Apple’s finally revealed pricing and availability details for the Apple Watch.
The basics of the Apple watch were already fairly well known, which only left questions around battery life, pricing and availability to deal with.
On battery life, it appears that Apple’s fallen into the same problem space that pretty much every non-Pebble smartwatch seems to sit in, which is the nice way of saying that it won’t last a day. 18 hours, according to Apple’s Tim Cook, and in his view “that should be enough for most people”.
What about pricing? That’ll depend on which Apple Watch you want. The entry level Apple Watch Sport will cost $US349 with a 38mm band or $US399 with a 42mm band. Moving up the range, the Stainless Steel Apple watch will cost you between $US549-$US1049 depending on your choice of watch band for a 38mm variant, or $US599-$1099 for the 42mm variant, again depending on your choice of band.
Feeling flush with cash? The limited edition Apple Watch Edition Watch (that’s a hell of a name) will come in “limited quantities” and be priced from $US10,000. No, that’s not a typo.
Tim Cook indicated that pre-orders would start on April 10th with device availability on April 24th, including in Australia. I’m waiting on Apple Australia’s release with local pricing, and will update when that comes through.
Update: Which it just did. The Sports models will cost $499 and $579 respectively, the stainless steel models will run $799 to $1629 respectively, and the premium Apple Watch Editions will start at $14,000.
Again, those are figures including GST, so what happens when we convert from US prices? At current exchange rates, while they’re not exactly “budget” priced, they equate quite fairly when you consider that US prices always omit tax and the Australian dollar isn’t particularly healthy right now.
Update: Ouch. Apple giveth, and Apple taketh away. As I note over at PC Mag Australia, the flip side of this is that the price of every iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus model also quietly went up at the same time.