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Comment by greggsy | Hacker News Reader

Sure they’re 5-10 years behind, but I wouldn’t underestimate Apple’s ability to create a thriving ecosystem.

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.

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Not at all, Garmin is not fashionware like Apple. You buy Garmin because you are an athlete that needs an actual complete product that is tested and bullet proof; where you own the hardware, and you’re not ‘renting’ it from Apple. If you want to flash how fancy you are to your coworkers and have a second iPhone, you buy the iwatch.

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.

Eh... I think there is an enormous gap between “pro athlete” and “normal smartwatch user” that does not diminish to just “fashionware”. The battery life sucks tho, thats what keeps me from using one. I think the health and exercise features are more than fine enough for “non-pro athletes”. No idea what “renting from apple” means but it does not seem to be the watch for you.

Garmin sensors are more precise, and the off the shelf analytics are better. Everything else in that parent comment is nonsense.

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.

Any proof for Garmin sensors being more precise?

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.

Just my own anecdata I guess. I’ve always found heartbeat and location tracking to be a lot better with the Garmins. I haven’t trained with the new Apple Watches yet though, so maybe I’m completely wrong…

The thing about Apple products is that no serious professional would use a Macbook, no one with a job requiring critical connectivity will use an iPhone, no serious photographer will use an iPhone. Until they do.

They ate the business Thinkpad. They ate the Blackberry. They ate some portion of the SLRs.

And each time they weren't serious.

> Totally agree re: the current state of repairability and support

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.

Top result on Google for how many km should running shoes last

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?

I typically get around 400-600 kms out of a fresh pair of running shoes before the tread is completely gone and the energy return structure stops returning energy. I typically run about 100km/week. A bit less if I’m tapering, or injured (not very often), or on holiday. I also walk a lot, which I have different shoes for, but that adds an extra few pairs to the annual shoes bill as well.

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’m more-or-less a casual runner

> 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".

I cannot consistently qualify for majors, I have never been paid to run, and I’ve never entered a race that I had the intention of winning, and I have a normal job and social life. Perhaps you could qualify it by saying I’m a casual _endurance_ runner. But I am very much a casual. My lifestyle might be vastly different from a sedentary lifestyle, but it’s not so different from that of all the other casual marathon runners out there.

You’re definitely no beer league athlete. I think “amateur athlete” used to be the right term here, before it gained the negative connotation.

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.

You're an amateur runner but you're not a casual runner. I run about 35KM a week and I am in the 99% percentile of Garmin users (with a connected watch I guess) for running distance. Most are doing sub-10.

Yeah, I get that. I think just a terminology thing. It seems like you're using "casual" to describe your mindset whereas I'm understanding "casual" to be offhand, or without significant investment. Forgetting about the absolutely massive time investment, spending > 2000$/year on running shoes alone is a distinctly not-casual thing to do.

> 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.

What's your weekly mileage? Are you doing something extreme to your shoes? Most runners don't spend, nor could they afford to spend $250 per pair of shoes that wear out in 6 weeks. Try $100 every 6 months instead. Events do add up but for most runners it comes out to roughly the same as the shoes or less. Running is popular because it's affordable. You might be projecting your rarefied well funded lifestyle onto the rest of the market

About 60 miles (and I weigh about 180lb). I probably do 4 or 5 marathons a year, and a couple of ultras. My mileage isn’t excessive for people who complete marathons around the same pace as I do, or better (of which there are many, many people), and every time I look around the field at an event, it’s full of $200-$300 energy return running shoes.

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.

If you had to guess, what percentile of the general population are you in when it comes to fitness?

I’d probably rank quite well amongst the general population. But I’m talking about fitness enthusiasts here, specifically the subgroup of long distance runners. Within that group I’d probably be “not bad”…

You run 4-5 marathons a year. That is more than many professional runners, who usually limit themselves to 4 a year max, because of the sheer amount of stress a marathon puts your body through. Add in the ultras, and you are running more than pretty much anyone being paid to do so.

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.

That’s not a very good way of looking at things. Professional marathon runners have a completely different set of priorities to me, and perform at a massively different level. Eliud Kipchoge has only run 2 marathons so far this year, I have run 3. That doesn’t make me 1.5x fitter than Kipchoge, or say anything at all really about the relative level of fitness between him and I.

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.

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