Yes, including the 18-karat gold model.
https://www.engadget.com/the-original-apple-watch-lineup-is-officially-obsolete-083825819.html
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?”
It’s one banana, Michael. What could it cost, $10?
I’m waiting for the news that my automatic and Swiss quartz watches have become obsolete. That’d be news!
Good riddance. I had a first gen watch, and it was awful. Trying to navigate apps would take minutes. And forget about trying to use Siri with it. Even gen 2 was night and day in terms of performance, but I think gen 3 was when it really became a viable product.
I still miss my Pebble though. Really, if Apple would let people make faces for the damned thing and create a rich face ecosystem, that would remedy like 90% of my issues with the watch. And just putting the time on a pic isn’t an answer. I miss things like the old LCARS face I had on my Pebble that incorporated all the other data into it (time, date, battery, now playing, weather, etc.). They need to let us do that with custom faces.
I love the Pebbles. I have a Pebble Time, just snagged a used Pebble Time Round 20mm from eBay so I’m looking forward to trying that out!
Your comment sent me digging. I had no idea that they could still function. I thought they were lost to time (lol), but apparently Google gave an update to the official app so the Rebble project could keep supporting all the functionality of the watch. Looks like it’s Android only, though tbf Pebble always did have significantly more functionality on Android than iOS. But if it would work on iOS, I’d dig out my Pebble right now.
You can still use them with GadgetBridge if Rebble ever goes away too!
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.
… 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.
That’s an apple problem, not a smartwatch problem in general
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.
If you have a fitness tracker - no problems with that. Needs a recharge after two or three weeks, which is not perfect, but still better than those “smart” watches that you have to feed daily.
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
Personally I have a Garmin Fenix for the 3 week battery life
Now that is a totally different beast than an Apple watch that has to be recharged daily.
if you bought the gold watch and now you feel cheated, you totally deserve it.
On the flip side, the gold still has its worth in gold… 🤷
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.
the first good wearable computer ever made
That’s an opinion and a half! People might consider it collectable but they’re not exactly rare.
Anybody else having non-buyer’s relief?
I’m never buying a smart watch again. I bought into the Moto360 hype back around this same period. The watch was slow as molasses and basically next to useless. The battery wouldn’t last a full day either. You’d look down to tell the time, and it would be blank. So phone out of the pocket, which is what they are supposed to help prevent.
It was the watch that made me realize that I’d rather just have an actual watch. The battery completely gave out on it sometime in 2018, and it looked like a PITA to fix, so now I have this really attractive gold watch with a nice band that’s completely useless. Won’t be handing it down to the grandkids, that’s for sure. I’ve got a nice real watch now, and they can have that.
It’s an eight year old smartwatch. I feel like most of the target audience already has a newer model.
Now I’m curious what the newer models are for. Isn’t it essentially a watch with notifications and buttons for music?
Apple quickly pivoted it to a health tracking device. newer model have even medical grade ECG, blood oxygen level, fall and crash detection, etc. plus the usual activity tracking (steps, calories, workouts)
Are there any good non-Apple equivalents for health tracking? Something that does pulse-ox for example, but isn’t stuck in the walled garden.
non-apple, yes. not stuck in a waller garden, I dont think so (garmin, and samsung make some alternatives)
