This biggest issue I see is that watches, in general, are a thing that are really hit or miss with people. Using your examples, pretty much everyone has a phone, there are uses to a very portable computer, and portable music is a nice luxury. But watches? Not everyone cares to use a watch and for the most part it's a flashy accessory instead of a necessity. Perhaps Apple will find a use for it in time but I can't see a justification for the price and the prices just seem to be almost a parody of Apple products instead of an expected norm.
Right, and that's why, as I said, no one expects the Apple Watch to be a rousing success like the iPhone. Including Apple. Apple is not counting on every iPhone user going and buying an Apple Watch. This is clearly intended to be much more of a niche product, like the Apple TV (though they're making a push for wider adoption of that).
As for the prices, I think $350 for the base model is very very reasonable. Keep in mind that the $199 price tag that you see for most luxury smartphones these days (including the base model of the current generation iPhone, the iPhone 6) is not the actual amount you pay for the phone. It's heavily subsidized through your two-year contract with your cell carrier. To buy the $199 model of the iPhone 6 straight-up, it costs $649. The base model Apple Watch is just over half the cost while packing a lot of the same components into a much smaller form factor. The current generation iPad mini starts at $399, $50 more than the base model of the Apple Watch (which, again, packs many of the same components plus some other components into a significantly smaller body).
I don't know what you're expecting. Given the pricing of Apple's most comparable products, $350 is pretty sensible.
As for the higher-priced models, what you're paying for there is luxury, which is what you would do if you were in the market for a nice watch of the traditional sort as well. The good news for people of more limited means is that every model of the Apple Watch has the same functionality. The $350 one does the same thing as the $550 one which does the same thing as the $17,000. The difference is that the $350 one comes in basically the least expensive case they made that is still durable, visually appealing and water resistant, while the $550 comes in a somewhat nice case made from stainless steel and the $17,000 is made of fucking gold.
What were you expecting the price to be? Knowing that Apple makes high-end consumer electronics, and knowing the (actual, not subsidized) prices of their most comparable products—the iPhone and the iPad, I don't see how anyone could imagine the Apple Watch costing much less than $350. And I would argue that for your $350 watch, you're getting more functionality than you get from a $399 iPad (assuming that you own an iPhone and a laptop computer).
Also I can't also be the one that gets the impression that Apple uses the rest of the tech world as their thinktank. They're great at marketing something that already exists with their own twist but actually coming up with something innovative on their own? Not a chance.
The entire tech world uses each other as their think tank. Look at what Samsung does. Samsung copies every Apple phone. Honestly, if you look at the new Samsung Galaxy S6, it is hard to even distinguish from an iPhone. Apple came out with a finger print scanner, Samsung came out with a fingerprint scanner. Apple came out with NFC payments using said scanner, Samsung did the same. Microsoft has done the same thing practically for decades: the personal computer with GUI was first made by Apple. And then Microsoft copied it to make Windows. I'm not denying, of course, that Apple has not at times copied features from Microsoft or Google, I'm simply illustrating that this is what the entire tech industry does (Samsung is just over the line with that shit, though. They copy look and feel to such a degree...).
Apple's primary skill, it is true, is in creating a good user experience. The best example of this is the iPad. Apple didn't invent the tablet. Microsoft made tablets for almost ten years before the iPad came out. But nobody bought Microsoft's tablets. Why? Because Apple advertised better and duped everyone with the mysterious hypnotic power of marketing (by the way, if it's all about marketing, why don't Apple's competitors simply hire better marketing people? Why is it only Apple who has this mystical power of marketing?)? No. Because Microsoft's Windows XP tablets created a truly terrible user experience, while the iPad created a good one. Using a Microsoft tablet from the pre-iPad days would be very frustrating on the whole, while the iPad is easy to use and it works—it creates a quality experience.
But if you look to my preceding post, I did dispute the claim that Apple has place no innovations into the Apple Watch. I named three technologies that I don't believe anyone else has included in a smartwatch yet: Digital Crown, Force Touch and Taptic Engine. Or are those just constructs of marketing that don't actually exist?
Sorry, that was meant to be a joke.
Ah, okay.
He was (is?) a poster here who used to frequent Apple threads and evangelize Apple in a similar manner.
Jesus fucking Christ, not the "Apple is a religion lol" thing again. Honestly, is it that impossible for some folks to believe that people legitimately buy Apple products because they think that those products provide a better experience than those of Apple's competitors? The whole damn religion comparison is really quite rude and dumb and doesn't reflect reality in any way. It's just a cheap way of insulting people who admire a company that you don't like.
Edit: And by the way, I'm not in here like an evangelist asking if you all have heard the Good News about Tim Cook. This is an Apple discussion thread in which people are slagging on the Apple Watch, and I'm taking an opposing position, saying, "hey, I don't think you have it quite right." It's not like I'm commanding people to prostrate themselves before the glory of premium consumer electronics and then commit mass suicide so that we can all go together to the Great Big Apple Store in the Sky.