You predicted a 1T market cap- while simultaneous mocking and bashing the company to no end, constantly deriding the quality of its new hardware and software, calling their acquisitions foolish, proclaiming their CEO to be unfit for the job, and predicting massive failure for their next product category?
Makes perfect fucking sense. So either you truly don't believe anything you say and are constantly trolling, or you believe your opinions are so off the mark and irrelevant, that they do not impact the real world in any sense whatsoever.
<div class="quote-container" data-huddler-embed="/t/184916/apple-closes-in-on-775b-market-cap-now-twice-as-large-as-no-2-exxon-mobil#post_2680279" data-huddler-embed-placeholder="false"><span>Quote:</span><div class="quote-block">Originally Posted by <strong>RedHotFuzz</strong> <a href="/t/184916/apple-closes-in-on-775b-market-cap-now-twice-as-large-as-no-2-exxon-mobil#post_2680279"><img src="/img/forum/go_quote.gif" class="inlineimg" alt="View Post"/></a><br/><br/><p> </p><p>I can understand a stratospheric price for the top model due simply to the cost of gold, but should the stainless steel model really sell for 3x the price of the aluminum one? No way.</p></div></div><p> </p>
At the event last year a watch blogger was really praising the bands, especially the link bracelet and milanese loop saying they were as nice as higher end Swiss watches. I'm sure those bands are driving up the price. Considering how much effort Apple put into these bands I struggle to see how they could design ?Watch to be obsolete in a year or two. There has to be some sort of upgrade path or trade in ability. If not, if Apple is expecting people to fork over another grand in 2 years then I think someone at Apple has jumped the shark and I worry about the success of the product.
Difficult to reference the price of bands, but Garmin is charging $129.99 for a metal band:
If Apple cuts off Google head (Search) they don't need to worry about Google doing anything in the smartphone, watch, or car space. They won't have money to do so.
Business is Business. Google was not hesitant to cut off Apple's head (Hardware/Software) with Android. Time for payback.
Apple will eventually make a search engine. It just makes too much sense. Especially when literally overnight, they will grab MASSIVE marketshare from Google simply by making it the default in iOS. That's the power of having such an influential platform. Sure, many might switch back manually to Google. But most won't bother. And just like that, they completely **** Google over. All they need to do is make sure it doesn't look TOO different, and users won't care. And there are so many integration opportunities with the rest of their ecosystem.
When will this happen? Who knows. But it WILL happen, it's inevitable. Apple can control the world through it's iOS defaults, and that prize is too tempting.
Unlikely, if they keep repurchasing shares at the recent rate....
Do you have numbers to show how their current buyback program will prevent them from ever reaching a $1T market cap?
Buybacks don't directly affect the market cap. Apple's buybacks are removing shares so that, assuming the market cap remains the same, the value is split between fewer shares and each investor is better off. This also increases their earnings per share, which helps give investors more confidence in growth so it builds some momentum - that can push up the market cap. Ultimately, the market cap is decided by investors. Now that Samsung is flailing and Xiaomi is aiming at the low-end, Apple has secured their place as the premium handset maker in the very lucrative smartphone business.
The uncertainty is in how people are valuing the shares just now. Apple makes around $40b per year so while you could say that operating for 10 years this way could earn $400b on top of their $775b valuation, a lot of this will have already been factored into the current price. Apple would really have to keep growing in revenue while maintaining margins. The iPhone 6 showed their revenue growth wasn't finished. 30% revenue growth and 37% income growth so they not only grew revenue but improved margins. It might then seem logical to consider another 30% growth in either 2016 or 2017 and they only need 30% more to reach $1t but that growth might also have been factored in already.
I imagine that a lot of negativity that gets directed towards Apple is from people who bought into the idea that Android was the Microsoft of the smartphone world and that the same thing would happen with smartphones that happened with PCs. How Apple started in the early 80s and within 13 years were months from bankruptcy as Microsoft took over in both volume and profit. Apple started in the smartphone industry in 2007 and so 8 years later, some people probably expected or hoped for the same thing and invested that way and are now very bitter about backing the wrong horse. Apple isn't going to repeat that scenario this time round, they have enough cash to coast for a decade and they have no intention in coasting.
It seems to have shot up in early February, I wonder if this was related to the rumors about the car. It's all about manipulating the share buyer's perception of value. There's no reason why they couldn't be valued at $10 trillion if you manipulate that perception enough e.g they're working on rockets, cars, TVs, houses, food, clothes, financial services. You notice whenever people look for investment in their own company, they very often say they're going to be part of an x billion or trillion dollar market. It's all about convincing other people of the potential.
The figure itself is ultimately meaningless. Apple's only valued at about 4.5x Amazon, a company that makes little to no profit at all. It's more a reflection on the value metrics of people involved in the financial services industry, which as we all should know by now are null and void.
The value of money is not constant. As such, anything you measure with money should, to be fair, adjusted for inflation. I have no dog in this fight; I don't care if Apple becomes the biggest company ever or not. If they do, good on them, if they don't, I'll continue being an Apple professional. But I don't see a strong argument against adjusting for inflation if the metric you are using is affected by inflation.
And I'd agree if everything else was equal, but that's far from the case which makes looking at market caps across decades, whether adjusted for inflation or not, as pointless as March 14th, 2015 at 9h:26m:53s.
I assume you are referring to the deep dish Apple variety. :->
You predicted a 1T market cap- while simultaneous mocking and bashing the company to no end, constantly deriding the quality of its new hardware and software, calling their acquisitions foolish, proclaiming their CEO to be unfit for the job, and predicting massive failure for their next product category?
Makes perfect fucking sense. So either you truly don't believe anything you say and are constantly trolling, or you believe your opinions are so off the mark and irrelevant, that they do not impact the real world in any sense whatsoever.
Benny frosty is a troll pure and simple your points indicate it , there are many more in incendiary and other assorted hypocritical remarks he makes just to rile people up and get a reaction.
Apple will eventually make a search engine. It just makes too much sense. Especially when literally overnight, they will grab MASSIVE marketshare from Google simply by making it the default in iOS. That's the power of having such an influential platform. Sure, many might switch back manually to Google. But most won't bother. And just like that, they completely **** Google over. All they need to do is make sure it doesn't look TOO different, and users won't care. And there are so many integration opportunities with the rest of their ecosystem.
When will this happen? Who knows. But it WILL happen, it's inevitable. Apple can control the world through it's iOS defaults, and that prize is too tempting.
I agree they did it with maps, personally I can't wait but they will have to do it really well to avoid a debacle . Screw you search is really good and hard to match unfortunately
So you think that Apple shot its load design wise? The Apple Watch is going to look exactly the same for the foreseeable future? That hasn't been Apple's MO as of late.
You need to separate the SIP from the watch itself. We can't even gauge how much the Edition version will cost because we can't even get a decent ballpark of thick the casing is for this first generation model.
If I were designing this watch, I would be well aware that a wrist-worn device has to compete with actual watches for that same space, which means it has to compete with a wide spectrum of jewelry. Apple has already shown us that they understand this with at least 34 different looks for the day it hits the floor.
Now, I'd also be aware that this is still a consumer electronic, which historically is the antithesis of jewelry so I'd want to design the internals to be as modular as possible, which means designing that knowledge into the device. This would be a very complex and difficult thing do, which may be what Jony Ive was talking about when he said it was his hardest project to date.
I would assume that access is via the ceramic magnetic charger base at the bottom (that also houses the 2 sensor types over 4 sensors). Inside there you'll basically have the battery, SIP, and then the display, along with the Digital Crown and button. How these all connect together will be a mystery until iFixit get their hands on one, but Apple made a point of letting us know that the SIP has all the "intelligence" on one small chip that is sealed in resin. Why?
Now consider that even with a 4.7" display all its components could fit inside the original 3.5" iPhone because the internal volume of the original iPhone was so much more than today. Of course, the display size is different, so that comparison doesn't work well without some folding so then do back to the iPhone 4S and that also fits in which a lot more room to spare. Now consider that the wrist is the key factor for the watch size and that 38mm and 42mm displays are going to be with us for a long time. That means Apple could have set up an SIP size and then included both all the sensor chips it could fit as well as all the reliable sensors available for this first launch, knowing that sizes will be reduced which will allow sensor growth without having the SIP grow in size.
If I were designing this quality wearable that is exactly what I'd do. I'd find the longterm solution for the size of the charging solution, display, battery and SIP footprints, and then work to thin those out over time, if possible, knowing full well they won't ever need to get thicker, nor will ever need a larger footprint. I assume you agree that the 38mm and 42mm watch faces can stay the same indefinitely (even if there are cultural changes that, say, make the 38mm fall out of fashion with women and/or make a large, say 46mm watch face en vogue).
I assume you also agree the ceramic base for the charger was also carefully designed and will used for many years to come. I don't even see a reason to change its size in the way MagSafe connectors on Mac notebooks have changed by becoming longer and thinner to fit the thinner notebook chassis. They could make the plug-side thinner or change the cabling, like they did with MagSafe, without affecting anything else. The sensor array in the ceramic base can also then be given more sensor as needed and as possible as the technology evolves. Which leaves pretty much the battery and SIP inside being able to stay virtually the same or get thinner, even as the styling of the external casing changes year-over-year.
That's how I would do it, but that's surely easier said than done because you're designing CE far beyond the typical roadmap and life expectancy of CE because you're designing it around the notion of being jewelry.
(Note: I am not a fan of the currently stated ?Watch features or look).
I think it won't go over 150 this year, it may reach that as resistance level but will soon retrace . Everything has to go right and they will have to have a stellar Christmas quarter to trade steadily over 150 as support next year
Apple makes way more than that. In the Dec Qtr alone they made $18 billion. If you take the rest of FY2014 and add 20% profit growth Apple will do $50 billion in profit for FY2015.
$1 Trillion less $180 Billion in cash = $820 billion in market cap sans cash.
$820 billion divided by $50 Billion profit = 16.4 PE. that is a very reasonable PE ratio.
And that's not even factoring dividends and future buybacks.
IMO, we won't see a $1 Trillion market cap till at least next year because of option sellers. Regardless this is a good time to buy shares since I can easily see this at $150+ this year.
As noted by The Wall Street Journal, Apple's doubling up on Exxon is a rare event for publicly traded companies, one most recently witnessed by IBM 30 years ago. During a stretch between 1984 to 1985, IBM's year-end value was more than two times that of the next-largest company, which happened to be Exxon at the time.[/quote]
Cautionary tale for the future?
Cautionary tale of sitting on your ass will lead to problems. Yes, I guess so ;-). Better reason for Apple to aggressively diversify. IBM is still #35 world wide on Forbes list (14 US companies in front of it including Apple)... So, not all is lost ;-).
The thinner the internals, the easier it will be to fit them into an old large ?Watch case.
One word: "spacers."
I'm guessing extra batteries could be used as space :-). I don't think they'll make the watch thinner for a few years (3-4). They'd rather add functionality and usage time instead. Unless they get the watch to charge in 15 minutes, in that case, they'd be incentive to make it thinner.
Watch bands today are held on by those spring loaded posts. No different than toilet paper. TOILET PAPER.
I still remember seeing the AppleWatch bands go on and off during the keynote. Subtle, genius, game-changing, Apple.
I remember looking up and, while imagining all the watch makers throughout history before me, thinking:
"You guys had CENTURIES to think of this!"
I cant wait, but I'm already getting spooked by the potential stainless price.
Plus, I fear the real communicative benefits will be lost if one's spouse doesn't also have one.
So for maximum benefit, a couple needs two of them.
1) The watch band locking mechanism is one thing I want to see broken down and detailed. This how to change the Pebble watch bands.
2) I'm not watch aficionado, but I've read the quality of the watch band is what instantly set Apple apart from others. High quality for a watch, and absolutely unheard of with a smartwatch.
PS: Will Pebble survive ?Watch's release? So far all signs point to yes, but remember that both Palm and RiM got a huge boost in sales the year the iPhone was announced. The iPhone sparked consumer interest in the smartphone market as a whole. Perhaps they will be able to survive on the low-end of the market, and Pebble's use of eInk does afford it advantages not likely to be seen in this arena for many years.
f you followed the Kickstarter launch of Pebble Time, you probably noticed that the smartwatch got funding very quickly. It met its $500,000 goal in just 17 minutes, and hit the magical $1 million mark in about half an hour. But are any of those records? Well, yes -- Kickstarter has confirmed that the color-screened wearable is the fastest-ever project to reach $1 million on its crowdfunding service. For reference, even the fan favorite Veronica Mars movie took 4.2 hours. The original Pebble took 27 hours to hit that milestone, which sounds positively glacial in comparison.
I'm guessing extra batteries could be used as space :-). I don't think they'll make the watch thinner for a few years (3-4). They'd rather add functionality and usage time instead. Unless they get the watch to charge in 15 minutes, in that case, they'd be incentive to make it thinner.
Rolex hasn't changed the thickness of their Submariner or Oyster Datejust or Day-Date. Ever.
They don't feel the need to compete against, say, Patek Philippe in "thin."
So why should Apple make their first ?Watch series thinner over time?
Better to release all-new thin models later in addition to the thick ones.
I don't see how the **** people can say these look "hideous". They look pretty damn gorgeous to me. The link bracelet and white band ones look particularly nice. The former looks classy as ****. Apple is going to make absolute killing with these, especially the bands. I can see people buying multiple bands per watch, especially with how easy it is to switch them up. That was an absolute stroke of genius.
One thing I am curious about: in his latest podcast John Gruber says from third and fourth hand sources he's heard that Jony was the one pushing for the gold watch basically saying "trust me on this one" but meeting a lot of resistance inside the company. IF this is true, I'd love to know how he ultimately won the argument. I'm a little surprised Tim wouldn't have stepped in and made the final call for NO gold watch. I fear if Apple announces watches that are thousands of dollars and there is no path to upgradeability, if it looks like you spend all that money and spend it all over again in a couple years when a new watch comes out it will be a huge embarrassment for the company. I'm still racking my brain trying to figure out how Phil Schiller is going to get up on stage and announce a $10K+ watch.
That little rumor makes me wonder then if Jony persuaded Tim to hire Angela Ahrendts. Jony is good friends with Christopher Bailey, who replaced Angela as CEO of Burberry. Perhaps he knew Angela as well and if he already had an expensive watch in mind maybe thought she would be the right retail leader to sell it?
One thing I am curious about: in his latest podcast John Gruber says from third and fourth hand sources he's heard that Jony was the one pushing for the gold watch basically saying "trust me on this one" but meeting a lot of resistance inside the company. IF this is true, I'd love to know how he ultimately won the argument. I'm a little surprised Tim wouldn't have stepped in and made the final call for NO gold watch. I fear if Apple announces watches that are thousands of dollars and there is no path to upgradeability, if it looks like you spend all that money and spend it all over again in a couple years when a new watch comes out it will be a huge embarrassment for the company. I'm still racking my brain trying to figure out how Phil Schiller is going to get up on stage and announce a $10K+ watch.
That little rumor makes me wonder then if Jony persuaded Tim to hire Angela Ahrendts. Jony is good friends with Christopher Bailey, who replaced Angela as CEO of Burberry. Perhaps he knew Angela as well and if he already had an expensive watch in mind maybe thought she would be the right retail leader to sell it?
Lots of interesting points. I would assume that Apple simply isn't going to trust any single individual without first checking to see if there is a market for such an investment, so if this was Jony Ive's idea then I have to assume that Apple also feels it's a viable option.
I'd be surprised if we don't have a major worldwide crash in 2015 or 2016.
Eh, I’d say 2020 barring a large, unforeseen event.
Originally Posted by sog35
You are wrong. Look at the profits companies are making compared to 2000. Huge difference. We may see a correction but not a correction like 2000 where multi-billion dollar companies disappeared in a matter of months. I don't see the huge tech giants like Apple, FB, Google, ect disappear because they are all making huge profits.
Bold is the only part I’d agree with. China has a bit of a problem coming up.
Rolex hasn't changed the thickness of their Submariner or Oyster Datejust or Day-Date. Ever.
They don't feel the need to compete against, say, Patek Philippe in "thin."
So why should Apple make their first ?Watch series thinner over time?
Better to release all-new thin models later in addition to the thick ones.
Think ?Watch Air.
In my opinion Apple has to address the obsolescence question with this product. I don't doubt the quality of this watch for one second. I'm sure it is second to none. I remember after the event some hands on reviews raving about the quality of the watch bands. That's all great but unless there is some sort of upgrade path who's going to want to shell out thousands of dollars when in 2 years snother one comes out with more sensors, maybe GPS, etc. Are gen 1 owners out of luck? Or are they able to swap out the watch and keep their bands? Or trade in their watch for a new one?
Lots of interesting points. I would assume that Apple simply isn't going to trust any single individual without first checking to see if there is a market for such an investment, so if this was Jony Ive's idea then I have to assume that Apple also feels it's a viable option.
Makes me wonder too. I have a hard time believing one person (other than Tim Cook) could make a decision like this.
Comments
In 2 yrs time the Watch will be thinner, so the internals will not fit into a 2 year old case.
The thinner the internals, the easier it will be to fit them into an old large ?Watch case.
One word: "spacers."
Last year, I predicted May 2015.
Highly unlikely, but you never know.
You predicted a 1T market cap- while simultaneous mocking and bashing the company to no end, constantly deriding the quality of its new hardware and software, calling their acquisitions foolish, proclaiming their CEO to be unfit for the job, and predicting massive failure for their next product category?
Makes perfect fucking sense. So either you truly don't believe anything you say and are constantly trolling, or you believe your opinions are so off the mark and irrelevant, that they do not impact the real world in any sense whatsoever.
Difficult to reference the price of bands, but Garmin is charging $129.99 for a metal band:
If Apple cuts off Google head (Search) they don't need to worry about Google doing anything in the smartphone, watch, or car space. They won't have money to do so.
Business is Business. Google was not hesitant to cut off Apple's head (Hardware/Software) with Android. Time for payback.
Apple will eventually make a search engine. It just makes too much sense. Especially when literally overnight, they will grab MASSIVE marketshare from Google simply by making it the default in iOS. That's the power of having such an influential platform. Sure, many might switch back manually to Google. But most won't bother. And just like that, they completely **** Google over. All they need to do is make sure it doesn't look TOO different, and users won't care. And there are so many integration opportunities with the rest of their ecosystem.
When will this happen? Who knows. But it WILL happen, it's inevitable. Apple can control the world through it's iOS defaults, and that prize is too tempting.
Buybacks don't directly affect the market cap. Apple's buybacks are removing shares so that, assuming the market cap remains the same, the value is split between fewer shares and each investor is better off. This also increases their earnings per share, which helps give investors more confidence in growth so it builds some momentum - that can push up the market cap. Ultimately, the market cap is decided by investors. Now that Samsung is flailing and Xiaomi is aiming at the low-end, Apple has secured their place as the premium handset maker in the very lucrative smartphone business.
The uncertainty is in how people are valuing the shares just now. Apple makes around $40b per year so while you could say that operating for 10 years this way could earn $400b on top of their $775b valuation, a lot of this will have already been factored into the current price. Apple would really have to keep growing in revenue while maintaining margins. The iPhone 6 showed their revenue growth wasn't finished. 30% revenue growth and 37% income growth so they not only grew revenue but improved margins. It might then seem logical to consider another 30% growth in either 2016 or 2017 and they only need 30% more to reach $1t but that growth might also have been factored in already.
I imagine that a lot of negativity that gets directed towards Apple is from people who bought into the idea that Android was the Microsoft of the smartphone world and that the same thing would happen with smartphones that happened with PCs. How Apple started in the early 80s and within 13 years were months from bankruptcy as Microsoft took over in both volume and profit. Apple started in the smartphone industry in 2007 and so 8 years later, some people probably expected or hoped for the same thing and invested that way and are now very bitter about backing the wrong horse. Apple isn't going to repeat that scenario this time round, they have enough cash to coast for a decade and they have no intention in coasting.
It seems to have shot up in early February, I wonder if this was related to the rumors about the car. It's all about manipulating the share buyer's perception of value. There's no reason why they couldn't be valued at $10 trillion if you manipulate that perception enough e.g they're working on rockets, cars, TVs, houses, food, clothes, financial services. You notice whenever people look for investment in their own company, they very often say they're going to be part of an x billion or trillion dollar market. It's all about convincing other people of the potential.
The figure itself is ultimately meaningless. Apple's only valued at about 4.5x Amazon, a company that makes little to no profit at all. It's more a reflection on the value metrics of people involved in the financial services industry, which as we all should know by now are null and void.
The value of money is not constant. As such, anything you measure with money should, to be fair, adjusted for inflation. I have no dog in this fight; I don't care if Apple becomes the biggest company ever or not. If they do, good on them, if they don't, I'll continue being an Apple professional. But I don't see a strong argument against adjusting for inflation if the metric you are using is affected by inflation.
And I'd agree if everything else was equal, but that's far from the case which makes looking at market caps across decades, whether adjusted for inflation or not, as pointless as March 14th, 2015 at 9h:26m:53s.
I assume you are referring to the deep dish Apple variety. :->
Benny frosty is a troll pure and simple your points indicate it , there are many more in incendiary and other assorted hypocritical remarks he makes just to rile people up and get a reaction.
I agree they did it with maps, personally I can't wait but they will have to do it really well to avoid a debacle . Screw you search is really good and hard to match unfortunately
You need to separate the SIP from the watch itself. We can't even gauge how much the Edition version will cost because we can't even get a decent ballpark of thick the casing is for this first generation model.
If I were designing this watch, I would be well aware that a wrist-worn device has to compete with actual watches for that same space, which means it has to compete with a wide spectrum of jewelry. Apple has already shown us that they understand this with at least 34 different looks for the day it hits the floor.
Now, I'd also be aware that this is still a consumer electronic, which historically is the antithesis of jewelry so I'd want to design the internals to be as modular as possible, which means designing that knowledge into the device. This would be a very complex and difficult thing do, which may be what Jony Ive was talking about when he said it was his hardest project to date.
I would assume that access is via the ceramic magnetic charger base at the bottom (that also houses the 2 sensor types over 4 sensors). Inside there you'll basically have the battery, SIP, and then the display, along with the Digital Crown and button. How these all connect together will be a mystery until iFixit get their hands on one, but Apple made a point of letting us know that the SIP has all the "intelligence" on one small chip that is sealed in resin. Why?
Now consider that even with a 4.7" display all its components could fit inside the original 3.5" iPhone because the internal volume of the original iPhone was so much more than today. Of course, the display size is different, so that comparison doesn't work well without some folding so then do back to the iPhone 4S and that also fits in which a lot more room to spare. Now consider that the wrist is the key factor for the watch size and that 38mm and 42mm displays are going to be with us for a long time. That means Apple could have set up an SIP size and then included both all the sensor chips it could fit as well as all the reliable sensors available for this first launch, knowing that sizes will be reduced which will allow sensor growth without having the SIP grow in size.
If I were designing this quality wearable that is exactly what I'd do. I'd find the longterm solution for the size of the charging solution, display, battery and SIP footprints, and then work to thin those out over time, if possible, knowing full well they won't ever need to get thicker, nor will ever need a larger footprint. I assume you agree that the 38mm and 42mm watch faces can stay the same indefinitely (even if there are cultural changes that, say, make the 38mm fall out of fashion with women and/or make a large, say 46mm watch face en vogue).
I assume you also agree the ceramic base for the charger was also carefully designed and will used for many years to come. I don't even see a reason to change its size in the way MagSafe connectors on Mac notebooks have changed by becoming longer and thinner to fit the thinner notebook chassis. They could make the plug-side thinner or change the cabling, like they did with MagSafe, without affecting anything else. The sensor array in the ceramic base can also then be given more sensor as needed and as possible as the technology evolves. Which leaves pretty much the battery and SIP inside being able to stay virtually the same or get thinner, even as the styling of the external casing changes year-over-year.
That's how I would do it, but that's surely easier said than done because you're designing CE far beyond the typical roadmap and life expectancy of CE because you're designing it around the notion of being jewelry.
(Note: I am not a fan of the currently stated ?Watch features or look).
[/quote]
As noted by The Wall Street Journal, Apple's doubling up on Exxon is a rare event for publicly traded companies, one most recently witnessed by IBM 30 years ago. During a stretch between 1984 to 1985, IBM's year-end value was more than two times that of the next-largest company, which happened to be Exxon at the time.[/quote]
Cautionary tale for the future?
Cautionary tale of sitting on your ass will lead to problems. Yes, I guess so ;-). Better reason for Apple to aggressively diversify. IBM is still #35 world wide on Forbes list (14 US companies in front of it including Apple)... So, not all is lost ;-).
The thinner the internals, the easier it will be to fit them into an old large ?Watch case.
One word: "spacers."
I'm guessing extra batteries could be used as space :-). I don't think they'll make the watch thinner for a few years (3-4). They'd rather add functionality and usage time instead. Unless they get the watch to charge in 15 minutes, in that case, they'd be incentive to make it thinner.
I can see people buying multiple bands per watch, especially with how easy it is to switch them up. That was an absolute stroke of genius.
Watch bands today are held on by those spring loaded posts. No different than toilet paper. TOILET PAPER.
I still remember seeing the AppleWatch bands go on and off during the keynote. Subtle, genius, game-changing, Apple.
I remember looking up and, while imagining all the watch makers throughout history before me, thinking:
"You guys had CENTURIES to think of this!"
I cant wait, but I'm already getting spooked by the potential stainless price.
Plus, I fear the real communicative benefits will be lost if one's spouse doesn't also have one.
So for maximum benefit, a couple needs two of them.
1) The watch band locking mechanism is one thing I want to see broken down and detailed. This how to change the Pebble watch bands.
2) I'm not watch aficionado, but I've read the quality of the watch band is what instantly set Apple apart from others. High quality for a watch, and absolutely unheard of with a smartwatch.
PS: Will Pebble survive ?Watch's release? So far all signs point to yes, but remember that both Palm and RiM got a huge boost in sales the year the iPhone was announced. The iPhone sparked consumer interest in the smartphone market as a whole. Perhaps they will be able to survive on the low-end of the market, and Pebble's use of eInk does afford it advantages not likely to be seen in this arena for many years.
Right now over $5 million.
I'm guessing extra batteries could be used as space :-). I don't think they'll make the watch thinner for a few years (3-4). They'd rather add functionality and usage time instead. Unless they get the watch to charge in 15 minutes, in that case, they'd be incentive to make it thinner.
Rolex hasn't changed the thickness of their Submariner or Oyster Datejust or Day-Date. Ever.
They don't feel the need to compete against, say, Patek Philippe in "thin."
So why should Apple make their first ?Watch series thinner over time?
Better to release all-new thin models later in addition to the thick ones.
Think ?Watch Air.
One thing I am curious about: in his latest podcast John Gruber says from third and fourth hand sources he's heard that Jony was the one pushing for the gold watch basically saying "trust me on this one" but meeting a lot of resistance inside the company. IF this is true, I'd love to know how he ultimately won the argument. I'm a little surprised Tim wouldn't have stepped in and made the final call for NO gold watch. I fear if Apple announces watches that are thousands of dollars and there is no path to upgradeability, if it looks like you spend all that money and spend it all over again in a couple years when a new watch comes out it will be a huge embarrassment for the company. I'm still racking my brain trying to figure out how Phil Schiller is going to get up on stage and announce a $10K+ watch.
That little rumor makes me wonder then if Jony persuaded Tim to hire Angela Ahrendts. Jony is good friends with Christopher Bailey, who replaced Angela as CEO of Burberry. Perhaps he knew Angela as well and if he already had an expensive watch in mind maybe thought she would be the right retail leader to sell it?
Lots of interesting points. I would assume that Apple simply isn't going to trust any single individual without first checking to see if there is a market for such an investment, so if this was Jony Ive's idea then I have to assume that Apple also feels it's a viable option.
Eh, I’d say 2020 barring a large, unforeseen event.
You are wrong. Look at the profits companies are making compared to 2000. Huge difference. We may see a correction but not a correction like 2000 where multi-billion dollar companies disappeared in a matter of months. I don't see the huge tech giants like Apple, FB, Google, ect disappear because they are all making huge profits.
Bold is the only part I’d agree with. China has a bit of a problem coming up.
In my opinion Apple has to address the obsolescence question with this product. I don't doubt the quality of this watch for one second. I'm sure it is second to none. I remember after the event some hands on reviews raving about the quality of the watch bands. That's all great but unless there is some sort of upgrade path who's going to want to shell out thousands of dollars when in 2 years snother one comes out with more sensors, maybe GPS, etc. Are gen 1 owners out of luck? Or are they able to swap out the watch and keep their bands? Or trade in their watch for a new one?
Makes me wonder too. I have a hard time believing one person (other than Tim Cook) could make a decision like this.