I really want stainless steel, I can afford aluminum

Today we were finally given access to the pricing ranges for the Apple Watch, and I know that for me, the pricing was a bit of a shock. That $349 number that had been bandied about for months for the Watch Sport? Wait a second — that’s only for the 38mm version. For the bigger 42mm size, you’ll need to cough up $399. 

While the pricing of the mid-range stainless steel Watch started right where I thought it would be — $549 — that price is for the 38mm model with the Sport Band. The pricing goes up to $599 for the 42mm version, and you can pay anywhere up to $1049 (38mm) or $1099 (42mm) depending on what band you decide to purchase.

What seemed somewhat reasonable now seems absurd. There’s not that much difference in terms of the looks of the Space Gray aluminum case Watch Sport with a black Sport band and the stainless steel case with a black Sport band, except one is matte finish (Sport) and one is glossy. That glossy finish and sapphire screen just cost you another $200.

To be honest with you, I was also quite surprised with the pricing on the Watch Edition. Given some of the talk the last few days about Apple possibly using a ceramic/gold matrix to provide the beauty of gold with much more strength, I thought the price tag would be much less. $10,000 is the ticket for entry to the Edition ride. 

What this tells us, of course, is that for a lot more people, the Watch Sport may be the model that they’ll go for. The price is right and they get the same functionality as the $10,000 model with a lot less pretentiousness. And Apple won’t worry — there are enough pretentious people who will have their employees lining up for them to buy an Watch Edition.

With today’s pricing and availability information, what are your plans for the Watch? Are you giving up on buying one? Are you still going for the mid-range watch or the Edition, price be damned? Give us your feedback in the comments.