One of the Tested guys pointed out there was a big hazard with Apple eroding the feel of it's brand - no matter who you are, if you buy an iPhone then you have the same iPhone as any celebrity.

With the watch...that's only going to be kind of marginally true: you'll have the same electronics package, but there's an importance psychological difference when Apple is also selling the $10,000 Kanye-edition watch in the same store (and has to publicly assign importance to that - they can't do that and then publicly be smug about it being a waste of money).

Legit point.

However I will point out that it hasn't hurt Beats headphones. They are VERY big on celeb' endorsements, but sell tons of different editions/looks. Their brand and ability to sell $14 headphones for $200 hasn't been damaged.

But they don't sell $10,000 headphones direct. And Beats has the same model: "same as the stars use to mix their tracks".

Of course that's complete garbage, but its a much easier sell when the only headphones you sell are an affordable $200-400 range with "justifiable" reasons for it.

Watch doesn't work as a Veblen product because it falls into the uncanny valley of not quite being unaffordable enough.

A $1,000,000 watch in a limited edition of 25 would do much less damage to the brand than a $17,000 watch in a limited edition of ????

Median buyers know that they can never afford $1,000,000 for a watch. So at that price it remains a celebrity fantasy product, and some the fantasy gets reflected onto the rest of the range.

$small-number,000 is - paradoxically - almost, but not quite, affordable. It's not any more expensive than many cars, and people buy those all the time.

But the only extra value is the case and the strap. So it looks a like you're paying a lot to pay a lot, and getting something very mass market for the money.

With a nicer strap and case. But people don't buy watches for the strap or the case.

Now you have an "exclusive" product that isn't producing the right exclusivity signals, but at the same time it's expensive enough to seem gratuitously and irritatingly unreachable.

There's nothing insanely great about this. I don't think Steve Jobs would have done it. (I mean - who knows? But historically, there's good reason to suspect this wouldn't have worked for him.)

The $10,000 version will have limited availability, in terms of watches produced and where you can actually buy it.

Apple Watch will also be available to preview or try on at Galeries Lafayette in Paris, Isetan in Tokyo and Selfridges in London on April 10. Apple Watch will be for sale on April 24 at these select department store shop-in-shops, and at boutiques in major cities across the world including colette in Paris, Dover Street Market in London and Tokyo, Maxfield in Los Angeles and The Corner in Berlin.

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2015/03/09Apple-Watch-Availa...

The $10k watch will be available to anyone with $10k to spend on it. The 'limited availability' doesn't mean they'll only produce a fixed number of them or whatever. Apple will make as many as they can sell.

Agreed I am told that Burbery was horrified when their trademark check was taken up by chavs - apparently their marketing refer to as this as "The Time".

And £13k for a watch will get you a really nice Rolex but its not that much in terms of the high end watch luxury brand.

And you can hand down your Rolex to your great grand kids not sure the apple watch will last that long.

Exactly what I came here to say: it's an albatross. There's nothing compelling about a wrist computer that a pocket computer doesn't already do.

It's on your wrist, for one.

If that was compelling, we would still wear wrist watches to tell the time with. We don't: it's not that much harder to take out your phone.

And anything more information intensive than the time is going to be even harder to access on a watch.

And we still have to keep our phones around anyway - the watch is just a conduit to them.

> If that was compelling, we would still wear wrist watches to tell the time with. We don't

There's more "we" out there than just "you." I wear a $30 digital watch because it's indestructible, compact, accurate, and its battery lasts forever. Carrying a delicate, bulky, non-waterproof phone I needed to charge every day would suck by comparison. Try running, hiking, or doing anything outdoors with a phone, and you'll soon end up with a dead battery or a dead device.

That's not to say that I find "smart" watches compelling. The phone tethering and need to recharge every night make them useless to me. Once they can go a week on a charge and do much more than a normal watch, they may be useful. (Today's GPS watches come close.)

...and it has less space than a Nomad.

>We don't

Maybe you don't, but we do :)

I'll rather have nothing on my wrist... for one.

I'm not going to be getting one, but I'd still be very careful with the "there's nothing compelling about an X that a Y doesn't already do" argument.