Apple’s PR tour for the Apple Watch doesn’t appear to be slowing down with Apple’s design chief Jony Ive showing off the device and revealing an exclusive collection of never before seen Sport band colors tonight in Milan. Apple this morning kicked off a showcase of the device at Milan’s Salone Del Mobile Design Fair in Itlay, which was attended by Apple executives including marketing head Phil Schiller and designer Marc Newson.
Earlier today, images emerged of a red Sport band, and now Apple appears to be showing off several more exclusive Sport bands at tonight’s event in Italy. An image posted to Instagram shows dark blue, light pink, red, and yellow Sport bands. All of these colors were previously unreleased by Apple and never before seen. At the Design Week event in Milan, Apple is allowing invitees to try-on the Watch and use it with a band of their choosing. Designer Karl Lagerfeld was seen with an Apple Watch paired with a gold link bracelet earlier this week, although it’s not confirmed if the band was designed by Apple.
Attendees of the event were invited by Apple design Marc Newson, who joined the company in late 2014. A gallery of images from the event can be seen below (via Umberta Gnutti Beretta). Apple is holding similar pop-up store events in Paris, London, and Tokyo. It’s worth noting that Italy, where the Milan Design Week events are being held, is not a launch market for the Apple Watch, but an important one in the fashion world.
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Love the Mickey mouse iPhone case in the selfie picture.
The dark yellow band looks gorgeous. I hope they’ll be releasing it to public soon
Notice all of the other band colors that weren’t mentioned beyond dark blue, light pink, red, and yellow. What’s interesting about the sport band is that it crosses over into fashion/lifestyle. The bold colors read as “sport”, just like the current blue, green and pink. All of the softer pink, cream, tan and white read as lifestyle. Brilliant actually.
Is that an orange band? I WANT THE ORANGE BAND!!!
Difficult to tell in the straps photo, but are the pins on the straps gold or silver?
#TheStrap
Is that Stan Lee with the sunglasses squeezing into the selfie? He is always the greatest when it comes to cameos.
I guess I’m the only one that finds this kind of insulting? The “optics” of this are just awful.
Apple can’t even make enough Apple Watches to fill the orders, yet they have enough to give them away to all these rich a-holes, and now they are even giving them “special” colours that the “regular” folks can’t get? I guess this is how you’ll if someone is truly important.
To me this is just like another “f*ck you!” from Apple.
It’s like they are giving a giant middle finger to everyone who isn’t rich and influential.
We won’t even *get* our Watch orders for two months, yet in the meantime we have to watch all these rich f*cks get theirs for free, get preferential treatment, and party it up with Apple execs. Truly awful IMO.
You’re a happy fellow
He has a point though! Don’t you think?
GazooBee is obviously an Apple fan and believe it or not it is possible to like Apple products without having to agree with absolutely everything they do.
One of the many reasons why Apple is so successful is because they can do what they want to do, regardless of consequence, and they know that fans will happily go along with it. That’s not hating or a criticism – it’s a fact.
No other company has that effect on it’s customers and the chances are no other company will. Ever.
The problem is if Apple take their eyes off the ball for too long and start upsetting customers have spent thousands of their hard earned wages they will lose those customers forever. Once bitten twice shy and all that.
Do you ever post anything that doesn’t come across as bitter and miserable?
Touche. :-)
This is really jive. Steve Jobs would have allowed any of this.
Feeling like a 2nd class citizen.
That’s how the rich get richer. Too many freebies!!!
Steve Jobs was famously against “brands” and against selling Apple as a brand in particular. If that isn’t bad enough, it’s pretty obvious that Apple is trying hard to become what’s known as a “luxury brand” which itself is a perversion of the whole concept of a “brand” so even if you like the idea of Apple as a brand, a luxury brand is the opposite of that.
The point of a brand is that it’s egalitarian. The Sultan of Brunei drinks the same can of coke that a construction worker in Miami drinks. A “luxury brand” is the opposite of that, it’s about exclusivity, and it’s about adding huge amounts of money onto a product that has no relation to it’s cost or manufacture, so that it can only be afforded by the insanely filthy rich. It’s purposely exclusive. That’s the whole point.
This is precisely, word for word, what apple is doing with the Edition Watches. Take the price of the Watch itself, add the price of the gold it’s made of … but then add $10,000 f-ing dollars to the price on top, so that rich people feel cool about buying it and so that it is definitely “out of the reach” of the rabble. This is the entire point of such pricing and the entire point of the “luxury brand.” There is simply no denying it no matter what anyone says.
Apple is trying to be a luxury brand, and as a long time Apple user and supporter I find it disgusting as do many others. It’s the exact opposite of what they should and used to stand for, and my love for Apple products is not going to stop me from saying so.
And yet, at the same time they are selling one for $350 that does everything the $10k watch does.
I would agree with you if the $10k version was the _only_ version. Or if it had some exclusive features. But it doesn’t. They provided a unique look in at an exclusive price but that is IN ADDITION TO two other versions that are functionally equivalent and well within reach of the “common” man.
@friedmund1: Think about Steve Jobs, and how much money he had. Then think about how much money he turned down, or how much money he *could* have had on top of his billions, if he had been the typical business dude grasping for money.
He literally could have been the richest man in the world if he wanted to. He certainly had the drive, but he wasn’t and he didn’t, because that kind of stuff doesn’t actually matter to anyone who has any real humanity.
Now think about how he lived his life, how he dressed, and what “luxuries” he had. One of the richest most famous guys in the world with a huge amount of actual *power* to go with it, and he walked around in trainers and jeans and spent his whole life just trying to make good products for people. For *all* people.
He was the exact opposite of these people that Apple now is catering to, and pretty much the opposite of you from what I can gather from your remarks. That’s what I mean about these people being “awful human beings,” and that’s the problem with the way Apple works today.
At least we can both agree that Steve Jobs was pretty awesome (a lot of people these days only want to talk about SJ’s negatives… of which there were also many). However, that didn’t really translate over into Apple making products “for *all* people”.
Apple has always been seen as the “overpriced” alternative. Always. The original Mac debuted at $2500 which is nearly $6000 in today’s dollars. That’s hardly affordable by *all*. The iPod was, on paper, way overpriced compared to other MP3 players of the day. A “normal” Mac laptop has always cost north of $1000 when the “everyman” Dells and the like were selling for $300-$500.
No. Apple, even under Steve Jobs, was not trying to reach *all* people. They were trying to create the _best_ products… price be damned (which is why many of us love these products).
In fact the Watch, at $350, is one of their _cheapest_ new products ever. More than ever before they really are trying to reach *most* people.
I love how you can act all pious and say that “rich people are terrible when they buy themselves things” when you, yourself, spent $2000 on an Apple watch. In my book that’s A-OK (you have money and you spent it on something you wanted) but somehow you live in a twisted world where you’re an awful human being for doing so.
You must wake up every morning and hate yourself for owning all of the Apple products when you could have foregone all of that and given the money to charity…
You’re a hypocrite and an asshole. You’ve proven it time and time again on this forum. You do nothing but spread negativity. If people who enjoy purchasing Apple products make you so unhappy… why do you come here so much?
I’ve been wondering the same exact thing. Drake, Pharrel, Katy Perry, etc. were all wearing them at Coachella last weekend.
Yet, I was up at 3am est to get a June delivery date.
It’s about advertising.
I don’t know you, so it’s possible you have 100,000 people + following you on Instagram… but I doubt it ;-)
Giving away ~10 watches so that ~10 million people see it is just good business.
I love how in just a few short weeks the Apple Watch went from something that “nobody really wants” to “HEY THEY GOT ONE FIRST NO FAIR”
Whereby with “all these rich a-holes” you refer to Lagerfeld, or did you see somebody else being given anything special? I tentatively agree on your classification of Lagerfeld, but that’s one case.
Still, try to think of how you would try to get your unique new product that has the name of a watch but isn’t one, in the hands (or on the wrists) of everyone in the world. Could you make it without the fashion world (Lagerfeld) and some rich a-holes? Just asking, I don’t have the answer.
Why do you assume that because a person has money that they are an a**hole? I’ve come across an equal number of poor and rich a**holes in the world, but that’s just me.
If you are a 1%-er as they say nowadays, or even a 10%-er, then you have ridiculously over the top amounts of money. You have excess money that you have no use for other than to spend on luxuries for yourself. If you are one of the fashion elite, you similarly have gigantic piles of cash that you spend wholly on yourself, and on “fashion items” that are themselves absurdly overpriced. Overpriced far beyond any of the costs or time involved in making them and overpriced beyond any reasonable or even unreasonable profit margin.
If you are any of these people, you are an a-hole by definition.
Wow Gazoo… you’ve reached a new low here. You come off as a child that is simply jealous of what others have.
Many people in this world have worked VERY hard to get their status and wealth… and you don’t need to be a “1%er” to afford a $350 watch. The fashion industry in particular is VERY cutthroat, you must prove yourself over and over again and use every minute of your life working in order to get anywhere. If those people have enough money to afford a gold watch then I’m happy for them!
Even in my position where I’m very far away from the 1% I could reasonably save and buy a $10k watch if I really wanted one. Many people do “silly” things like this because it makes them happy. Like buying a $60,000 sports car or taking a $20,000 vacation for a month in Europe.
Everyone has different things they want from life. For many, that means working your ass off to attain the money you want to buy the things you want… don’t begrudge people for doing just that.
@friedmud1: You would still be an a-hole by definition in my book, but what I’m arguing is actually about principles and moral “right and wrong” not about people per se.
Interestingly, I must be richer than you because I could walk out and buy an Edition Watch tomorrow if I wanted to. I just don’t want to, because I don’t want to be an awful human being.
Haha… I’m pretty sure you just proved YOURSELF to be the a-hole around here. And not because of the amount of money you have but because you act like an a-hole :-)
You have just proven that there are a-holes at all levels of wealth. At least we know that there is _one_ at _your_ level!
@friendmud1: You know pretty much nothing about me other than the fact I post here, have contrary opinions to most people, and am strident about voicing them. None of which makes me an “a-hole” really, but everyone has their own definition I guess.
To me, an a-hole is someone who is despicable, who has poor or evil motivations, or who sets out to harm others either on purpose or through selfishness and self-absorption. My motivations are actually as pure as the driven snow, despite my language and my tendency to call people out, or point out their obvious flaws.
If I was going to insult me, I would probably go with “strident” or “preachy.” I’m well aware of my own flaws.
Who cares? Only people with awful taste, or having been paid to do so, will wear the Apple Watch.
Yep… Apple found ~2-~3 million people so far that have terrible taste. Or do you think Apple is paying all of those people to pre-order a watch?
Could it not be that the Watch is useful to many of us and that it looks good enough to go on our wrists? Nah, it couldn’t be.
Thanks for your insightful comment on an Apple website about a product your not interested in. You really added to the conversation! Your life and taste is obviously above reproach and affords you plenty of free time…
Marketing 101. Comments like these make me wonder why I even bother to visit any forums. Childish, insipid, and self-centered comments like these add nothing to the discourse. What you see as favoritism and hob-knobbing is THE BEST WAY to achieve maximum marketing exposure, expand the brand into a “fashion statement” and speak to customers and investors at the same time.
Maybe you should have gotten up a little earlier last Friday morning and you wouldn’t be waiting “two months” for your Apple Watch…
Ordered the minute the store was live actually @ 12:02. Spent $2,000 and will receive it in early to mid June.
I don’t know anyone who ordered the SS Black who got a delivery date earlier than mid-May, and three or four of the commenter’s I’ve seen claimed to have ordered at 12:02. I ordered at 12:08 (wasting the first seven minutes refreshing the website before switching to the Apple Store iPhone app), and I also got a June delivery.
The only customers who seemed to have had a significant advantage ordering immediately after the starting bell were Sport buyers. For everyone else, it was basically a lottery.
I got May myself for a 42mm SS Black Sport. I lost a little bit of time inputting Apple Store Gift Cards… Argh!
After I placed the order I realized that the SS Classic Leather was still available for April 24th. I would have switched to that if not for the Gift Cards. Sigh.
Oh well… we’ve already done plenty of waiting! Might as well do some more!
Think of it this way then (which is how Apple sees it): they’ve spent something like $30 million on tv adverts for the watch. Handing out a few dozen or even a few hundred freebies is far cheaper and likely just as effective marketing. You want your device being worn by and seen on people that normal people follow. This converts to more sales of Apple Watch, which absolutely will have the same sort of halo effect the iPod had. Remember when everyone was claiming the iPod was too far afield for Apple and a waste of their time as well as an abandonment of its core constituency? The iPod saved Apple and is a big part of why we even have MacBooks and iPads and iPhones today. The Apple watch will make more people part of the Apple ecosystem as they graduate into Mac customers, which is good for everyone. Even cranks who think “Steve would have never done [insert least favorite thing Apple is doing now].”
Just think of it this way, Apple is marketing to rich fashionistas, so that when rich wannabes buy the Gold Editions, they’ll be subsidizing all those Sport watches for the masses. If Apple didn’t expect this or plan for it, then the Sport models would have been priced higher, but Apple did plan for this and priced the Edition so high that they could lower the entry-level price of the Sport.
Forgot to add, one, we don’t know if any of these people got Apple Watches, other than Lagerfeld, and the straps were all plastic sport straps that cost $49. Big deal.
As for “get”ting our watch orders, I’m getting mine next week. It’s too bad if you could wake up in time to place your order, when everyone and their cousin knew that it might be in short supply.
As for “preferential treatment”, you can go to one of the select Apple Stores and be given a personal 30 min tour of an Edition just like those rich folks. Happy? I doubt it.
Never did it actually say in the article that anyone got anything for free. I read the entire article not once did it say “people in attendance got something for free”. But even if they did so what? Does this affect you in any way? You’re still gonna get your Apple Watch, and eventually those bands will be available to the public. Patience clearly isn’t your fortay. And may I suggest a little anger management counseling?
Do you really think Apple are going to rock up to a event like this and charge the attendees for the watch? It doesn’t work like that and you know it.
Of course celebs getting a free watch doesn’t affect the public from getting theirs (other than the public are having to wait in some cases months to get their grubby hands on one), but if you remove the rose-tinted specs from your eyes you’d see GazooBee has a perfectly valid point. See, it’s dedicated Apple customers who spend a substantial amount of their wages on iPhones, iPads and Apple Watches who have made Apple the colossus it is today not celebrities who accept freebies from Apple one week and Microsoft the next.
Try looking at articles like this from the view of the man in the street who is dedicated to Apple, as opposed to the richest company in the world who is dedicated to taking your money. You can still own Apple stuff AND criticise them believe it or not- it’s not against the law.
I agree. I don’t like the whole special treatment rich people get. They are already rich. What’s wrong with them paying like everyone else.
Not really knowing anything about how fashion products are rolled out, I’d love for 9to5 to do a comparison piece on a luxury watch or clothing brand and what ends other brands must go to in order for their product to stream into the consciousness of the fashion world in order to “matter”.
It may provide some insight into Apple’s marketing approach to its latest product, and show whether Apple is modelling itself after other luxury names, is taking an original track, or a combination of both.
For one, the Watch is different in being functionally the same in all materials (another example of how everything’s done in the design process at Apple). It’s really interesting what they’re doing, and everybody will want to know how.
What happened to Mac Mini? They forgot all about other stuff that made Apple :-)
Does the watch come with Soy milk?
Funny thing is, I got a phone call from Apple today asking me to confirm a few billing details, it came to the point in the conversation where I was given the opportunity to ask a question, I asked the Apple Advisor or whoever it was why the watches are taking all long to be delivered, I mean come on, the reason we “Pre-Order” is so we can have the device as soon as it is released. They said to me that someone must have ordered before me and I’m just waiting in line for my watch…. WTH
The hope of preordering is to get one right when it’s released, but I mean cmon…. With apples huge launches, it’s inevitable that the majority of people who preorder will have to wait a Little longer. This product is one of the most complex, with so many options and SKU’s it’s probably a nightmare to try to allocate enough across the initial launch countries. You can wait a few extra weeks I bet
There are a lot of SKUs but they’re probably weren’t packaged before preorders went online; the watch/band combos are almost certainly being assembled to order (except for the black steel, which doesn’t have multiple permutations). That would explain the two-week lead time and wide delivery windows between preorders and shipments. A two-week preorder run gives them enough data to estimate how many of each SKU to prepackage going forward.
It is just a place where rich people meet with luxurious dresses and watches just to show off themselves.
Obv they don’t care that Italy is not part of the first wave of Watch selling. They care about how they look and location.
The rich know nothing about the problems of the poor; and care even less.
And the poor are the ones you step over on your way out the Opera !
#Lovies
good…
Just read through the comments, my pet had to comment, Miow.
:-) At least your pet has the decency to just say something light and polite instead of making overgeneralizations about certain groups of people ;-)
Looks like Jony Ive is enjoying his fair share of Spaghetti and Meatballs :D
Oh, and was Lady Gaga there? And what about Paris Hilton or somebody from One Direction?
The rollout of the Apple Watch is something out of The Great Gatsby. Maybe they needed to handle it this way. But this is the company that now believes it’s okay to sell overpriced headphones with too much bass.
Meanwhile, Apple, please fix the clunkiness of iTunes, and Photos makes me wish I’d kept iPhoto.
What am I really waiting for, since Apple Watch 1.0 doesn’t arouse me?
The Force Awakens.
It makes me feel kind of sick to see Apple cavorting with this vile industry. This is not the Apple I’ve grown to love.
What’s vile about the design industry?
Looks like the old days with a woman circulating around with a tray full of cigarettes, cigars, etc.
http://frenbet99.blogspot.com/2015/04/frenbet99-promo-bonus-depo-10.html
Do you think maybe Apple is pushing these events because they 1. hired the new store head honcho lady who most likely is into fashion and 2. just to keep the news going on it. The watch is not going to be the same seller the phone is and I doubt they expect it to be. I would think most people on budgets, if they want one, will wait at least until the next version is released since they will more than likely keep their watch longer than anyone attending Milan for fashion. :-) I guess this type of promotion works for some, myself, though I love the iPhone I see no need for this, my $45 watch suits me fine, having ‘no taste’ is a benefit unto itself. LOL
You know those people who maintain that Apple products are just luxury baubles that people buy more for the prestige and the aesthetics than for any real practical purpose? Well, headlines like these make it hard to refute that stand point: “Apple’s Jony Ive reveals Apple Watch w/ exclusive collection of Sport band colors at Milan Design Week” :-(
As it seems the most extravagant wristband design doesn’t come from Apple and it was presented in Frankfurt not Milan, lol :-) http://www.rtl-hessen.de/video/8176/aeppler-watch-statt-apple-watch
#tickdifferent