Venu 3 Training Load/Readiness - ?? Where is it?

They did not disable it, Venu 3 never had this feature, and it is not in the specifications. 

Perhaps English comprehension is not your strong suit, so let me rephrase: while the watch is functionally capable of recording the required metrics to deliver this feature, they have made the business decision not to enable it, as part of their decision for the watch's target market. As such, it is disabled. Hopefully my analogy with the car functions being built into the car, but not being turned on for the user, is helpful in understanding my point. And so I am questioning that decision, and asking them to revisit it.

PetersRunningThings said:

As such, it is disabled.

Not disabled. It was never implemented, so you did not pay for it when buying your watch. You do not pay only for the hardware, you pay also for the software. If you need a watch with Training Status and Training Readiness, buy one that has it in the specifications.

PetersRunningThings said:

while the watch is functionally capable of recording the required metrics to deliver this feature, they have made the business decision not to enable it, as part of their decision for the watch's target market. As such, it is disabled.

Yup, you explained Garmin's market segmentation strategy, except for the "it is disabled" part. It would be more accurate to say that it was never included (or promised) in the first place.

PetersRunningThings said:

"Hi. I know you've just bought our new car, with power windows & mirrors, air-conditioning, and heated seats ... but we've disabled those functions because we don't think you'd understand what they're for, or be overwhelmed by them, or something, because this is a wellness car, not a fitness car. Enjoy!"

This analogy isn't great because the things that you mentioned were never in Venu 3 in the first place.

trux said:

You do not pay only for the hardware, you pay also for the software.

Exactly. There seems to be this weird attitude when it comes to market segmentation and product differentiation that companies are only "allowed" to differentiate by hardware, and never by software. No, companies can differentiate any way they want, and it's up to customers to select the product that has the hardware and software features they want.

By this logic, Microsoft cannot release separate editions of Windows 11 (Home and Pro), because the only difference between the editions is in software.

Similarly, there can't be different editions of video games, and DLC is out of the question. (Ofc ppl railed against DLC for years and years, but it's still around.) Not to mention microtransactions.

Also, Apple cannot release software features that are "artificially" restricted to certain hardware. Anyone remember the Stage Manager controversy in 2022? People were mad because it was restricted to M1 iPad Pros, because they thought this was an artificial restriction (as if all other restrictions are organic). Due to the blowback, Apple relented and allowed Stage Manager on all iPad Pros released after 2018.

But why not go further? Surely they could've brought Stage Manager to older iPad Pros, iPad Air, iPad, iPad mini, as long as they were supported by iOS at the time. Maybe older iPad Pros would be out of the question due to the age of the hardware, and maybe iPad mini's screen is too small, but no reason to exclude all the other iPads, right?

Except the reason is that Apple wanted to give people another reason to buy iPad Pro.

Speaking of hardware differences, these aren't so "organic" (i.e. not artificial) as some may think. Sometimes a less expensive GPU is made by artificially locking down the hardware of a more expensive GPU, so you can't access all the features. The hardware Garmin uses is likely artificially limited to run more slowly than it could, in order to save battery life.

PetersRunningThings said:

Does anyone at Garmin not recognise that this decision for the Venu 3 is ridiculous?

If it makes you feel better it's not just for Venu 3, it's for all Venu/Vivoactive watches, and some of the cheaper Forerunners.

PetersRunningThings said:

because this is a wellness car, not a fitness car.

Again you hit the nail on the head. Garmin defines different product ranges with different feature sets, in the hopes of extracting the maximum amount of money from the market.

- Running: Forerunner

- Multisport: Fenix, Enduro, Instinct, Epix, Forerunner 7xx/9xx/265

- Outdoor: Fenix, Enduro, Instinct, Epix

- Lifestyle/Fitness: Vivoactive, Venu

And it just so happens, that whether we like it or not, there's no amount of money you can pay to get *all* the features from a Garmin watch. If you buy a Venu/Vivoactive watch, you don't get training load, but you do get the feature which starts a timed activity via Move IQ. If you buy a Fenix or Forerunner, you get training load, but not the ability to start a timed activity via Move IQ.

I would def sympathize if you said that Garmin's market segmentation strategy is very confusing or that Garmin has far too many products. Or if you said it sucks that there's no way to get *all* the features in one watch. I also sympathize with Forerunner 165 users who were accidentally given certain features at release, and Garmin later withdrew them after they realized their mistake. And I sympathize with the fact that certain features on FR165 are watered down compared to other models, but this isn't reflected on the specs page.

But there's no reason Garmin has to put any feature in Venu 3 that they didn't promise to.

BTW, Apple Watch Ultra has a software feature that is not present in the regular Apple Watch: "precision start" for the Activity app (it's the ability to control when an activity such as Run starts, as opposed to the watch starting the activity automatically after a 3-second countdown). There is no reason Apple could not have brought that feature to the regular Apple Watch, except...wait for it...they want to give people a reason to buy Apple Watch Ultra.

In this case it's even more egregious since it's arguably an extremely simple feature that every Apple Watch should have. Ofc Garmin users take this ability for granted - in this context it's so simple and obvious that it doesn't even have a name.

_What you're arguing against:_ me saying that I was promised something and I haven't received it

_What I'm actually saying:_ the decision not to include it in the first place should be revisited, given the price point of this most recent iteration of the Venu watch, versus the "cost" of this software (which I'm estimating amounts to zero in technical functionality requirements terms, minimal in physical memory usage [on the watch] terms, and an unknown nominal X in IP terms). It appears it's the latter, and the desire to push people towards a more expensive, self-designated Running/Multisport/Outdoor watch, rather than a Lifestyle/"Fitness" (fitness ≠ training ) watch, to obtain this feature. Although, this feature IS included with the cheaper Forerunner 165. Essentially, I *am* saying a variation of your "your segmentation strategy is very confusing" - but I'm saying it from the perspective of a customer, not a product strategy manager.

In a lot of/most cases, when a tech company sells different versions of a physical product at different price points, the difference is in the physical hardware included, including memory capacity (& RAM/processor). They don't usually restrict proprietary software from certain versions if the physical hardware (inc memory) allows for that software. At the least, they might sell it as an upgrade, if they restrict it from their budget versions, to recoup IP cost, as long as those budget versions have the technical capabilities to support it.

I would hazard a guess from your description that Apple's "Precision Start" functionality requires a completely different version of the "Run" activity software, which in turn likely requires more memory space, and likely more processing power /on the watch/ to work as intended. Garmin's Training Status software does not face the processing power hurdle, and the Venu3 has more than enough storage memory to accommodate it.

(NB - I am using the term "disabled" quite deliberately, and I think accurately, based on the message I'm trying to get across to the company. It _is_ disabled in the Garmin Connect app - if I add a Forerunner watch to my Devices, I do not need to install a completely new Garmin Connect app on my phone - Training Status is already there)

Yes i think the decision not to add these features is ridiculous. I think many people are frustrated because of that.

kiwidoc said:

Surely it's calculated by the platform?

No, it is calculated on the devices (watch or Edge). The platform is merely a storage of the data coming from the devices, with close to no server-side processing at all. In other words, if the device does not support certain feature, the platform cannot help.

PetersRunningThings said:

_What I'm actually saying:_ the decision not to include it in the first place should be revisited

Sorry for the late response.

That's fine but I see this kind of complaint all the time:

"Forerunner 165 / Vivoactive 5 / Venu 3 should have this "premium" feature it doesn't have, but other watches do have"

Especially for something like Venu 3, people make the same argument you do. "My watch is so expensive / top-of-the-line that it doesn't make sense to exclude that feature"

Very rarely (never?) does Garmin turn around and add that feature.

I've seen the opposite happen: Garmin accidentally included some premium-ish feature by accident, and they remove it via software update. Here I think users have a legit complaint.

I also think it's a legit complaint where 2 watches have the same feature on paper (like "compass") but the cheaper watch has a crippled version of the feature and this isn't disclosed / made clear.

PetersRunningThings said:

(NB - I am using the term "disabled" quite deliberately, and I think accurately, based on the message I'm trying to get across to the company. It _is_ disabled in the Garmin Connect app - if I add a Forerunner watch to my Devices, I do not need to install a completely new Garmin Connect app on my phone - Training Status is already there)

As trux pointed out, Training Status/Load/Readiness and other training-related metrics are actually calculated on the device itself, not in Connect.

So what you are saying is not technically accurate.

But does it matter?

Whether or not a feature is implemented on-device but was never included in the model of your choice, or whether the feature is a function of Connect that's just disabled for certain models, the outcome is the same: you don't have that feature. So what if it would be "easier" for Garmin to add that feature if it was in Connect? They are not going to do it either way.

This is similar to the old argument about "on-disc (paid) DLC" for video games, back when it was normal to buy physical games. Paid "DLC" is bonus downloadable content that you pay for separately, on top of the base content, like extra courses for Mario Kart. Back then people had this expectation that the paid DLC, which was often released months after the game, should be in fact be developed and delivered separately, so that they would feel good about paying more cash for it. But people found out that downloadable content was actually included on the disc that you originally purchased, and all you download is an unlock code. They were mad because they felt cheated - the "extra" content was already developed on day one, and technically they already "had" it, just in a form that was unusable. I still don't think this was a rational complaint.

You get what you paid for, regardless of how it is (or isn't) delivered.

We don't have to like how Garmin does market segmentation, but I don't think they're gonna stop doing what they do.

"Lifestyle" watches (Venu and Vivo lines) have the feature to automatically start a timed activity via Move IQ. No other Garmin watch has this, regardless of price.

Similarly, "outdoor", "multisport" and "running" watches like Forerunner and Fenix have features that the lifestyle watches don't.

Ofc the lifestyle watches have a different form factor / design compared to the Forerunner/Fenix watches.

Venu/Vivo lifestyle watches: touchscreen with 2 or 3 buttons, and the touchscreen is mandatory for normal usage

Forerunner/Fenix: touchscreen with 5 buttons, you can disable the touchscreen and use 99% of the functionality

There's literally no amount of money you can pay to get all the features in the form factor / design of your choice. Maybe they are secretly hoping some users will buy multiple watches? Or maybe it's just that they think this is indeed the optimal way to extract the most amount of money from every market segment. I'm not a business guy, so I'm not sure.

PetersRunningThings said:

I would hazard a guess from your description that Apple's "Precision Start" functionality requires a completely different version of the "Run" activity software, which in turn likely requires more memory space, and likely more processing power /on the watch/ to work as intended. Garmin's Training Status software does not face the processing power hurdle, and the Venu3 has more than enough storage memory to accommodate it.

Sorry, I think you're just apologizing for Apple here, and failing to apply the same standard as you would to Garmin. Tbh, it sounds kind of disingenuous [*] to me.

Precision Start is an extremely simple feature that cannot be possibly as complex as the algorithms for various training-related metrics that are calculated on a Garmin watch itself. All Precision Start means is that the activity DOESN'T start automatically. It's nothing more than a toggle that disables the existing auto activity start behaviour, and a tiny extra piece in the UI that lets you start the activity manually.

Regardless, it's all just software. The cost of adding some feature - once developed - to various models is fairly marginal in most cases (unless the code for different models is so bad that the feature has to be redone for every model, or unless there's some tight dependency on existing UI code which is vastly different for different models).

Apple could put Precision Start in every Apple Watch if they wanted to [**]. They don't want to. 

Garmin could put Training Status in every Garmin watch if they wanted to. They don't want to.

[*] Let's say Garmin historically had auto-activity start, and at some point they added a similar "precision start" feature, but only for the top end Forerunner/Fenix models and not Venu. Let's say that you really want "precision start". Are you really gonna to tell us that you'd just shrug your shoulders and say "that's ok, it doesn't come with my Venu, I need to buy a Fenix"? Then why don't you apply the same logic to training load / readiness? But actually, I don't think your excuses for Apple are genuine. 

[**] The Activity app on AWU is very similar to the Activity app on non-AWU, so it doesn't look impossible for them to port Precision Start to other models if they wanted to