You know, I think Apple won its bet on those gold watches

I wonder if we should consider Apple’s experiment with ludicrously-priced gold Apple Watches as ultimately a success. Perhaps the goal was never to continue to sell solid gold watches, but instead was to guide our first impression of the product into one of luxury and desire. A brute-force method into a mindshare category that was a cut above the Fitbits and Garmins. And even though the precious metal version didn’t last past the “Series 0” family, that mindshare extended to down the ~$300 price point watches and into subsequent Series. “Get a luxury-caliber watch at a fraction of the price! It does all the same stuff!”

Getting them onto celebrities’ wrists right from the start was a stroke of genius. Maybe the fancy gold was simply the price of admission. I wouldn’t blame them if the entire production budget for the Edition watches that year was lumped under Marketing.