Here’s a small detail you might have missed about the Apple Watch. In pictures for the Apple Watch Edition, the 18-karat solid gold version of Cupertino’s upcoming wearable, the Digital Crown has a small dot at the end that matches the color of the watch strap. But here’s a question for you: Is Apple going to allow users to customize the Digital Crown as easily as they can swap out Apple Watch wristbands?
Over at the Six Colors blog, ex-Macworld editor Dan Moren posts some interesting thoughts about how Apple might go about allowing users to customize the color tipping the Digital Crown. One of his best theories, although it’s definitely a little crazy, is that the tip of the crown is actually a miniature LCD screen on the Apple Watch Edition, which changes its color when you swap in new bands!
That’s an awesome idea, but it seems a little out there, even for Apple. But if that’s not it, what is it? Moren ultimately says the simplest solution is probably the best one.
Let’s go with the simplest solution: you’ll probably pick the accent color when you buy it, and then basically be stuck with it, no matter which band you choose. The thinking perhaps being that most people will stick with a single watchband, viewing the whole watch-plus-band as a single unit (like most fancy watches). Cool as swappable crowns would be, I’m hard pressed to imagine that the crowd Apple wants this model to appeal to — the fashion-conscious market — is going to be keeping track of or swapping out replacement dots/crowns.
I think that’s probably right. For one thing, replacing a small dot on the end of a Digital Crown is a lot more fiddly than the kind of solution Apple usually favors. For another, I doubt that most people will really care that the small dot at the tip of the crown doesn’t match the band.
But here’s a thought. The Digital Crown is probably the part of the Apple Watch that will wear out the quickest, since you’ll be constantly twisting and turning it to interact with your device. For the expensive Apple Watch Edition devices, which could cost thousands of dollars, is it really so crazy to think that Apple might not make it easy to swap out the Digital Crown in case it gets worn out? And if it does, selling a replacement Digital Crown along with every Apple Watch band would be a fairly trivial thing to do.
What do you think? How will Apple handle this?
Source: Six Colors
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
7 responses to “Apple might allow you to customize the Apple Watch’s digital crown”
It’s simple, but so obvious people are overlooking it. Apple will initially not allow any customisation or swappable bands at all.At the bottom of each web page detailing 3 categories of Apple WATCH,it clearly states which watches will be available to buy in which configurations.Eg Apple WATCH SPORT space grey will be the only watch with black ‘sport band’. There will be a total of 34 configurations (10 SPORT,18 Watch, 6 EDITION)-that is all.
Except when you read what Apple actually said, that’s not what they “clearly” stated at all. Rather they say this: “There are so many ways to make Apple Watch your own. To help you choose the expression that suits you best, we’ve curated three collections of cases and bands that we feel work particularly well together.” To me, this “clearly” suggests that there will be many, many, more watch band configurations in addition to the 34 highlighted by Apple.
The bigger question is can you upgrade the internals like the system on a chip and battery as new models are released. This is especially important if the gold watch retails for $10,000 as some are rumoring. Of course, what’s another $10,000 for an upgrade, right?
i personally favour the notion that, when the time comes, Apple will allow – sorry Invite – those who have paid for Edition to exchange the main part of the way against some sort of upgrade fee. I dont they will start dismantling the devices to pull out parts etc during a service – easier just to swop the watch and then do that inside stuff like they do with the rest of their computers, out of the way.
I really hope that with the internal dimensions of the watch never change. So, as components get smaller are made there will be room for more battery, or new sensors. … But also that the total of the internals can be swapped out from one generation watch to the next.
With the gold, and the Stainless Steel, I would hope that ONLY the internals would be swapped out, including the crystal face. I think these are heirloom type watches.
With the Aluminum, I would think that it would be easier just to give an upgrade price. … Because the aluminum would be scratched too much.
One moment you have Ive saying that providing customization is a sign of weak design and the next people are speculating on optional crown colors.
The gold watch is going to be troublesome. They may be able to charge a premium of say no more than $1500 but anything more then that and anyone buying one will be labeled a sucker when people start getting their watches gold plated.
Which makes you wonder if this crown color thing is exclusive to the gold watch as a way to identify it from a plated knockoff, which means the crowns will be permanently attached.
Agree to disagree! :-) I think at most at launch (different a year down the line) you’ll be able to get ‘sport band’ with whichever ‘model’ of Apple Watch (Edition) you purchase. This despite the well made point that the internals in a gold Edition watch and your common or garden Sport watch will be exactly the same.This is Apple’s genius,getting people with different incomes to all be able to buy the same technology-at the maximum they can afford. But regardless,the fun in all this is not yet knowing-They have done so well to reveal just enough without telling all.