Source: http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2015...

If it becomes a status symbol, it'll be because it's expensive and rare, not because of any intrinsic value. However, there is something conceptually funny about the product that Apple has engineered. We are talking about an 18-karat gold watch that, to quote one of the company's patents, uses "as little gold as possible."

In other words, gold bugs, this is not the accessory for you.

Last week, Apple cultists took note after the Financial Times published a profile of the company's design guru, Jony Ives, in which he explained that “the molecules in Apple gold are closer together, making it twice as hard as standard gold.” This was tantalizing. What sort of high-performance precious metal had the geniuses of Cupertino cooked up? Soon, Twitter and the tech blogs unearthed an answer. As Dr. Drang of Leancrew wrote, Apple had filed a patent for a method of producing 18-karat gold that was both stronger than usual and used less actual gold by volume.