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The entire GC dev team has resigned: now what?

Former Member over 15 years ago

Although I haven't posted a whole lot on motionbased and then garmin connect, I've been a supporter of the fact that aggressive software schedules can run late for a variety of reasons and often rebutted those who were calling for the heads of the GC developers. I have asked for Garmin to be more transparent in status updates, rather than continuing the fiction that updates are posted monthly.

Then I found out that the GC dev team in San Francisco have all resigned, back on February 8, 2010. Now would be a very good time for Garmin to be up-front with their plans for Garmin Connect. It is unfair to your users, especially those who are are about to or have recently bought your products, to not address this issue head-on. Garmin Connect is an attempt to build a community of users, but you will seriously undermine any trust that is there by pretending that the GC dev team didn't just leave.

Of course you may have plans to restaff in Olathe and get things back on track, but surely this will have an effect on schedule and features. Letting your users, your community, hang out to dry for six or more months with no apparent progress while your new devs get up to speed is unfair to your customers. We are adults, we can deal with information even if it is bad news.

My apologies in advance if this has been addressed, but I tried searching and couldn't find any acknowledgment about it.

0 Former Member over 15 years ago

Wow.

Here's hoping the site can stay up and retain all my data.

0 Dr Phil over 15 years ago

Wow.

Here's hoping the site can stay up and retain all my data.

Hopefully you do not have all your eggs in one basket. if you have, you should at least load and use Garmin Training Centre to store you records locally.

As an alternative to Garmin Connect, switch to RunSaturday for on-line loggin and Sporttracks for local logging (PC not Mac unless running a virtualisation package)

0 Former Member over 15 years ago

sad.....

Garmin just won me as a customer from Polar for their superior software. If this means that they are going to relegate software to second class, I will certainly consider going back to Polar for my next product purchase.

Garmin should communicate to their users soon about this (are you listening???)

0 Dr Phil over 15 years ago

Garmin just won me as a customer from Polar for their superior software. If this means that they are going to relegate software to second class, I will certainly consider going back to Polar for my next product purchase.

Garmin should communicate to their users soon about this (are you listening???)

I always thought Garmin was about hardware. Software, is most definitely a secondary consideration. The only thing that could be said good about the software was that it is free. It is so lacking in useful features to be virtually unusable except for a back up of data. You have to go elsewhere for useful tools for post activity analysis.

Saying that Garmin's software is good probably says more about how bad Polar's must be in comparison

0 Former Member over 15 years ago

hope GC team will find arrangement...
you're doing a very good job. thanks for that.
if not with garmin in the next month, don't worry about it !
and users will find other way to manage their tcx files ;)

0 ekutter-dnu over 15 years ago

Garmin just won me as a customer from Polar for their superior software.

Interesting. I moved to Garmin for the hardware, despite the software. I actually quite liked the Polar Pro-Trainer software (never used their online stuff). They just didn't do much to support GPS and power in their hardware. Unless you only want the most basic functionality, current Garmin software isn't the place, either online or off.

It really is too bad that Garmin hasn't invested more in GC. Maybe most users are satisfied with what the offer and those of us that actually want to analyze the data are a vocal minority. But there are very few people I know that actually use GC or TC other than for backup. Without a huge investment, Garmin could really own the mind share of power users. If they even matched the functionality of other sites, there would be no reason for most users to look elsewhere.

I wonder if they are hiring and how much they are paying. And could you work remotely? Could be a fun part time job.

0 DW152 over 15 years ago

It really is too bad that Garmin hasn't invested more in GC. Maybe most users are satisfied with what the offer and those of us that actually want to analyze the data are a vocal minority. But there are very few people I know that actually use GC or TC other than for backup. Without a huge investment, Garmin could really own the mind share of power users.

I agree with this. They should either decide if GC is going to be a bare-bones thing to just allow people to see their data and nothing else, or if they are going to make it a full-featured package. IMHO, they could have a great product with GC just by adding a few simple and obvious features. On the other hand, if they decided that it wasn't worth their time and effort and that they rather let the aftermarket handle the analysis software, I would understand that from a business perspective. But they seem stuck in the middle -- GC had a promising initial start, but since then it's just been stuck in limbo. Like others, I just use GC as one of my data backup repositories, and nothing more.

I wonder if they are hiring and how much they are paying. And could you work remotely?

Apparently not. The GC team left because they didn't want to relocate to Garmin HQ in Kansas.