Not to mention they don’t sunset their products after 12 months… your watch will get updates for a long time. They’re also -very- repairable to boot.
Any Garmin app developers worth their salt should be scrambling to port their existing apps to the Apple Watch platform. It’s currently an under-supplied market, and failing to tap into that opportunity is a bad business strategy.
Totally agree re: the current state of repairability and support, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they extend the user repair program to this sector.
Also, it’s a bit disingenuous to claim that they sunset their products after 12 months. They might refresh them, but that doesn’t change the software support cycle.
Apple does not hold a candle to Garmin’s software for sports and training… they have everything from an actual desktop app that works (gasp) without an internet connection, an online portal where you can freely download all of YOUR data (gasp) if you choose the connected option, and the sports and training analytics is light years ahead of Apple.
And besides, Apple can’t receive ANT+ signals from connected sensors, and BLE battery life is abysmal in comparison.
The only thing Apple has on Garmin is the have app stores full on apps, but that’s it. Nobody is using their Garmin to play Candy Crush but that misses the point.
Apple Health data is very easy to download and share with 3rd parties (say a 3rd party that has better analytics than Apple Health offers, for instance…). I don’t get the battery complaints either. I only ever charge mine while I’m in the shower, and I don’t really have any problems. The only instance I found it an issue was in 24+ hour ultras, but I don’t think that’s what most people are complaining about…
Imo, the advantage that Apple has over the more well equipped Garmin models is that it’s comfortable to wear all day and sleep with. I never liked wearing the chunkier Garmins outside of training.
TheQuantifiedScientist on his YouTube channel has great tests for many wearable devices and their sensors. His assessment has been very favorable for AW Ultra on HR, location and sleep when compared to Garmin devices: for sleep tracking Garmin is very inaccurate, for HR and location Fenix 7 and Ultra are identical. Fenix 6 and older are poor.
Blood oxygen and temperature seems to be quite inaccurate on both.
They ate the business Thinkpad. They ate the Blackberry. They ate some portion of the SLRs.
And each time they weren't serious.
Is the target market really concerned about this? I’ll chew through a $200-300 pair of shoes in 4-6 weeks, and I’m more-or-less a casual runner. The cost of attending events is much more than that. I probably would buy a Garmin if I was really taking things seriously, but the Apple Watch does what I need, and even if I brought a brand new one every year it wouldn’t have much impact on the costs of this hobby.
Experts recommend you replace your running shoes every 500 to 750 kilometers. That's roughly every 300 to 500 miles, which equates to approximately four to six months for someone who runs 20 miles a week.
What are you doing replacing your shoes every 4 weeks?
Edit: I probably go through shoes slightly faster than most runners, because I weigh a bit more than most runners. But I don’t think that’s a huge factor.
> I typically run about 100km/week
This feels pretty naive or disingenuous. I'm pretty sure vanishingly few people understand 100km/week to be "casual". While you may not feel like you're a "pro" or have a competitive mindset, I'd argue averaging more than an hour a day at pretty much literally anything moves you out of "casual".
As for the target market, I’m torn whether Apple is seriously going after athletes or whether it’s actually mostly marketing, as with their “pro” laptops.
> it’s not so different from that of all the other casual marathon runners out there
Maybe this is the disconnect? People who have ever run a marathon at all are < 1%, and people who continually run marathons casually are a niche within that niche. If the audience is "people who run more than 50km per week" then I think "casual" probably gets the right idea across, that's just a teeny tiny audience.
Perhaps most of them don’t train in their race shoes, but that’s honestly a bad practice.
Endurance sports is a pretty boujee hobby. Running is the cheapest one, but it’s not that cheap if you really get into it.
You do not rank "quite well". You rank in the 0.1%, and even amongst fitness enthusiasts, you also rank easily amongst the top 10%. Not necessarily in terms of speed, but in raw distance done.
I run a lot because I love to run. But I don’t set a competitive pace in any of the events I attend. I would claim to have rather strong knees, but that doesn’t translate into pace or fitness, just into mileage and a certain level of resistance to knee injuries.
Apple still provides security updates for the iPhone 5s from 2013.
Maybe that's feasible for the larger tech companies but not the smaller ones.
The first generations of the Garmin Fenix actually supported charging in use with a very overcomplicated charging cable: https://youtu.be/S9haDnwIuSQ
Garmin absolutely has better battery life. But if you can see your way to charging the Apple Watch more frequently it seems more interesting for a combination of regular smartwatch use and day activities. And, if you are climbing huge mountains in the middle of nowhere, I assume purchasing a specialized watch if you want one is the least of your expenses. (Or something like an InReach.)
It's been a while since I've done any high-altitude mountaineering. I honest don't know what people actually use these days. Certainly GPS watches didn't exist when I was climbing. Not sure if people use power-hungry watches that need to be charged these days or not.
Perhaps you say "when it stops working". Well if that were the bar then we would still be producing computers from the 90s. Ok so maybe you say "no, when it stops running the apps I want to run". Sounds reasonable enough. So when should the app makers stop supporting the older hardware? Presumably at the point when maintaining the old hardware starts costs more than they make from the support.
This point will be reached sooner or later, and you might disagree with it because you still see the product as fully capable, but ultimately the phone will stop making economic sense at some point and production will stop.
Garmins repair costs are much more reasonable and for things like broken screens there are third party options.
""" AppleCare+ for Apple Watch, Apple Watch Nike, and Apple Watch Ultra extends your coverage3 and includes unlimited incidents of accidental damage protection. Each incident is subject to a $69 service fee plus applicable tax for Apple Watch and Apple Watch Nike, and $79 service fee plus applicable tax for Apple Watch Ultra.2 In addition, you’ll get 24/7 priority access to Apple experts by chat or phone. """