Apple may have woken up somewhat to new challenges ahead with the on-trend message that everyone seems to be getting more into personal fitness.
The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on Monday brought several new sports-related announcement for future functionality in WatchOS 5.
I think these announcements are interesting for those of us with sports-focussed devices. These new features are, well, a little basic on the surface.
Challenges
Friends can be challenged over 7 days with competitions based on closing their ‘activity rings’.
New Workout Types
Yoga, hiking and running. Great.
Automatic Workouts
Workouts will be automatically started and stopped.
Enhanced Running Features
To include cadence, moving average pace and pace-based alerts. Whoopee-do.
Here is a more waffly version…
Apple Watch 3, triathlon kept Garmin Forerunner 935 on charger
But there are great apps of course for the sporty-minded:
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I have said this before if the sport watch companies don’t wisen-up quickly they will be rendered obsolete (or purchased) by major brands with capital to burn. Apple, Samsung, Google–all of them are just swimming in Scrooge McDuck levels of cash each.
If you don’t think they aren’t eyeballing Fitbit or Garmin for patents or tech, or even by squeezing them via their own foray into the Sports watch sector, you’re out of your mind (not you, or anyone, just a turn of the phase).
Little things like this (QoL) make the install base happy (confident?) in their purchase (investment). It makes them less likely to go and buy a “Hardcore” dedicated sports watch. This affects those companies (all the money!!) which either they:
-Become more like the smartwatch brands and
a)compete and thrive
b)compete and die
-Stick to what they do
The problem with the second one is the notion the market is static when really it’s a malleable board and everything can fallout underfoot right away. What if, let’s say Samsung, creates a truly amazing sports function (hardware) which revolutionizes how sports tracking works; how does a Garmin compete? Samsung already owns a fitness watch, tablets, smartphones, a literal smorgasbord of ecosystem appendages. How would Garmin deal with this? Personally–I say they get bought-out in a few years (dependent on how amazing this tech is).
Even if it isn’t an “Earth-shattering” improvement–death by a thousand cuts via small software improvements and updates to the package can begin to trivialize the need for a sports watch at all, thus making much easier to purchase.
I know, I know, I’m extrapolating too much from this, projecting opinion as fact; but I see the cracks in the sector and those cracks are starting to widen. What Apple did here isn’t much, but they add up. In time what’s to say the Apple Watch isn’t doing what sports watches are doing….but also it integrated with ALL the subsequent devices in their ecosystem and are no obtrusive to the user in the slightest (again QoL).
And, I really need to stop myself when responding here 🙂 This was supposed to only be a paragraph or two.
“These new features are, well, a little basic on the surface.”
Yep.
I like the AW as daily driver – the smart stuff is great. Also music and the possibility of making a phone call (e.g. emergency, duty) during a workout. But as *dedicated* sport watch… it really sucks. Mainly because it has like no sensor (PWR, CAD, SPD, and more) support and because of bogus metrics. The ow battery life in when using the sport mode is challenging, but that I can handle.
655/803 CAL via AW3 (https://i.imgur.com/0R5RPE7.png)
1270 kJ via PWR (https://i.imgur.com/bHWjd5b.png)
😂🤦♂️
yeah the longterm prognosis is not good for garmin i would say (https://the5krunner.com/2017/11/04/2018-peaktastic-not-garmintastic-year-ahead-sports-tech/ ). but that’s still years away.