Garmin Connect sending Body Fat % as BMI to Apple Health

I hope that perhaps the team in charge of the culprit (Connect Mobile for iOS) see this and action it, as it's almost certainly a tiny thing to fix. However being a digital product manager myself, and an ex-developer, I'm worried that there's someone who looks at this and says "Does it work within Connect itself? Great. It doesn't work with Apple Health? Not a priority." which would be a MASSIVE cop-out given the product is marketed as syncing data to Apple Health.

Great you made a support case!
I experience this issue myself. I have a Withings smart body scale and used to have Withings sync the weight to Apple Health and then GC reads the weight from Apple health.
Worked flawless, very convenient having the latest weight in GC and passed on to my Fenix 3 watch :-)

Since this summer GC does not read data from Apple Health. As you say, this should be easy to fix!

I love the GC-app and their smartwatches/bike computers - but I’m getting a littlebit tired of all those small bugs that suddenly keeps appearing in new versions, taking quite some time to be fixed.

This is happening to me too from June/July. I just checked and it's basically trashed the data in Health kit from then. This really isn't good enough. Garmin don't read these forums.

Have the same issue as well, and it bugs me too. Body Fat % is sent to Apple Health BMI as a 0.?? value, which messes up the BMI charts.
Grmin, please fix this.

Okay... so I got a response from Garmin Support this morning...

After having the case assessed by our technicians they have advised to check your sharing settings of any third party accounts you may have and disable any that are also sharing data with Apple Health.

If none of the third party services are sharing data with Apple, then you will need to contact Apple, as we do not push data to Apple but rather Apple pulls data from our application.

Needless to say, I am absolutely infuriated by this!!!

My response:

This is a completely unacceptable response, and to be perfectly honest this has infuriated me.

Firstly, there are no other apps sharing data to Apple Health that I have set up. (See screen shots attached).

Secondly, the explanation of "... you will need to contact Apple, as we do not push data to Apple but rather Apple pulls data from our application" is factually incorrect.

• Apple Health data is written by developer apps which implement the Apple HealthKit framework
  
• Specifically, data is ONLY written when an app (e.g. Garmin Connect Mobile for iOS) makes a call to the framework using a specific function.
  
• Apple HealthKit DOES NOT pull data. Developer apps SAVE data to the HealthKit store.
  
• See (apple developer documentation link) for proof of the above facts.
  

Your own support forums show this is not a situation isolated to myself - (link to this forum post)

I am a digital professional who as led teams of developers in building iOS apps. To suggest that the fault lies with Apple, and to state factually incorrect information in order to lay the blame elsewhere is absolutely unacceptable.

I expect this to be escalated immediately.

Probably time we start posting reviews on the AppStore

Been online with senior Apple support tech's since this cop-out to query if what Garmin Support said was true or not...

My direct question:

Does Apple "pull" data, or does Garmin connect "Push" or "Write".

Response

Push
For sure

and

I hate to say this, but since its coming in from Garmin I think its transmitting that way ...

So I went back to Garmin Support over the phone just now... After a long time on hold while the gentleman I spoke to talked to an engineer the outcome was:

• Apple say one thing, we say another
  
• There's a case open for this we've added you to it (and no idea if/when it will be looked into)
  
• It works this way "By design" (really... he said that!!!)
  
• I can send you the forms to return it and get a refund.
  

That's about as far away from great support as you can get.

• Essentially stick to the lie, even when Apple have called you on it.
  
• Admit, in a round-about way, that you KNOW there's an issue.... but your team can't be bothered to fix it.
  
• Make up the most lame cliché possible... if you think Body Fat % goes into BMI by design, then you have no place making a scale in the first place.
  
• Try to make sure the problem goes away by removing the person complaining rather than solving the problem.
  

Simply pathetic, Garmin. Pathetic.

Probably time we start posting reviews on the AppStore

Good Call.

I've also posted about this on DC Rainmaker's review of the Scale so that (hopefully) some of the people considering purchasing have a view on just what sort of issues there are, and what sort of response to those issues we have been receiving.

Well done for your perseverance!

I'm surprised at the lengths I have gone to, to provide Garmin with details of the version history, links to Apple technical documentation, screenshots, and even the exact HealthKit API call they were misusing. This exchange was from 21st Sep:

Me:

Could you ask your development team to check the forIdentifier value they are using when initialising the HKQuantityType used to build the HKQuantity value for body fat percentage? It looks like they are using the .bodyMassIndex identifier instead of .bodyFatPercentage, possibly via the reuse of a local variable. It’s a very common error for devs to make when identifiers are named very closely.

Their response:

I have passed that information on to our technical team.

I advise at this point contacting apple, as I have been assured that a fault such as that which you detailed would have been caught in one of our many testing phases, and that it would have resulted in a much more widespread an issue than what we are having reported.

I am very sorry that we have been unable to resolve this issue for you, we are continuing to work on it, but at this stage I do not have anymore information to share with you.

Kind regards,

Lewis

I particularly loved the phrase 'many testing phases', as their Apple Health integration was causing the app to crash hard due to the UK during daylight savings time a month later.

Long story short, I called up Amazon, stated that my Index Smart Scale and vivomove HR were not fit for purpose as the Apple Health integration did not function correctly. I stated I had been trying to get the manufacturer to resolve the issue, and they were being no help at all. Amazon have issued me a full refund for both the devices, plus the various accessories I have purchased. Amazon have always been amazing with their customer service, having previously issued a full refund on my Garmin vivosport HR when the watch strap broke and Garmin said it they could not replace the strap alone as the GPS antenna was in it - a massive design flaw!

I've now purchased a Withings Body+ scale, and Steel HR Sport. Withings Apple Health integration is flawless, and their watch battery lasts 25 days!. Couldn't be happier, and don't know why I put myself through so months of frustration with Garmin who seemingly don't want to know about issues with their products.

Garmin's attitude during this has meant it will take a hell of a lot for me to ever purchase another Garmin product, and I can't see me ever recommending their products to anyone.