Stages of obsolescence:
Obsolescence: you have something so long that even the cheapest tight-wade realizes it is time for another one so they can interact and operate with current standards.
Planned Obsolescence: you bought something in the tech space which you realize how fast things change and had an expectation of be outdated within a certain amount of years depending on what sort tech gear was purchased.
Forced Obsolescence: you bought something from Apple and know the thing you brought from them today will be rewarded by forcing you into operating system and other software upgrades that will cause the gadgets you bought a year or two ago completely miserable to use or completely unusable by forcing upgrades by forcing developers to move their apps to the newest platforms.
I don’t have much of a problem with this method and speed of forward movement. I sold my iPad 2 because I expected that it wasn’t going to be able to use iOS 7.x forever and the upgrade to iOS 8.x would (based on a lot of community posts) make using that older iPad miserable. Even worse is the iPad before that is now 5 years old and none of those gadgets can even try to upgrade which means their apps will die a slow death from developer abandonment.
Mobile products are disposable which means to me that they will last 2-3 years until the software displaces the hardware or newer hardware makes a new purchase attractive. The Apple watch purchase is going to be the most terrible type of purchase unless you have money to burn (and some do) since it is a technology gadget and not a crafted piece of jewelry. This is obvious since the method of keeping time is a very outdated technology that is so much taken for granted that just about everything with space to keep time has the time displayed somewhere around it. More importantly it isn’t different then the watches that will be $9000 less besides the material difference. There isn’t an technological reason to buy one over the other. There isn’t a design difference to buy one over the other. There is only a material difference. The material difference is gold and there is less than $1900 worth of gold material. The entry level watch is made of steel and costs less than $500, add the $1900 of gold and you get a watch that is worth based on market value (Apple watch value is less than$500 and gold value in the other Apple watch is ~$1900) of $2400 that you can buy for a minimum of ~$10000. I don’t see how they sell this to anyone who is paying attention unless they have money to burn.
Beyond the material value discrepancy there is a bigger problem of forced obsolescence that Apple pushes towards faster than most technology based companies. That device watch is going to be a golden paper weight in less than 3 years if Apple keeps up with it’s trend to force it’s fans/users through the same upgrade cycles.