When Apple announced its Watch Series 2 earlier today, it said that the watch would come in a new ceramic white finish to complement the returning aluminum and stainless steel finishes. Completely absent was any mention of the Apple Watch Edition branding, which Apple used last year to launch a pair of $10,000-and-up Apple Watches that worked the same way as the cheap ones but were made out of actual gold instead of workaday, plebeian metals.
It turns out that the new ceramic watch is the Apple Watch Edition, and all mentions of the gold versions have been scrubbed from Apple's site. The company began downplaying the gold watches earlier this year, removing them from the main Apple Watch product page circa the iPhone SE launch.
The "reimagined" ceramic Apple Watch Edition starts at $1,249, roughly twice the cost of a stainless steel Series 2 and three times the cost of an aluminum Series 2 (the Sport branding also seems to have disappeared from the watches themselves, though it still applies to some of the bands). The Edition is still more expensive than the other models and is still intended as a sort of status symbol, but it is no longer the hulking monument to conspicuous consumption that it once was. And on Apple's end, giving buyers an upmarket option they can actually afford is probably a good way to drive up the average selling price. Everyone wins.
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