Marc Newson, the Apple Inc. designer who along with Jony Ive gave the world the Apple Watch, has turned to a new form of timekeeping — in this case, an insanely expensive and ostentatious hourglass.

The “Marc Newson Hourglass For HODINKEE” is a limited-edition hourglass that doesn’t feature sand but instead what are described as “nanoballs,” seamless stainless steel ball bearings coated in copper. The hourglass itself measures exactly 10 minutes and a user can tell when the 10 minutes has passed without even needing to look at the hourglass because the balls have stopped making noise.

“Sometimes you see an object and it just captivates you. You can’t look away. You can’t even really explain what you’re looking at either,” the product page for the hourglass claims. “Marc Newson’s Hourglass is one such object. It takes the idea of one of the most basic time-measuring instruments ever devised, and pushes it to its limits,” whatever that’s supposed to mean.

The pitch gets even better: “The combination of watching those first few nanoballs bounce around the bottom chamber, the flow begin to change surface patterns in the top chamber, and the unique sound of the nanoballs flying around, hitting the glass and one another as they settle at the bottom, is utterly mesmerizing.”

How much for this marvel of an Apple designer’s modern take on a technology that was first invented around 150 BC?

$12,000.

Seriously, $12,000 for an hourglass. It is little wonder why a growing number of people disapprove of the corporate excesses that continue to occur in Silicon Valley. A $12,000 hourglass may be pretty close to being the peak of the madness — that is, if anyone actually buys it.

Photo: Hodinkee