Apple Will Not Repair $17,000 Gold Watch

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Oct 4, 8:30AM EDT

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Apple Will Not Repair $17,000 Gold Watch — © Deagreez / iStock via Getty Images

The company sold a gold version early in the evolution of the Apple Watch. It set buyers back as much as $17,000. Apple will no longer repair these, leaving buyers with little more than a gold brick that does not tell time. (These iconic gadgets have shaped our lives since the 1950s.)
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Apple sold the gold watch in 2015. According to MacRumors, the decision not to service the watch is part of a larger decision: “The list of obsolete models includes the first-generation Apple Watch Edition with an 18-karat gold casing, which cost up to $17,000 in the U.S. when it was available.”
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Apple must believe the PR fallout that will occur as it abandons gold watch owners it not worth the very modest effort to keep them running.
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The Apple Watch is part of a division that Apple calls “Wearables, Home and Accessories.” The division brought in $8.3 billion of Apple’s $81.2 billion in revenue in the most recent quarter.
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While the smartwatch is not the company’s flagship, it is one of Apple’s most visible products. It also pairs with Apple’s flagship iPhone, which makes it, to some extent, an extension of that product When Apple releases new iPhones, it generally introduces an Apple Watch as well. It currently has three versions, the most expensive of which is the Watch Ultra 2, which carries a price tag of $799.

Apple always abandons the service of products that are several generations old. However, few match abandoning a $17,000 product.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.