Remember Apple’s gold Watch Edition, which launched in 2015 with a price tag of $10,000 to $17,000? It was only available for one year before Apple replaced it with less opulent variants of the Watch.
Now, as MacRumors learned from an internal memo, the gold Apple Watch Edition was added to Apple’s list of obsolete products on Sept. 30.
In general, Apple starts considering a product obsolete if it stopped selling it more than seven years ago. For such products, all hardware service is discontinued, and other service providers cannot order parts for them.
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Apple’s official list of such products currently only lists Apple Watch Series 1 and Series 2 as vintage, which are products that the company stopped selling more than five years ago. For such products, service and parts may still be obtained.
But the original Apple Watch, sometimes classified as Series 0, isn’t mentioned anywhere, though it’s possible that Apple’s list simply hasn’t been updated yet.
The pricy gold version of Apple Watch edition is especially notable. It competed with high-end, luxury timepieces, where longevity is often marketed as an important feature, but now, repairing a broken, gold Apple Watch Edition may be next to impossible. Perhaps it’s no wonder that Apple discontinued the gold variant of the Apple Watch just one year after introducing it.
