I use Connect because I've got a Garmin watch. The watch is great for my use and I think that the steaming pile of dogshit that is the Connect app is probably better when it's borked than when it's working.
Garmin Connect outage leaves folks unable to share their fitness virtue signaling
Fitness app Garmin Connect got knocked down but got up again, after an unexplained outage that left fitness extroverts flummoxed. There's no need to panic: Garmin's watches appear to be still recording data but the Connect platform used to correlate fitness data, and share it with others such as Strava, took a dive early on …
COMMENTS
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Wednesday 8th January 2025 19:56 GMT tip pc
Means to an end
The connection app is a jeans to an end.
There are loads of 3 parties that can integrate with connect cloud and you can consume your data there.
Connect is the conduit that connects your activity to a wider ecosystem, loads are free some are paid for.
Many just use connect to get their data to Strava.
https://support.strava.com/hc/en-us/articles/216918057-Garmin-and-Strava
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Wednesday 8th January 2025 21:35 GMT Headley_Grange
Re: Means to an end
The Connect app on iPhone is just a way of presenting Connect website data and it does nothing without an internet connection. If there's no internet then I can't synch my watch to the app even though the synch is direct device-to-device bluetooth. All the post walk calculations have to be done online, in spite of the app running on device capable of doing them. I can create courses on the website but, in spite of having 80GB of free memory on my phone, I can't download them to the iphone via Connect app, so if I want to add a course to my watch I have to wait for and internet connection. It's lazy app development at its finest and, given that I only use my Garmin watch for Munro bagging it's a pain given the lack of internet in many of the areas I walk in.
The Connect website itself is clunky as fuck. No bulk editiing, no folders to organize courses, terrible presentation and overlaying of data and no integration with the other Garmin websites like Explore or the standalone Mac app.
I don't want to share my data with anyone, so the wider ecosystem of connectable sites is of no interest to me.
If the watch wasn't such a good piece of kit for walking then I wouldn't bother with Connect and Garmin at all, although I've talked to DC Rainmaker and he says that Garmin's web offerings are pretty good compared to the competition; God only knows how rubbish they must be.
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Thursday 9th January 2025 11:37 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Means to an end
The Connect App and Connect website ppear to be developed by two completely different teams that do not talk to eachother. Some functionality is only available in the App and some only in the Website. But then this is fairly typical. Strava is another good example. In the app you cannot upload a GPX file, but can on the website. Infact banks are just the same. They all push you to use their app, but then you need the website for some stuff.
Shame FirefoxOS never took off on mobiles. Might have helped unify the customer experience.
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Thursday 9th January 2025 11:53 GMT Headley_Grange
Re: Means to an end
I think that the Garmin software environment is the best example I've ever seen of something that has been specced and developed by people who, if they use it at all, do so only superficially. It's so hard to understand why a company that has such good hardware doesn't seem to give a shit about its software products.
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Thursday 9th January 2025 16:12 GMT Sam Jelfs
Re: Means to an end
I use Garmin, but my OH is a Suunto user, and that really is awful, makes Garmin look amazing by comparison! I basically never use the app, it's just there to sync my watch to other sites, fetcheveryone.com for analytics, and plotaroute.com for creating routes (Favourite a route on plotaroute and it gets automatically sent to garmin connect and then onto compatible devices)
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Thursday 9th January 2025 10:04 GMT Headley_Grange
Re: Means to an end
I think they are mainly anticipating an AI-driven future where someone gets a Strava account and only logs in once to set it up, after which AI does all the work. synthesizing whatever reports the user wants from it and dozens of apps that suck Strava's data and Strava's advertising revenue goes through the floor.
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Thursday 9th January 2025 08:54 GMT Korev
Re: Americans panic ..
As an experiment I let my insurer see some overview stats from my Garmin as they offered a discount for exercise. They were really dumb and only looked at steps, I'm someone who cycles a three figure number of KM each week so only walks a few thousand steps each day. I cancelled it pretty quickly...
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Thursday 9th January 2025 19:35 GMT jdiebdhidbsusbvwbsidnsoskebid
Re: Americans panic ..
"They were really dumb and only looked at steps..."
I know someone who shares their activity with their insurer to get discounts and freebies. They need to upload an activity lasting a minimum duration for that to happen, even if that activity is actually doing nothing.
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