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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

The internet-of-things that aren't really your things strikes again. When will manufacturers learn that their hardware should function even if their services are down? The whole account/subscription tacked on for no apparent reason thing is highly irritating, and Garmin is actually better than most.

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Yes the Garmin Connect mobile app ought to be able to do a lot more without a server connection. But in fairness to Garmin they don't charge subscription fees. After you buy a device you can use the service for free.

If it is up.

When I worked for Garmin, we deliberately designed products to work for as long as possible offline - the Bike Speed & Cadence Monitors (~2018) are able to work for 1 year, riding every day, then a battery change, and then another year, all before a sync to a device is required. All of the rides should be stored on-device.

Storing stuff for so long on device is great, but I still miss Garmin Training Center where I had all the graphing and mapping on my MacBook

What’s the significance of 365 days?

(I’ll accept “CA certificate expires” - but why isn’t there a workaround?)

Presumably related to the size of the on-device storage?

> The whole account/subscription tacked on for no apparent reason thing is highly irritating, and Garmin is actually better than most.

I agree that the Garmin’s app/services should be more useful without an internet connection, but I think it’s fair to say that these days customers want and expect an ecosystem that syncs their data and ties in Garmin’s devices. I wouldn’t call such an essential feature tacked on.

the Garmin devices that I own are working, it's just that I cannot synchronize the activities to the cloud.

My watch is functioning just fine. I can see historic data, log a run, tell the time etc.

The mobile app is 100% nonfunctional. Also any changes you made on the mobile app (eg editing rep counts in a weight lifting activity) are not synced back to the watch.

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