luxury

Read Cult of Mac’s latest posts on luxury:

Apple Card gets $999 accessory you didn’t know it needed

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GRAY
Your Apple Card deserves a classy wallet.
Photo: GRAY

Exorbitantly priced Apple accessories are all the rage this summer thanks to the new Pro Stand, so why not grab one more stupid expensive add-on for your Apple Card?

Singapore-based luxury brand GRAY unveiled its newest range of minimalist card wallets this week. Like the Apple Card, it’s made of titanium and has a beautiful minimalist design. And like the Pro Stand, it will set you back a cool grand.

Take a closer look:

This $43,000 Apple Watch will appeal to your inner oligarch

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golld Apple Watch
This Series 4 will cost serious dollars.
Photo: Caviar

Caviar, a Russian company that tricks out iPhones in gold and precious gems, has an Apple Watch Series 4 “for those who cannot be surprised easily.”

So let’s see if that’s you. How does $43,850 strike you?

The headline may have ruined the surprise, but you might be startled once you learn the details that got the watch to that price point.

Finnish company gives iPhone the Midas touch

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Think your iPhone 7 looks like all the others? These gilded 7s, which includes one to mark the Year of the Rooster, were designed to appeal to the Chinese market.
Think your iPhone 7 looks like all the others? These gilded 7s, which includes one to mark the Year of the Rooster, were designed to appeal to the Chinese market.
Photo: Legend

Martti Virta knew he wanted to create a luxury brand. He just needed an everyday object he could reimagine with opulence.

The Helsinki entrepreneur knew little about the artisanal processes to make gold and jewels adhere to a surface but admired how the famed S.T. Dupont of Paris did so with fountain pens and lighters in pioneering the “Art of Living Well.”

Virta settled on the iPhone as his popular status symbol, but it proved a difficult surface to coat with gold.

Poor people should give up iPhones for healthcare, congressman says

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iPhone-7
Why buy healthcare when you can eat an iPhone?
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Are you unable to afford your new health insurance premiums now that Obamacare might be going away? Well, according to Rep. Jason Chaffetz, you should trade in your iPhone.

The GOP’s replacement plan for Obamacare has been met with plenty of hate from both sides of the aisle, but in an interview this morning, Chaffetz pointed out that people just aren’t focusing on how the new law will give us all more choices.

Apple Watch beats Rolex in luxury brands ranking

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Not everybody who bought the Apple Watch is wearing it.
The Apple Watch was the only smartwatch which made the list.
Photo: Apple

The Apple Watch has displaced Rolex on a list of luxury global brands, as measured by analytics firm NetBase, measuring social media mentions and consumer sentiment from more than 700 million posts between 2014 and 2015.

The Apple Watch took the no. 1 place in the list’s “watches” category — made all the more impressive by the fact that it was the only smartwatch featured. Other watchmakers it outranked included Tag Heuer, Richemont, Curren and Patek Phillippe.

Your boring Apple gear would look so much better dipped in 24k gold

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Goldgenie offers the iPhone 6s with a couple of additional upgrades, diamonds and gold.
Goldgenie offers the iPhone 6s with a couple of additional upgrades, diamonds and gold.
Photo: Goldgenie

Sure you can get you MacBook or iPhone in gold or rose gold colors. Or for a few bucks more – OK, several thousand dollars more – you can get your Apple products plated with real 24K gold.

Maybe the bitten Apple logo on your devices is enough status symbol for you, but Goldgenie, with offices in London and Dubai, is betting there are a few Apple fans drawn to the hypnotic shine of the precious metal.

Jony Ive denies that Apple is turning into a luxury company

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Hermes Apple Watch bands are now available on their own.
Apple couldn't wait to hop into bed with French luxury house Hermès.
Photo: Apple

Jony Ive sure loves his designer goods, but don’t suggest to him that products like the new high-end Apple Watch Hermès are turning Apple into a luxury company.

“We don’t think in those terms,” Ive says in a new interview. “I’m not comfortable with words like exclusive.”

This from the guy who made a $17,000 smartwatch!

Luxury watchmaker IWC takes on Apple Watch with new strap sensor

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big-pilot
This ugly sensor is IWC's answer to Apple Watch. Photo: IWC

If you need more evidence that the luxury Swiss watchmakers are as truly screwed as Jony Ive predicted, look no further than IWC’s laughable answer for keeping up with the Apple Watch.

The luxury watch company is adding a smart sensor called IWC Connect to the strap of its Big Pilot watch, a favorite of horologist collectors including John Mayer. Details on what the fitness sensor can actually do haven’t been revealed, but IWC created a ridiculously dramatic teaser trailer for the new strap that you can watch below:

See Jony Ive and Marc Newson talk Apple Watch design

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Jony Ive gets animated as he talks about Apple Watch. Photo: Vogue
Jony Ive gets animated as he talks about Apple Watch. Photo: Vogue

Jony Ive and his BFF Marc Newson launched Apple into the luxury market this week with the Apple Watch, which expertly straddles the line between gadget and fashion accessory.

Apple’s dynamic designing duo sat down with Vogue’s Suzy Meeks this week to talk about their first foray into the fashion world — as well as what inspired them to create the Apple Watch. We rounded up the top 8 revelations from the pair’s appearance earlier this week, but Vogue just made the full interview available online, and it’s full of juicy insights into Jony and Marc’s thought processes.

Watch the full interview below:

Your new 30K iWatch is just a click away

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Got $30k to drop on this diamond encrusted Apple Watch bracelet? Photo: Mervis
Got $30k to drop on this diamond encrusted Apple Watch bracelet? Photo: Mervis

We don’t know when Apple Watch will hit stores, but if you can’t wait to strap your wrist with the most luxurious Apple product ever created, Mervis Diamonds has the perfect band to match the 18k gold Apple Watch you’ve been lusting after. And it’ll only set you back $30,150.

If The Doctor Used Headphones, They Would Be The Brilliant Parrot Ziks [Review]

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post-238595-image-70c3e164788375f98de7d8b4fe0c6a82-jpg
The Starck-designed Parrot Zik.

It has the technological sophistication of a sonic screwdriver. Its design elements look as if pulled straight out of another dimension. And there may not be another set of headphones on this planet — or any other — baked with as many ingredients as the Parrot Zik.

But we were curious — would all this tech work? And how would the Ziks sound? So we poked them with a stick, and here’s what we discovered. Allons-y!

Zik by Parrot
Category: Bluetooth Headphones, Circumaural
Works With: Phones, MP3 players
Price: $399

This Ghastly Gold iPhone Case Will Cost You $10,000

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solid-gold-iPhone-case

Look at that big ugly thing. It’s not pretty, it’s boring, and it’s not even all that protective — leaving the top and bottom ends of your iPhone exposed to the elements. But despite these insufficiencies, its manufacturers will charge you $10,000 for the thing simply because it’s made from solid gold.

This $30K iPhone Is Also A Three-Timezone Pocketwatch

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Gresso-iphone4-lady-blanche

Presumably, it takes intelligence to become rich, which is what makes it so mystifying to me that so many “luxury products” are things that only swollen-tongued mooncalves would actually buy. Take, for instance, Gresso’s custom iPhone, which costs $30,000, and tries to justify that with three in-laid clocks with ten year time reserves apiece… despite the fact that if you just turn it on, the iPhone has an infinitely more accurate clock for as many time zones as you care to throw at it. Oh, there’s also the ubiquitous slathering of Swarovski crystals, if crushed glass floats your boat. Horf.