but no foresight.
It’s targeting the ones saying stuff like “If you can afford a coffee a day… how much is a coffee anyway, like $100?”
if you bought the gold watch and now you feel cheated, you totally deserve it.
Seems to me anyone rich enough to spend so much on something so stupid might have gotten some other extravagant accessory to replace it already.
If anyone thought an electronic device would become a family heirloom they are really clueless.
If anyone thought an electronic device would become a family heirloom they are really clueless.
I think the first good wearable computer ever made has great potential as something people might like to collect. I have the first ever (proper/good) laptop for example. It doesn’t work anymore, but I still like having it (and I’d love to restore it some day - just because Apple won’t fix it doesn’t mean it can’t be fixed… it just means Apple isn’t maintaining a large stockpile of spare parts anymore).
In 20 years time, I bet those watches are worth a lot of money in good condition. An original iPhone recently sold at auction for $200,000.
I feel like the important part is that apple again is allowed to keep its old devices locked up after taking them our of support. This needs to become illegal.
It had been from day one, just in case no-one noticed.
The very idea of a “watch” that has a bunch of gimmics while completely fail the main job of providing the time over a long time without any hassle shows how absurd this product was from the very beginning.
A good automatic, mechanical watch is way superior on that behalf. As a bonus, it looks better. And you don’t have to press a button to actually see the time.
Ok, I’ll be sure to use my automatic mechanical watch to check my decent speed and heart rate on my ski trip… Oh wait…
Personally I have a Garmin Fenix for the 3 week battery life but let’s not pretend that a mechanical watch and a smartwatch fill even close to the same market segment… It’s like telling someone who dropped 3k on a mountain bike to buy a car instead as it’s faster on the highway: ok, but not comparable and not relevant
I can see you’re a watch enthusiast. But really, people don’t buy smart watches to see the time. They buy them to more easily keep track of their fitness progress, (heart rate, bp, blood oxygen, etc.), and it’s much easier to respond to a message without having to take your attention away from something else. We shouldn’t be attacking the idea of a smartwatch because it’s pretty cool, we should be attacking the companies tracking us, stealing our data, and making us pay absurd amounts of money for something that goes obsolete in a few years.
… You do realize Apple Watches have had always-on screens for half a decade now? You don’t have to do anything to see the time.
And yeah, if all you use it for is to see the time, then it’s obviously not worth it. But can you listen to music through a mechanical watch? Can you use a mechanical watch to respond to text messages? Can a mechanical watch show you the map while you’re hiking?
Why even have a smartphone? You just need a landline phone. After all, it’s just pick up and dial, with a smartphone you have to unlock it to call.
Or maybe phones can be more than just phones these days? Just like watches can be more than just watches.
Just like watches can be more than just watches.
Yes. Like needing to be recharged every night, and being obsolete after a handful of years.
I never really got this argument, to be honest. I put mine on the charger when I take a shower in the morning. If I did a long workout that day, shortly before bed, too. Other than that, I wear mine day and night. It really doesn’t feel like a big deal to me. I wouldn’t wear a mechanical (or quartz) watch in the shower either.
My Apple Watch needs to be charged ever night.
The watch I had before needed the time adjusted every night if I wanted it to be accurate to the second which I did. And adjusting was a painful process. You can’t adjust the seconds - it resets the secondhand to zero and then you need to stare at a reliable timepiece (like maybe an Apple Watch), taking the regular watch out of time set mode at exactly zero seconds. If you miss it by a second… you need to wait an entire minute to try again.
I don’t like sleeping with my watch on anyway, so placing it on a charger isn’t a problem. And the battery lasts long enough it doesn’t matter if I forget ocasinally.
Apple Watches aren’t the only option, and watches don’t just go “obsolete” like they’ve gone out of date. Just because they don’t get more support doesn’t mean they’re unusable. This article is literally about how an almost decade old product still had official support until now, and it’s going to still be a usable product for years to come if you’re willing to put up with the slowness inherent to the first gen (seriously, 2nd or 3rd series and onwards watches could easily last over a decade or more)
Also, this criticism applies to smartphones too… but it doesn’t mean (most) people abandon their smartphones and use a Nokia 3310 for their multiple week batterylife over one that needs to charge every/every other night. The tradeoff of charging is offset ten-fold by the slew of useful features.
