Luxury Watchmaker Ridicules Apple Watch With Tongue-In-Cheek $30,800 Clone
Image via H. Moser & Cie.
The Swiss Alp Watch Final Upgrade is an Apple product copycat that’s about 100 times the price of the original.
Not long after Apple launched the first-generation Apple Watch, timepiece maker H. Moser & Cie. unveiled a lookalike Swiss Alp Watch that was run by mechanics. That was in 2016, and the followup, the Swiss Alp Watch FInal Upgrade, once again pokes fun at the bells and whistles of smartwatches.
The US$30,800 timepiece, which bears a rectangular face just like the tech giant’s, features a dial painted in Vantablack, the famous Anish Kapoor-owned pigment that is able to absorb up to 99.965-percent visible light. This creates the illusion of the hands hovering the display.
The watch’s cheekiest one-uppance is its seconds hand, reimagined as the loading wheel in the Apple Watch when it is getting an update. It’s called the Final Upgrade for a reason.
In spite of the digital appearance, the watch—available only in a count of 50—is fully mechanical with 100-percent Swiss Manufacture movement. Turn it around and you’ll find an impressive manually-wound movement running at 18,000 vph with a power reserve of 96 hours.
The campaign for the pseudo-smartwatch also mimics Apple’s “less is more” presentations. However, the brand embraces minimalism as a feature of the analog: “No updates required, no lousy autonomy, no unnecessary features, no annoying notifications, just the only reminder you ever really need: To disconnect from all the noise and cherish each and every moment.”
The watch also has “one application: Time.”
[via HODINKEE and MacRumors, images via H. Moser & Cie.]
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