Last week, Apple announced their first quarter 2015 earnings, and by now you’ve heard plenty about those numbers. The ridiculous numbers. And let’s be clear here: Apple’s giant quarter was ridiculous. Apple has a lot of money in the bank, in their back pocket and plenty of loose change in the couch cushions, too.
So what happens with all that money? Well, Apple will keep doing what their doing, and they’ll keep making more money. We’ll get new MacBooks soon, and we’ll get another version of iOS, too. After that, new iPhones and iPads. New iMacs will be in the mix as well. A lot of those products will get revealed with the echo chamber screaming, “Iteration!” and people wondering how they’ll sell any.
And then Apple will sell millions of them.
There is a lot that Apple could do with the money that it’s earned over the months, and years, and there’s plenty that the company is already doing. But ultimately, as a consumer, there’s really only one thing that I want to see Apple do, knowing it has a ridiculous amount of money at its disposal:
Make awesome things.
But, to go a bit beyond that, I don’t want Apple to just make awesome things, because they are already doing that. The iPhone is awesome. The MacBook lineup is awesome. iPads are awesome. (Keep in mind that I’m not saying they are perfect, or that you should buy one because you’re doing it wrong by not owning one of them. To each their own.) I actually want to see Apple actually make those awesome things better.
And my case in point is the Apple Watch. Now, I think we all know that when the Watch gets unleashed, it’s probably going to sell out in record time and people are going to be upset when they get it and it’s not as perfect as they think it should be. It’s a first generation device and it’s going to have some hiccups. But, the worst thing about the upcoming wearable is something that we already know even before its launch: It’s going to have terrible battery life.
The “about a day” battery life could probably be manageable if the Watch cost $150. But, that’s not the case. The Apple Watch is going to start at $350, which means that’s probably going to be the Sport variant. The Watch Edition is most certainly going to cost more, and the “regular” Watch is probably going to cost more, too. Add to the fact that Apple will have two different sizes of the Watch and things can potentially be pretty crazy in the pricing department.
Of course, I don’t expect it to get out of hand with a bunch of Watch variants priced to high heaven or anything. Apple’s probably got all of that worked out by now, with the shipping window pinned down to April. I’m just willing to bet that, for a watch that offers barely a day’s worth of battery life, and that’s built to be a companion device to the iPhone, a $350 starting price is going to exclude a lot of people right out of the gate.
My question to you is, based on what we know of the Watch at this point, how much are you willing to pay for it right now? Is the $350 price tag just right? Or is it pricing it right out of reach?