The original Apple Watch is obsolete and Apple will not take care of it. Nor the $17,000 gold one.
It’s over, the Apple Watch is obsolete. Eight years have passed since the launch of the first generation Apple Watch (or Apple Watch Series 0, as it is known following the launch of the Apple Watch Series 1), a first generation that paved the way for a successful line of new devices.
Johny Ive – who is now allied with Sam Altman , the CEO of OpenAI – was in charge of the presentation in one of those legendary announcement videos that Apple has accustomed us to. Now, eight years later, the original Apple Watch is dead . And with it, the gold model that cost $17,000.
The Apple Watch joins the list of obsolete devices
If you have an original Apple Watch, you may be confused right now and thinking “wait, the Apple Watch has been outdated for years.” And yes, but no. That is, in 2018 update support ended with the watchOS 4.3.2 update . It’s not that it lasted too long, since watchOS 6.3 was stopped in the next generation, but hey, it could continue to be used perfectly.
There are applications that do not work, but the fluidity is still good, you can see mobile notifications and measure the parameters of a workout. However, it is different now, since when Apple declares a device obsolete, it does not refer to the software, but to full support .
This includes parts , so it will remove from its support service both the spare parts and the necessary machinery and tools (if any) necessary to repair these first generation Apple Watches. Apple, at the moment, has not updated its list of obsolete devices, but as we can read in Macrumors , the change would be about to arrive.
And all aluminum, steel, ceramic and solid gold versions, both 38 and 42 millimeters, will be included in the list. And, yes, the Apple Watch had two ‘base’ versions (steel and aluminum), but also a special ceramic edition that cost about $1,300 and one made of solid 18-karat gold that was discontinued a year after the launch. original release.
That Apple Watch cost $17,000 and was never really a bestseller. It was seen that some famous people carried it, but it is a price that is far from the pockets of the rest of us mortals and that, now, it is an extremely expensive paperweight.
And if it happens that you have this model and it breaks or you want to change the battery, you will have to take it to a center not authorized by Apple to carry out the repair or replacement. And, unless it has a huge stock of parts for that first generation Apple, it won’t be able to solve your problem.
Anyway, even if I have the parts, if I had the $17,000 Apple Watch I wouldn’t take it to an unauthorized center, so I would be left with a very expensive paperweight like Karl Lagerfeld’s . In fact, as we read on Hodinkee , Lagerfeld wore this watch without pairing it with the iPhone. Rich thing, I guess.
What is clear is that Ive designed these watches to try to enter the luxury segment, but something important about premium watches is that they are not usually smartwatches and will work for decades , something that an Apple Watch cannot compete with due to to battery degradation, which will come sooner or later.
But well, beyond focusing the story on the gold Apple Watch, if you have the first generation, you should know that it will be a little more difficult to repair from now on and that, of course, Apple will not take care of it.