Roger Fingas
One of the designers behind the Apple Watch, Marc Newson, has crafted a special-edition hourglass priced at a whopping $12,000. Swiss luxury watchmaker H. Moser & Cie., meanwhile, has launched a new mechanical piece designed to resemble the Apple Watch itself.
The Marc Newson Hourglass for Hodinkee is made out of a single piece of borosilicate glass, filled with 1,249,996 "nanoballs" instead of sand. Each ball is actually made of stainless steel with a copper coating, using an additional anti-corrosion material to prevent the copper from turning green. The product measures 10 minutes per flip.
Only 100 units are being produced. The first six have already sold, and four more should be delivered in early June, according to Hodinkee. The company expects to deliver about 10 per month, since each is handmade.
To discourage casual shoppers, Hodinkee is requiring that buyers put down a non-refundable $6,000 deposit, and pay the remaining $6,000 after a delivery time is set.
The H. Moser product is the Swiss Alp Watch Zzzz, which replaces the Apple Watch's OLED display with a pair of analog watch hands. The device has a four-day power reserve and is "fully rechargeable by hand," according to the company.
Two versions of the watch are being sold: one with a black dial, and another in "Funky Blue." Only 20 units of each are being manufactured — pricing wasn't immediately available.
The most expensive Apple Watch currently available is the Series 2 Edition, which costs up to $1,299 and differs from other Series 2 models simply by using a ceramic case. "Series 0" Editions used real gold, and cost up to $17,000.
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15 Comments
Honestly, I'm not the biggest fan of Marc Newson and his design aesthetics.
Eye-roll inducing verbiage from the hour glass description: "Every Hourglass is filled with approximately 1,249,996 tiny spheres." So that would be... approximately 1,250,000, but subtracting 4 makes it sound more precise?
And "Each is numbered "1 of 100" just below the "HODINKEE" signature on one side". At least they are honest about their misleading labeling. Every numbered item I've ever seen assigns a unique number to each one. "25 of 100", "26 of 100" etc. In that case having "1 of 100" is special. But in this case each of the 100 buyers can pretend they have the original.
I'm sure these are beautiful and cool items, but frankly these are playthings for the 1% of the 1% so who cares.
About ten years ago I had a client who commissioned my firm to design and build an ecommerce site that sold "luxury games" — most of them took the form of normal games, but made with fancy leathers instead of cardboard or whatever. Lots of chess sets, I think a monopoly set, even a frisbee. The most expensive of these was about the price of that hourglass and nowhere near as cool or classy.
If the rich are going to have silly playthings, I'm at least in favor of them being cool and weird.
"Every Hourglass is filled with approximately 1,249,996 tiny spheres." You know there was a chat with an attorney… "You don't understand, we designed this amazing machine that precisely counts out the spheres. We're from Apple, we can do these things." "That's really cute. See the law degree on my wall? Now let's make this copy dumb!"
Copper-coated stainless steel "nanoballs?" How are these not toxic? And how are they an improvement on grains of sand. Sand at least you can sweep up when the hourglass breaks. With a million nanoballs underfoot you'd have to skedaddle to avoid getting it into your system. Hey, I bet a beautiful blue-colored mixture of cyanide and plutonium would be lovely too. And another Darwin Design Award winner. (I hope we get to see a list of who bought them).