"MMCs are nearly always more expensive than the more conventional materials they are replacing. As a result, they are found where improved properties and performance can justify the added cost. Today these applications are found most often in aircraft components, space systems and high-end or "boutique" sports equipment."
So it seems the goal was really first to have the more durable material.
>MMCs are nearly always more expensive than the more conventional materials they are replacing.
Most MMCs replace base metals that cost a few dollars per kilogram. Gold currently trades at ~$37,000/kg. Even comparing against a relatively costly base metal like tungsten, gold is three orders of magnitude more expensive. Spending $100 or even $1000 per kg to halve the density of a given volume of material vastly increases the cost of aluminium, but greatly reduces the cost of gold.
I have absolutely no doubt that Apple could significantly reduce their materials cost by using this process.
One of the underappreciated competitive advantages of Apple is their ability to scale complex industrial processes for consumer products.
Going back to the first iMac, their industrial design work has included developing or scaling new manufacturing techniques. Examples include co-molding white and clear plastic to get the liquid look of the iPod, and of course machining laptop bodies out of aluminum blocks.
If there is a company who could make this work at consumer scale, it's Apple.
We see that the golden Rolex has most of the weight in the bracelet and I haven't seen the "full gold" bracelet on the Apple site. The body of the golden Rolex apparently has cca 2 thirds of the golden ounce of pure gold, which is at the moment not more than 700 USD. If Apple can save a half of it, it's around 350 USD saved, not counting the higher expense to make a composite which would reduce the saving.
Now if we accept Gruber's guess that the most expensive watch will be priced in the order of 10 K USD, compared to all the profits per unit, it doesn't seem to be a big percent. But if we factor the expected number of the items sold it's not something that should be ignored. Still I can imagine that they could have simply made a body with the steel "reinforcement" inside and nobody would blink.
I sure expect somebody will properly tear down the Apple Watch Edition to measure the exact amount of gold. If Archimedes managed to do this 2 millenniums ago, why wouldn't we?
I have the feeling that the gold watch portion will actually be significantly smaller portion of the 5K price (if it is 5k) Something like $999 - $1999. The rest of the price will come in the bands at 2 - 4K each.
They still have to sell the watch itself with their margins however. There's nothing stopping you from buying an aftermarket strap, and if they require you to purchase a strap with the watch -- well then it doesn't matter how they split the price up.
Archimedes' trick only works if you know the ratio of materials inside ahead of time. Otherwise it could be e.g. some gold + some copper and have the same density as silver.
If you know it's 18k then all you have to do is weigh it to know how much gold there is. Then measuring volume can tell you the density of the rest of the alloy.
Only if the entire mass is 18k gold. Not if the entire mass is 18k gold plus other Try your approach on two cases: 0% gold, with 100% unknown alloy, and 100% watch components.
Like how foods made with "100% fruit" still have other ingredients.
Probably people should be talking about the reduced density of the material, which is really significant. A men's-size 18k gold watch is heavy... too heavy for many people who don't have enormous meat appendages.
In something like a watch, if it looks like gold and has some bulk without corresponding heft, it feels fake.
I have a fairly cheap mechanical watch combined with a Milanese mesh strap. I ordered a bunch of different mesh straps, looking for the right material and closeness of weave - it's hard to tell from online photos. The biggest difference between the one I chose and the ones I discarded was weight. The discarded ones felt like they were made of plastic.
Try on a 18k Omega Constellation watch. The gold warms up to
skin temperature so quick it feels like a lambs skin band. As to weight--it's not heavy. Acually, I need to look down
to make sure it's still there. As a Horologist, it's by far my favorite watch. It's a simple watch, but it just feels right. My only concern is thiefs notice it more than high
end stainless/alloy watches.
Of course, an 18k gold watch, with the same size as Apple's, that contains more gold is heavier by definition. I wouldn't be surprised if that factored into the decision.
Weight is critical to the iWatch. Look at the advertising they have done to date. It has all been in women and men's fashion magazines (with a particular focus on Asia) whose readers will generally have slighter frames.
The iWatch is quite different from other watch makers in this respect since they are targeting both men/women with the widest age range probably ever seen in the industry. This means the same watch needs to be capable of being worn on a 13 y/o Chinese girl as well as a 35 y/o 6 foot American guy.
The biggest concern for Apple would be the processing part. The new "Apple Gold" could be favorable not only for cost efficiency but especially for machinability. Classic gold watches need a lot of manual work, as far as I know. The new material could help in mass manufacturing the Apple Watch.
There's no reason classic gold watches couldn't be machined by CNC - the hand finishing / handmaking process is just part of the cachet of high end watches.
I don't know anything about watch-making, but gold is pretty soft and likely easy to machine. Ceramic-based composites, on the other hand... I'd be surprised if this were the case.
It appears that Apple is making gold better - amazing.
What is the desirability of gold? It is the essence of the metal or the appearance? If apple is able to improve the essence of the metal and improve the longevity of the appearance - I say it's a win.
So we're down from 118 elements to 30, and we've come up with a list of three key requirements:
- Not a gas.
- Doesn't corrode or burst into flames
- Doesn't kill you.
Now Sanat adds a new requirement: You want the thing you pick to be rare. This lets him cross off a lot of the boxes near the top of the table, because the elements clustered there tend to be more abundant.
At the same time, you don't want to pick an element that's too rare. So osmium — which apparently comes to earth via meteorites — gets the axe.
That leaves us with just five elements: rhodium, palladium, silver, platinum and gold. And all of them, as it happens, are considered precious metals.
Gold has an additional bonus in being very resistant to oxidation or, well, pretty much anything it can be expected to encounter. A not insignificant property I would think.
It's interesting to note that before modern manufacturing processes, Aluminum was also a very valuable metal. It had all sorts of desirable properties and manufacturing costs were so high that it was effectively rare. Cheap hydroelectricity and process scaling have taken care of that however.
One other bonus: gold is mined, AFAIK, at a rate roughly comparable to the increase/production of value of everything else in society. Money is used to represent units of value in society, and inflation helps when the increase in the money supply matches economic growth. The increase in gold seems about on par with world economic growth, as noted in the aphorism that an ounce of gold can always buy a good suit or a good handgun.
Compound is at danger if a very effective manufacturing process appears. So it's better if there is a rare element in the compound. So it looks like the rare element is there to stay.
Why is the willingness of people to pay a lot of money for something because they like its texture or color and more "extrinsic value" than the willingness of people to pay a lot of money for something because they like its corrosion resistance?
I would say it's not. But I bet you if you came up with a replacement alloy that had the same exact texture and color as gold, people would not knowingly pay the same money for it. Just like lab diamonds can be grown to look even better than mined diamonds, the fact that they're from a lab still (sadly) diminishes their value.
Theoretically this is why it has value for hoarders; it's useful. Of course, if suddenly gold was unfashionable and was only needed for plating connectors, I doubt you'd get $1200 an ounce. But it will probably stay fashionable because people like the color.
(As someone who regularly uses public transportation, I personally won't be getting a gold watch. But I see the appeal.)
You could determine that by evaluating the proportion of gold that is used for industrial applications versus ornamentation. Based on my vague Internet research, I believe about three quarters of the gold consumed each year becomes a jewelry. That suggests that much of the value is linked to social status.
Fun fact: the fact that boron carbide is used and happens to also increase hardness of the watch band is interesting as boron carbide is the most common type of base ingredient in armor plates for soldiers due to its hardness which results in the ability to fragment rounds before they can achieve any significant penetration. [1]
As a Swiss it makes me wonder even more. It looks like the Swiss watchmakers are superb when it comes to mechanical engineering, but they're not much into material engineering and electronics. Japanese watchmakers are good with the electronics and materials, not so much with design and marketing. Apple is really in prime position to release a smart watch that people actually want.
This seems like a complete non-issue. "18 karat" isn't a measure of gold by volume, nobody buys gold by volume, and this "Apple gold" has the same amount of gold by weight as any other 18k gold.
Not really - unless you are wealthy enough to ignore the price when buying jewellery, you are buying by weight. Except for the high end jewellery, the price has a direct relationship with weight in gold, not the volume of the piece.
I heard that 18k gold must be 75% solid gold by weight.
Anyway I'm not a metallurgist, but it seems to me that if Apple watch is successful the gold watch will sell in large numbers. If that happens it seems to me it might spawn a cottage industry of gold refining to float off the ceramic and such and reclaim the gold. They aren't the first to make a hybrid like this, but they'll be the first to do it in large quantities.
Also, as others have pointed out the idea that you have to upgrade Apple products when new models come out is bunk. I use my iphones for at least 4 years. My current iphone is 4 years old and I will probably keep it for 5 years. I don't see why (if successful) the Apple watch after getting past the teething phase by the 2nd or 3rd revision you won't be able to keep it as long as an iphone.
People don't need to upgrade their iphones every year. Those that do are doing it purely out of their own desire. Apple devices last in a useful fashion quite a long time. The fact that they design them to do that inspires confidence in their institutional integrity. The fact that people who must have the latest thing don't acknowledge that they're usually upgrading purely for their own felt reasons–not that I'm opposed to it in any way–and not because anyone is forcing them to is just a way to hide the true reasons they upgrade from themselves. They made me do it!
One meme making the rounds now is that Apple will be consuming a significant fraction of world gold production for making the upper end Watches. Those calculations will now have to be recomputed, considering less will be used per watch as previously anticipated.
For table 1 of the patent, you should just ignore the Δ values in the last column and use values from the previous column instead.
All samples are 18k gold, so the reduction in gold mass should be (and actually is) exactly the same as the reduction in total mass.
Looking at their data, for some reason there is a reduction factor of 1.25 applied to all values, except for sample F which has no reduction. My suspicion is that someone wanted to correct for the fact that 25% of 18k gold is not gold, but even then they would have needed a factor of 1/0.75 = 1.333...
This fits right in line with my prediction [1] that we're all overestimating the amount of gold in the enclosure and that it's going to be cheaper than the high estimates. I'm still thinking $2,499 max. Can't wait to see what comes out on Monday.
> This fits right in line with my prediction [1] that we're all overestimating the amount of gold in the enclosure and that it's going to be cheaper than the high estimates.
Keep in mind doing this type of compositing usually makes the gold MORE expensive. Granted Apple could take it to an unprecedented scale but I couldn't wouldn't hang my hat on it just yet.
You're not really giving me much reason to put any stock in your prediction. Your complete lack of detail or explanation makes it sound like you're pulling a number out of the air.
The people making much higher estimates of the gold watch's price (most notably, John Gruber) are backing their estimates with analysis and citations.
Gold bullion (99.9% or finer, or 24 karat) is around $1200 an ounce currently. 18 karat gold is around 75% pure, so an ounce of the gold Apple would have been using is only worth around $900.
Does this mean that when iWatch 2 comes out I won't even be able to sell my original iWatch for gold scrap?
(I.e., can this special Apple Gold(TM) be melted and reused like regular gold, or does it just go in a landfill after two years like every other apple product?)
Ceramics typically have a higher melting point than metals. Perhaps you could just heat to gold's melting temp and then separate out the ceramic particles--it should help that they are so much less dense than gold.
Yes, but gold jewelry is supposed to retain some of its value. If the best you can do with a used Apple Watch is send it to Cupertino then it's a much less responsible purchase than a similarly priced Rolex, which can easily be resold.
It's not so much an investment as a way to keep up with changing tastes. It's very common to "trade in" old jewelry for something new -- your jeweler will pull the stones from the old piece, melt it down, and make you something new.
Will this be possible with Apple gold? Maybe, but it sounds like the salvageable quantity from a watch band will be enough to make a ring, not another watch band.
Gold jewelry, atleast in India, is sold by weight, and not volume, with a percentage markup for workmanship. This development doesn't change the value of Gold as an investment.
The iWatch would be lighter as a result of using this new technology. This reduces the value of the Gold it contains, but increases the iWatch's quality as a techology device.
Gold jewelry is sold by weight everywhere. Except by Apple, who will sell their watch for whatever they feel like, knowing that consumers will compare the band's price to that of a visually similar but far more valuable classic gold band.
My old 3GS is still doing good service for my father in law, and my 2006 iMac only packed in last year. My parents are still using my bought-on-release iPad 2 and 4 years after release its running the latest iOS 8. In my experience the useful lifetime of an Apple product is typically about 6-8 years.
You would probably get a better deal selling the watch as a watch itself than melting it down for its raw gold.
Apple has let you bring you old devices in to be recycled in the past however; Maybe they could extend this to buy back old watches? People have envisioned some upgrade program, though I'm doubtful Apple would be too concerned with melting down old watches for their gold.
If the tech is outdated enough that the OS no longer receives updates, then it's value will be similar to that of a first generation iPad.
I'm sure Apple could buy back, clean, and reuse bands from obsolete watches, but they might be the only buyers if iGold is too difficult for a regular jeweler to work with. It will be interesting to see if one of Apple's first moves on entering the jewelry market is to hamstring the independent secondary market.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_matrix_composite
"MMCs are nearly always more expensive than the more conventional materials they are replacing. As a result, they are found where improved properties and performance can justify the added cost. Today these applications are found most often in aircraft components, space systems and high-end or "boutique" sports equipment."
So it seems the goal was really first to have the more durable material.