Yes, including the 18-karat gold model.
https://www.engadget.com/the-original-apple-watch-lineup-is-officially-obsolete-083825819.html
Good riddance. I had a first gen watch, and it was awful. Trying to navigate apps would take minutes. And forget about trying to use Siri with it. Even gen 2 was night and day in terms of performance, but I think gen 3 was when it really became a viable product.
I still miss my Pebble though. Really, if Apple would let people make faces for the damned thing and create a rich face ecosystem, that would remedy like 90% of my issues with the watch. And just putting the time on a pic isn’t an answer. I miss things like the old LCARS face I had on my Pebble that incorporated all the other data into it (time, date, battery, now playing, weather, etc.). They need to let us do that with custom faces.
I love the Pebbles. I have a Pebble Time, just snagged a used Pebble Time Round 20mm from eBay so I’m looking forward to trying that out!
Your comment sent me digging. I had no idea that they could still function. I thought they were lost to time (lol), but apparently Google gave an update to the official app so the Rebble project could keep supporting all the functionality of the watch. Looks like it’s Android only, though tbf Pebble always did have significantly more functionality on Android than iOS. But if it would work on iOS, I’d dig out my Pebble right now.
I think you can technically still use Pebble on iOS, but I’m not sure how. The previous owner of the watch has been using it with his iPhone 13.
I feel like the important part is that apple again is allowed to keep its old devices locked up after taking them our of support. This needs to become illegal.
Anybody else having non-buyer’s relief?
It’s an eight year old smartwatch. I feel like most of the target audience already has a newer model.
Now I’m curious what the newer models are for. Isn’t it essentially a watch with notifications and buttons for music?
Apple quickly pivoted it to a health tracking device. newer model have even medical grade ECG, blood oxygen level, fall and crash detection, etc. plus the usual activity tracking (steps, calories, workouts)
I’m never buying a smart watch again. I bought into the Moto360 hype back around this same period. The watch was slow as molasses and basically next to useless. The battery wouldn’t last a full day either. You’d look down to tell the time, and it would be blank. So phone out of the pocket, which is what they are supposed to help prevent.
It was the watch that made me realize that I’d rather just have an actual watch. The battery completely gave out on it sometime in 2018, and it looked like a PITA to fix, so now I have this really attractive gold watch with a nice band that’s completely useless. Won’t be handing it down to the grandkids, that’s for sure. I’ve got a nice real watch now, and they can have that.
if you bought the gold watch and now you feel cheated, you totally deserve it.
Seems to me anyone rich enough to spend so much on something so stupid might have gotten some other extravagant accessory to replace it already.
If anyone thought an electronic device would become a family heirloom they are really clueless.
If anyone thought an electronic device would become a family heirloom they are really clueless.
I think the first good wearable computer ever made has great potential as something people might like to collect. I have the first ever (proper/good) laptop for example. It doesn’t work anymore, but I still like having it (and I’d love to restore it some day - just because Apple won’t fix it doesn’t mean it can’t be fixed… it just means Apple isn’t maintaining a large stockpile of spare parts anymore).
In 20 years time, I bet those watches are worth a lot of money in good condition. An original iPhone recently sold at auction for $200,000.
There’s always been a weird market for “luxury” tech that’s a gold-plated version of what everyone else has. I remember gold-plated pre-smartphone phones that went for ridiculous amounts of money; of course it becomes obsolete, it’s targeting those with money but no foresight.
It’s targeting the ones saying stuff like “If you can afford a coffee a day… how much is a coffee anyway, like $100?”
