What bothers me the most about this is I bought the Apple Magnetic Charging Dock and this was also missing the brick! WTF? I’m buying this as an extra item to charge my new watch, the brick should be included with a charging device, right? It cost $80, so it wasn’t some cheap knockoff.
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I’m talking about the people who will think they’ll need it, but decide to never use it anyways.
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I’ve installed one of these:
on each side of our bed. We each can charge our iPhones and Apple Watches overnight without using any of those cubes. Charging jacks in our car and our desktop iMacs. We only need the cubes when traveling in a hotel, but even then we could charge from the MacBookPro.
What will cause havoc is when they drop Lightning and make everything USB-C.
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For those folks, Apple can just include chargers that failed QA and give small shocks 
I usually just leave them in the box. It just make sense, when you already have an iPhone that you need to activate your Watch its guaranteed you already have 1 charger or more.
What I don’t get is giving a power brick to rich people who can afford the Hermes or Watch Edition. Gotta make them richer I guess.
Not sure if this is new news. I know they announced in the keynote, but the last two Series 3 we have purchased in the family didn’t come with adapters
I hear a lot of people talking about this, but…thinking this through, how many things this last year in the Real World have gone down in price, or even stayed constant?
Most of the things I’m buying have been either staying constant, or going up. Inflation is a thing.
So I don’t see “keeping the same price point, yet losing the charger” as a price hike - at least not in the broad economic sense.
I’m really curious though how many people “really need one”. In order to REALLY NEED one (unable to charge your watch without one), you’d need to not own…
- Any smartphone
- Any computer
- Any charger from any other USB device
Realistically speaking, how many people does that describe?
We’re talking about a problem that doesn’t exist for the vast majority of people, and costs $5-$10 to solve, max.
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It’s worth noting that the Hermes edition of the watch is also catering to an entirely different market.
I’ve heard half a dozen tech commentators so far talking about buying decisions, and I don’t hear any tech podcasters talking about “weighing the pros and cons of the regular vs. the Hermes editions”. It’s not even a consideration.
This is because Hermes is all about high-end fashion. And it may well be that the high-end fashion industry would be less tolerant of something like a wall charger not being included than, say, the average person who wants the Apple Watch primarily for function, with fashion as a secondary aspect.
Potentially tied in with that, government regulations tend to be of the format “you need to move X number by Y amount”. So if the regulations are looking like “you need to reduce your shipment of device chargers by ____%”, this would definitely fit that need. And if the regulations don’t exist yet, this lets Apple’s lobbyists push that they don’t need to be regulated, because they’re already complying.
I’m guessing the actual Hermes watches that are sold are a fraction of a percent of their total watch sales, which have been estimated at 31 million units in 2019. How many of those do we really think were Hermes?
So even if that market were to demand chargers bundled it’s a tiny, tiny impact - both politically and environmentally.
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It’s relative. In some countries, and/or low economy wearing a standard Apple Watch itself is a fashion. Yes they love and wear it with pride. What do you say about them not having the brick.
This is why I went for two of these in my kitchen.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07668S975/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_image?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Sure. But it’s not the high end of the global fashion market, by any useful definition. Those markets have specific parameters, and I’m guessing Apple is more familiar with them than we are - which may well explain the inclusion of the brick.
If there was an end-user revolt, in which the users refused to buy the Apple Watch anymore due to the lack of charging brick, Apple may try to find a way to reverse course - but other than some minor griping, I don’t see anything even close to that on the horizon.
It’s been pointed out elsewhere that governments are pressuring tech companies to not include the brick, so the question is why the Hermes watches are an exception to the rule - not why Apple is unbundling the brick from the (highly likely) 99+% other watches they sell.
I’m predicting that Apple is the first of many tech companies to begin not shipping charging bricks.
Cables? Yes. Bricks? No.
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99% of the people have lots of bricks lying around and Apple not include the bricks. They listened.
99% of the people complain about 5Gb iCloud storage and Apple ignores complaints. They give a damn about it.
If they have legal issues then they should stop including them ONLY in those countries. You can argue to any extent but the underlying intent from Apple is to pocket more money. Environment is a name they are banking on so that they wont get whiplashed.
I am a 2TB subscriber. S
That’s an opinion, not fact. What is fact is they are leading the industry with renewable energy, recycling and responsibly produced rare materials.
Perhaps part of their program involves counteracting the environmental cost of the bricks in the luxury watches.
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99% of the people don’t complain about the 5 GB tier. I’d wager that fully 70% of Apple’s installed base don’t even really understand what iCloud storage is and how it works - they just think it’s something they disable sooner or later because it keeps popping up notifications.
Or maybe put differently, they don’t see it as something they’re entitled to more of - they just see it as something they don’t want to buy. 
Bingo.
Does Apple want to make money? Absolutely. But the value calculus involved is more complicated than just price. Apple is a lifestyle brand that embodies principles, and a number of people who own Apple products own them because owning the brand sends those signals. Environmental responsibility is one of those signals.
I would also suggest that if Apple raised the cost of the watch by $30 (so $429 for the GPS model) and kept including the brick, there would be some griping by the tech press - but people would still happily shell out the $429. And that would include the heretofore posited people from these other countries that apparently see the entry level watch as a status symbol, but can’t seem to afford a cheapo power brick to charge their $400 watch.
Sorry I meant it to be sarcastic.
I’m all for removing the brick since it’s just unneeded waste that most people already have. I just wished that they’d remove it on all versions of Apple Watch.
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Just for gigs–
It’s about time Apple will announce that most of the users have many watch bands. To be environmental friendly now Apple will not offer a watch band out of the box.
Those sport bands are for sure environment friendly right?
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Yes, I would very much like to be able to buy a Watch without a band now, because I already have what I need.
I guess the EU should standardize on Watch bands too, to eliminate waste. Just like USB Chargers.
My watch band has a good patina (scuffs and marks) to it. I will have to scratch the new Apple Watch to match it to the band out of the box to wear it. 
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