Here's how old I am: I remember, as a young boy, watching the James Bond movie Live and Let Die in the cinema. A lot of what happens in that picture went way over my head. (That's probably still true, sadly.) I was young – about 8. But what I remember most vividly was the moment when James Bond, played by the master of the arched-eyebrow, Roger Moore, checks the time.
He looks at his wrist. On it is a watch that’s shiny and steel, but with a face that’s totally black. I remember seeing it in 1973 and being confused. What kind of watch is that? How on Earth can it possibly be useful?
And then, of course, James Bond showed us all. He presses a little button on the side and – amazing! – the watch lights up! The time is displayed in bright red LED digits. People in the audience gasped in delight. I remember sitting there, in that cinema, feeling like I had been zapped with 6,000 volts of electricity: I want one of those, I said to myself.
Not just to myself, of course. I tugged on my father’s sleeve and said it out loud: “I want one of those.” And again: “I want one of those.” I may have said it a few times, because the only other thing I remember about that movie is getting punched in the shoulder by my brother and told to shut up.
The movies have an amazing power to make us want things that we don’t really need – an 8-year-old boy did not need, in 1973, and probably still doesn’t, a fancy watch – and that makes them a great place to introduce new products. The audience is sitting quietly in the dark with no distractions, the screen obstructing most of their fields of vision, and suddenly a movie star uses a product none of the rest of us have ever seen, and it’s cool and new and “I want one of those” just naturally follows. Our brains, unfortunately for us, and our bank accounts, are just wired to desire the new and glamorous.
There aren't any movie stars in Apple Inc public presentations – though you wouldn't know it by the devoted fans of the company and its products that fill the convention halls with thunderous applause and rapturous gasps – but the company has still managed to create a lot of what Live and Let Die created in my 8-year-old brain back in 1973. The products are revealed with suspense and drama, they're always uniformly shiny and glistening, and I have a hard time watching the presentations unspool without wanting to tug at my father's sleeve and say: "I want one of those."
That is, until last week, when the company unveiled the multiple models of its new watch, available online and in shops in four weeks. The spell was broken by the addition, at the top of the product line, of a watch that costs more than $15,000 (Dh55,000).
This from a company that routinely “improves” and redesigns its product line, reconfigures connection ports and power cord specifications, resizes its screens and keyboards, and thinks nothing of requiring its customers to shell out extra cash for all-new cords, adapters and cases because the newer version is, they insist, “much better”.
I have a small closetful of outdated gadgets and computer devices – a couple of Palm Pilot Vs, an original iPod, the second-generation iPhone, even an old Apple IIc computer. All of these devices have two things in common: they were quickly made obsolete by faster, smaller, better iterations; and none of them cost anything remotely close to $15,000.
A price that high – and perhaps here I’m revealing my deep-set parsimony, or maybe it’s just that I’m not nearly rich enough – woke me from my reverie and forced me to confront the unhappy truth: in a few years, the first generation of the Apple Watch is going to look clunky and stupid. It just is: that’s the Law of Cool Electronics. If you don’t believe me, take a walk through your own Closet of Forgotten Gadgets. Are you old enough to remember the early mobile phones, which resembled nothing so much as a telephone handset attached to a brick? When I finally did convince my father to get me a digital watch – this was maybe two years after that thunderstruck moment in the cinema – the watches in the shops were slimmer, sharper and much more advanced than the backward-looking thing on Roger Moore’s wrist. And cheaper, too.
Put it this way: my 1946 Vacheron Constantin pink gold chronograph is still worth a lot of money. When I wear it, I feel smartly dressed and nearly invincible. But a year after shelling out $15,000 for the first Apple Watch, the wearer will be announcing to the world that he is, with total certainty, an idiot.
Unless, that is, they manage to put the pricey version of the watch in the next James Bond movie. I may be older and greyer, but I haven’t really matured much. If I see Daniel Craig checking his $15,000 Apple Watch, I’ll tug the sleeve of whoever is next to me and say: “I want one of those.” Until I’m punched.
Rob Long is a Hollywood writer and producer
On Twitter: @rcbl
