The Value of Electronics
Following my previous post on values, it occurred to me that electronic items have a very bad deprecation value. It used to be that cars are regarded as a bad asset since the value drops immediately after driven off the showroom, but I think nowadays, nothing ‘beats’ electronics.
I saw an advert for the new Apple Watch and was curious what are the prices and what’s new compared to my current watch. Mine is Apple Watch generation 1, purchased in 2016. Currently I think the latest is generation 7. I was browsing on Apple’s website and they offered some rebates for trade-ins. Oh that’s nice, I thought. So I tried the option. Apple asked for the serial number of my current watch (which is using an outdated OS, but still works fine) and after a few seconds, this screen appeared.
I was a bit confused at first but then understood: my watch is not fit for trade in and I might as well chuck it in the recycle bin. Not the exact words but that is what they meant, right? I was annoyed at this. I understand them seeing no resell or reuse value of my watch to them, since the recycle and refurbishment process takes a lot of time and cost, but suggesting for me to recycle it, seems to say that the watch is useless.
In fact it is not. It can still show time well, with automatic adjustment to daylight saving time and different world time zone (when connected to the phone). It can show all the notifications from my phone, and in limited ways, still react to them. And I don’t know how much processing power it has in it, but I am pretty sure it has more than the computer that was used for NASA to get to the moon. Also imagine all the effort in designing the hardware, making it able to withstand the forces while moving but sensitive enough to know I am walking or running; the effort in designing the software being able to dim, show the animation as I swipe between screens and also juggles all the data coming from the phone. It can still work!
Yet the suggestion was to recycle it, and I feel sorry that all those effort to create the watch, will be thrown away. I don’t know, it feels a bit sad.
Anyways, I am not buying an Apple Watch soon, not as long as this one is still working. Hope it goes on and keep serving me well.
Thank you for reading.