Feature: The Apple Watch vs Rolex Submariner
The Apple Watch has exclusively been a device for Tesla drivers, turtleneck wearers and people who take laptops to coffee shops—until now. With the addition of the Ultra, Apple’s watch now boasts functionality that doesn’t just compete with the iPhone team across the hall, but with the likes of Rolex as well. At least, that’s the idea. Is it the reality?
Who wears a Rolex?
To understand whether or not the Apple Watch Ultra is really a contender for wrist time on the owner of a Rolex Submariner, lets first take a look at the kind of person that wears the famed dive watch. It’s been kicking around since 1953, pretty much untouched—minus the addition of a few flashy knickknacks like a ceramic bezel and white gold hands and markers.
Fundamentally it’s a piece of equipment. Like the Apple Watch, it was never designed to be for posing in. It was for getting wet, smashing on rocks and general James Bond-style badassary. Don’t let big screen Bond’s slip to Omega fool you; Fleming had him dripped out in Rolex.
It’s the reason a Rolex is so popular today. It’s fancy but not too fancy. You can wear it at the big family get-together without getting weird phone calls asking for money from that one uncle with all the newspapers in his house. If Patek Philippe is a Rolls Royce, a Rolex is a Mercedes S-Class. At the same family gathering, you can pull up in it knowing it looks expensive, but not as expensive as it actually is.
Funny really, that Rolex costing way more than it probably should is one of its great draws. You can spend a lot less on a gold pocket watch and look like you literally own Downton Abbey, but there’s something about the understated glamour of a Rolex that’s very appealing. Like an expensive pair of jeans, it’s just not so try-hard. In fact, the whole jeans and Rolex steel sports watch look came from an era when people wanted to stop looking quite so uptight as their parents. It’s just the go-to look that always works.
Who wears an Apple Watch?
So, we’ve pretty well pegged the average wearer of Rolex—what about all those who went down the Apple Watch route before the Ultra came along? Well, this is where things get interesting, because where the Rolex was originally built as a functional device and evolved into a fashion statement, the Apple Watch reversed that trend to bring the watch back to its primary USP: functionality.
No one except that one guy who’ll let me know in the comments wears an Apple Watch just because it’s cool. Apple even designed it with that in mind, making it as unobtrusive and discreet as possible. It’s like a second skin, if your skin could tell you when you’re late for stuff. I mean, it’s basically just an in-built harassment device, constantly prodding you to remind you what you should be doing next.
Compared to the generation that first wore the Rolex Submariner, the generation that wears the Apple Watch doesn’t even have the time to get their iPhone out their pocket. The next meeting, their latest Instagram post, their fitness goals; it all comes in a stream of feedback that needs to be collated, managed somehow, to prevent the recipient going completely mad.
It’s the social equivalent of those bumpers at the bowling alley. Without the Apple Watch, its wearers would wander astray, burning precious seconds spending too long on Reddit or missing that important email by seconds instead of milliseconds. It’s hard to believe how much data we consume in the modern world, and the Apple Watch’s existence is the smoking barrel that proves it.
What’s different about the Apple Watch Ultra?
Sound like two very devices. That is indeed why, often, both are seen embodied by the same person, dual-wielded to cover the full gamut of the wristwatch experience. One is for the heart and the other for the head, and together, they make you fitter, happier, more productive.
So, it seems then that the Apple Watch Ultra takes both of those watches and combines neither of them. It’s not an understated luxury icon and it’s not a discreet social mobility aid. Instead, it’s a 49mm lump of $800 titanium dressed in international orange with a siren and compass built in. On paper it sounds less like a watch and more part of the pre-flight safety briefing. Remember, the right time may be behind you.
It’s big because the battery is big, giving you three days of life. Three days power reserve in the luxury watch industry is usually billed as being able to last a weekend whilst you wear your other watch, but somehow, I don’t think that’s what the Ultra is going for.
There’s dual band GPS, multiple microphones that can self-select to avoid the wind, different straps built for hiking, running and diving, an all-red night mode that doesn’t disturb your night vision. Speaking of diving, it can withstand 100m—although Apple warns not to take it past forty, further adding fuel to the confusing fire that is the depth-rating chart—and it even has a proper dive computer app that can be paired with it as part of a subscription.
Who is the Apple Watch Ultra for?
The Ultra isn’t a social mobility device. It’s an actual mobility device. The reason people wore Rolex Submariners back in the day wasn’t because they lived in an even wetter climate than the UK, it was because they were sick of the status quo. They wanted to visually and literally redefine their lives in a different way to their parents.
We see this today. Older generations want to work in the office and the younger want to work from home. Shirts and ties are being replaced with trainers and baseball caps. Mechanical watches are losing out to … well, wearing no watch at all.
The Rolex Submariner isn’t worn by people who go diving and running—or at least isn’t worn by people who do those things whilst they’re doing them. Except that one guy in the comments of course. It’s mostly worn by people who like nice things and enjoy the feeling of achievement and having something a bit special.
The Apple Watch Ultra celebrates a different kind of success. The success of breaking free of the machine, exploring a world outside the interconnectivity of things, places where your only form of communication might be a lone satellite in the sky, or even an 86-decibel siren. A place where Instagram, emails and Reddit don’t pervade.
Does the Apple Watch Ultra really compete with the Rolex Submariner?
Is the Apple Watch Ultra going to have people ditching their Submariners in droves? No, of course not. At least, not directly. The Submariner defined a generation who didn’t want to be like the generation before, and that’s as true now as it was then. The Submariner represented the exploration of a quiet place, dark and unexplored, the depths of the ocean where people are few and communication nothing more than hand signals.
Most people probably won’t use the Apple Watch Ultra for its true purpose in just the same way people don’t use the Rolex Submariner. What the Ultra represents, however, is one and the same: isolation. Isolation not just from people, but from data, from connectivity, from the internet. An Apple Watch Ultra owner might never take their watch to the fullest extremes of its capabilities, but they could, and sometimes even that is enough to get you through.
Both the Apple Watch Ultra and the Rolex Submariner are gateways into a sense of escapism that attempts to bring meaning and reward to the routine of continuity. Rather than being motes of dust, ants in an anthill, we’re individuals, free and thinking, the wildest corners of the world at our fingertips. They both give us a sense of purpose and motivation. A goal that might one day yet be achieved. That way we might be more comfortable, get on better with our associate employee contemporaries, be at ease, eat well and sleep well too, with no paranoia.
