“As you get wiser you learn to spend less money on materials and more on experiences”
-former Vanderbilt QB/WR Joshua Grady, 6 Mar 2015
About the time I turned 40, I was taken with the ephemeral nature of our industry, with the idea that you couldn’t reasonably expect your new iPhone to last much more than three years or your laptop more than five, and marveling that I could splash out the same money on a phone that would barely survive its contract or a mechanical watch that would last me the rest of my life without ever so much as looking at a battery.
This is particularly appropriate today.
First things first: the differentiation in Apple Watch lines is all about materials. Functionality is identical across all models. So set aside the $10,000 model completely; this is about the baseline $349 watch. And nothing’s changed since last night: I still need to see this thing make contact with the real world for a year or two before I’m persuaded of the utility. For instance: I know someone with an iPhone 6+ and an atrial fibrillation issue; the combination of real-time heart monitoring and not having to take that slab out of the jacket/cargo shorts/backpack is a very real and viable use case. They can actually use the thing in a way I don’t need. But for me, right now, it’s a gimmick…and a short-lived one.
See, the original iPhone was missing some crucial bits. Like video capture or MMS or GPS, stuff that couldn’t be replaced in software. And the original iPad was missing some crucial bits – like a retina display. And the original Apple Watch is apparently missing some of the sensors they wanted to get into the first generation but couldn’t make practically functional. And while there’s an expectation that you’d replace your phone every couple of years, that isn’t quite the case yet with the iPad, and nobody anticipates needing a new watch every two years. So if $400 means a watch and a pair of Ray-Bans that will each last me until I’m dead and buried in them, what’s the percentage in a watch that might not make it to the end of Sonny Gray’s rookie contract?
Until I know that the smart watch is a viable proposition for at least – four years? five? ten? – it hardly seems worth getting stuck into it, especially when the things I’d use it for exist on the phone. That’s money better spent on something like going down the pub every Sunday night to hear live Irish music for two straight months and change. Or on a train ticket to Los Angeles. Or…
Here we stumble across something I think the millenials and their sympathizers have gotten right. So much of the nonsense I see on things like Texts From Last Night and Twitter seems to be checking a series of notional boxes where going for anything, no matter how crazy or absurd or stupid, is justifiable for the sake of being able to say you did it. Or tried it. Or just having the story. And that’s where spending the money on the experience is worthwhile: because while it may seem absurd to pay money to become a Baron of Sealand, you’ve got that story for the rest of your days. Which makes it an even greater value than if you’d put the same money on a couple bottles of wine…unless those bottles of wine led to a House Hunters International viewing-and-drinking party that led to unbridled shtick you’ll be doing for ages. Or…you get the idea.
I got a little money for my birthday. Enough that it would make a sizable dent in acquiring a first-generation Apple Watch. And yet…there’s much better things I could do with that money that would almost certainly last longer than two years, or three, or five. I have stuff a-plenty, I have a watch and a phone (or two!) and a peacoat and a trucker jacket and a pair of resoleable boots and things that will last for ages. What I need to spend money on now is in the service of making memories. They’ll last as long as my watch or my peacoat…and if done right, they’ll be just as warm and timely for just as long.