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Comment by WD-42 | Hacker News Reader

I like my instinct, but Garmin is so locked down, less hackable than even an Apple Watch.

You can download the SDK and side load applications. No annual developer fee. Not sure how it’s more locked down.

Don’t know about Apple Watch development, but the scope of what you can do with Garmin's SDK is limited, apps run in a VM, ie no native code with respective performance issues and, as important, their developer support is a complete and utter garbage.

It's a lucky day when someone from Garmin graces Forums with their presence and bestows few sentences they think could pass for an answer.

In other words, yeah, the SDK is free, you can side-load and it’s not hard to write for, but you just can't write much.

You run native code on the Watch itself and most of the limitations are around not doing anything that will kill the small battery.

Nope, not native code.

> Monkey C compiles into byte code that is interpreted by a virtual machine, similar to Java.

https://developer.garmin.com/connect-iq/reference-guides/mon..., 2nd paragraph.

I meant the Apple Watch, I should have quoted the relevant bit I was replying to

> Don’t know about Apple Watch development

One example: I would like to program a (dumb/ID-only) RFID card into it to unlock a door. I can't as the NFC off limits to apps.

Apparently there is some transit system in China that uses this format for payments. So you can get one of those cards, add it to your watch, and program the RFID system to accept the ID of the card you got. There was an HN article about it this weekend.

My Garmin watch will only allow me to add emv cards.

You can also use Garmin watches for transit in Japan, if it's a Japanese model.

I think that was NFC. The problem was, iPhone generated a random UID for all other cards, while this one was fixed.

It's severely limited in terms of what you can do. Garmin doesn't support some Unicode (Georgian) characters, and when you get a notification with Georgian characters, watch freezes, starts heavily draining the battery and then resumes in a few seconds.

Garmin has refused to fix this for many many years, and there's no games you can play with SDK that will help you fix it yourself

I'm curious why you're saying it's less hackable?

I've written my own little app for my Garmin watch, and I didn't need to get permission from them or pay them anything.

Less hackable in what way? I've found it's tremendously easier to write a watch face for the Garmin than the Apple Watch. I know, I've done it (and if you, like me, don't want to share your watch face, leave it in Beta all the time).

The Instinct 2 has an SDK and a sort of app store. I must admit that adding real new functionality is hard, but it's something at least.

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