Touching the back wall of the Apple store

> We were fascinated with the Apple store in the mall because it was essentially an interactive luxury goods store where they'd let you actually grasp all the luxury goods with your teenager hands.

The secret being, of course, that they're not actually luxury goods. Like many things at the mall, it's a high-margin doodad sold to people in the proverbial impulse aisle of life. Dippin' Dots, knock-off watches, Build-A-Bear workshop - all in same vein of "looks expensive but is cheap to make" no different from the iPod.

I think the American shopping mall is one of the things that helped me contextualize Apple's brand identity. Apple does good marking in isolation or on a screen, SF Pro looks very stunning and the Apple logo is chic and simple. But so is the Cartier logo. And the Rolex storefront. Or any of the other genuinely valuable things sold at malls. It's the marketing that people respond to, not the value of a good.

I largely agree with you, but I think one of Apple’s secret sauces (and they aren’t the only one) is that while their products are to some marketed as luxury items, they are in fact coupled with extremely high utility which is a somewhat new concept, in my view.

The iPhone or your equivalent Android device truly is one of the most useful inventions humanity has ever created, especially for the era that we currently exist in.

> while their products are to some marketed as luxury items, they are in fact coupled with extremely high utility which is a somewhat new concept, in my view.

Well, a Rolex has extremely high utility too. It's just that it has much less utility than a digital watch you can buy for $23 from Casio. The purpose of spending the other $59,477 [ https://www.rolex.com/en-us/watches/sky-dweller/m336935-0008 ] is just that you can say you did.

Apple products are similar. They have high utility that is nevertheless not as high as competing products that are much cheaper. All of the value is coming from the luxury branding.

I don’t agree at all. Neither is Rolex high utility, nor is anyone fooled that an analog watch which sets you back 3-4 orders of magnitude more than digital/smart watches should be higher utility.

Products competing directly with Apple products offer, at best, equivalent utility and performance for no more than 1 magnitude cost difference. Flagship android phones have cost about the same as iPhones for the better part of a decade and macbooks are often price competitive with a similarly specced ultra books. It’s understood that cheaper phones and laptops have similar utility for the average user, but some aspect of performance or quality is often a tradeoff.

Rolex is not high utility, it is harsh environment. Real Antarctic expeditions, mountaineering, pre-GPS flight and navigation, SCUBA diving, sea navigation, desert navigation, etc. You could rely on your Rolex not to be the component that fails and gets you killed or lost.

Of course, like the SUV, often it's actual use case is a far cry from what it is actually capable of doing.

Except mechanical watches fail all the time. The sapphire glass shatters, or a strong impact disrupts the movement, or a user doesn't screw down the crown and water enters the device. They require expensive regular services.

Rolex has a long history of being a tool watch, and mechanical watches can be used in a lot of neat ways, but I would never want to depend on one in a life or death situation without fully understanding a backup plan.