I think part of the reason they sold insanely expensive Apple Watches is that they wanted to compete with luxury watches. Of course, the functionality is very different; the similarity is that both are methods of conspicuous consumption.
I’m not an Apple Watch fan myself (still clutching my Pebble for dear life), but I can understand why the uber-expensive Apple Watches would appeal to a certain audience.
> I can understand why the uber-expensive Apple Watches would appeal to a certain audience.
I never could understand why Apple (or anyone else) this would be a possibility. Luxury watches are almost synonymous with heirloom; there is no way anyone will be wearing a functional Gold Apple watch in 2085 with the anecdote "This was my dad's watch" - it would be hopelessly outdated, and likely non-functional by then. This is not the case with other luxury watches. This has little to do with branding, but everything to do with expected longevity and utility.
That heirloom stuff is purely marketing the fantasy of rich parents handing down a bauble (instead of, say, a business or real assets) aimed entirely at middle class and upper middle class people. It’s not real.
I may not be understanding your point: are you suggesting that 60-year-old still-functional swiss-made "baubles" don't get inherited? Old money is almost entirely defined by items inherited from forebears.
Old money is not about baubles it’s about the means to earn a living, connections and the knowledge of how to retain wealth.
Passing down a watch or car is an incidental thing and the watches real old money passes down are not the ones like Patek Phillipe who find it necessary to run ads suggesting otherwise to the middle class readers of The Economist.
I can. It's for an interval including instagram-flexing up to heirloom, not actually competing properly with a really nice watch. You wouldn't see a the drivers at a Grand Prix wearing an Apple Watch but the influencers (grumble) are.
This is somewhat true throughout all of apple's products. Release a new Mac or iPhone, you'll notice a lot of people (especially musicians) buying them for no utilitarian reason other than because it's new and because it'll be theirs - and it's expensive. Apple's marketing and reputation is so brilliant it's ingrained almost like a religion (Certainly socially what religion was to a ye olde' peasant)
I agree that they won’t be heirlooms, and old money folks would never be fooled into thinking they would.
But a lot of people wear luxury watches simply to show off how much disposable income they have. To these people, having a watch that is recognizably expensive is the only requirement.
I’m not an Apple Watch fan myself (still clutching my Pebble for dear life), but I can understand why the uber-expensive Apple Watches would appeal to a certain audience.