Beyonce is now on the expanding list of celebrities and notables who are enjoying their own personal Apple Watch Edition — the 18-karate gold wearable that will run from $10,000 to $17,000 once it's for public sale on April 24. The singer-songwriter showed off her Apple bauble at the Coachella Music Festival this past weekend.
She even posted some selfies of her wearing it on her website and while at the big California music event.
Beyonce joins a growing list of big names getting the Edition. Chanel creative director Karl Lagerfeld was caught wearing one last week, and the pricey watch has also been spotted on the wrists of Katy Perry, JJ Abrams, Anna Wintour, Drake and Pharrell Williams.
As the Edition is not apparently on Apple's website for preorder or even sale at this point, the celebrity bandwagon may be part of Apple "elite" marketing strategy for the very expensive timepiece.
However, more interesting Watch news that will likely interests thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of software developers is the fact that Apple is conducting a lottery that could put a few Apple Watches on the wrists of those working hard on Watch apps.
Reports claim Apple is sending emails to developers — those who already have a iOS mobile app in market — and giving them a chance to participate in a lottery and possible be one the first to buy the Apple Sport.
"We want to help give Apple developers the opportunity to test their WatchKit apps on Apple Watch as soon as it is available," states the email. Select App Store devs like Facebook and Instagram have been given the chance to test their apps on actual hardware at Apple's secretive WatchKit labs in California. It's clear the company wants as many apps for the Watch as possible.
The lottery effort, for Apple at least, is to get apps built quickly, and that's easier to do when developers have necessary hardware and software to work off.
The lottery to get a Watch is a boon to developers who likely haven't had much time to play with the device. Watch app makers facing big deadlines to get their apps in the Apple store before the supposed 2 million Watches, preorders from its initial debut last Friday, are put into consumers' hands.
"We built a lot of prototypes, obviously they weren't mechanical, but they were just a watch face you'd print out on cardboard and tape it to your watch," stated Stephen Griffin, the CEO of Eyes Wide Games. "When you build it ... and it looks fairly large on your computer screen, you can fool yourself. Then we'll print it out, and go 'Wow, that's way too small.'"
