Garmin company image

My 2c as a long time (13+ years) Garmin user.

Over the last 9 years or so I've observed that Garmin is trying to bring GPS (units) to the masses much like Apple brought computers to people that had no knowledge of computers and didn't want to. Towards that end I think they've "dumbed down" many models and are trying to make their software etc "look pretty" and make it "simple to use".

However if you look at Apple you'll see that they have a grand vision across all their products to make them work together. For example buy an iPod and iTunes will fully support it. In short their stuff is integrated.

Now Garmin has many products in many markets (e.g. Automotive, Outdoor, Fitness etc) but IMO they're not "integrated". There are differences between models but those are not handled well by their software. In many cases their computer software just assumes that a device has some feature whether it does or not. That leads to user frustration because they assume a feature should work, due to the lack of any indication otherwise, yet it doesn't.

The solution, IMO, is for Garmin management to make their various product development groups work together. The people that develop devices must "integrate" with the groups that develop software and websites. Apple has been doing that for decades and its paid off for them.

PS: I'm a technical person and personally disagree with the "make it simple enough for the average idiot" philosophy. That said I know I'm in the minority. We now live in a world where everyone expects stuff to require no knowledge to operate and for it to work 24/7/365.

There is quite a lot of 3rd party software and websites that work with Garmin. SportTracks is one. http://www.sporttracks.mobi/

I own an Edge 810 and a Virb Elite. I think Garmin is still a market leader in GPS *devices* - it's their device firmware, computer software and website design where they fall completely flat. If they could just get their software / firmware side to the standard of their devices, they would have, in each case, a *complete* package. No competitor could come close - at least for the devices *I* happen to own; YMMV. For users like myself, it's a frustrating position to be in.

Stuart leaves out one key point: Aside from the seamless integration, individual Apple devices will simply work from the start. There's a reason why I won't buy a Garmin device until it's been out for at least six months unless I have a compelling reason. If I do buy a newly released Garmin device, I know I'm in for about six months of annoyance, like I had with my VIRB Elite. The first thing you need to learn with a new Garmin device is how to force it to restart. I had no qualms buying an iPad Mini 3 before it was released, and I've restarted it only for iOS updates. I'd be very surprised if there are any major issues with the Apple Watch when it's released (not that I'm going to get one, but my daughter wants one so I'll see one from the beginning).

Well I guess that depends on the device, all my Garmins have worked from the start :)

Seem to have got a rather rose-tinted view of Apple products - I really like my iPhone 5S but many times have had to "restart" it when it stopped working as I expected. Ditto my iPad.

And the recent iOS 8 rollout hardly was their finest hour. Emergency patch needed to "fix" that.

I did another iOS upgrade once when it never appeared to finish and appearing to leave me with a bricked phone. I had to do some Googling to find out what the "trick" was to recover things - bit like why these forums exist.

And then which iPhone was it that worked great apart from not being able to make calls very well and needing some bit of plastic round the edge to improve things.

That's not to say you may well need to restart your Garmin sometimes but just saying it is not a "problem" unique to Garmin.

You're looking for the IP4 Tim. Apple has lots of issues too. People just don't seem to care.
This is one of my favourite graphics.

Schinder: I didn't mean to direct that at you. I just like that graphic :)

I very much like the comparison with Apple and broadly agree but also Apple is not perfect and they have had major glitches with their products because they assume that Apple knows best. The one that stands out in my mind was the replacement of google maps on their Iphone with Apple's own - the mapping on that was a joke it missed out major European cities and was worse than useless on launch.

I too like Garmin products and they have some very good design and functionality but at their premium price point I do feel that they could improve on customers service and certainly improve on quality control for software and firmware releases. I think they are failing their customers by trying to jump on a bandwagon that has already departed (if you'll pardon the mixed metaphor). They are attempting to produce a website that is more like Strava etc and in the process sacrificing some of the usability and unique features not only of the older connect but also of Training Centre - TC still allows creation of workouts that cannot be created on Connect and that's a serious issue for anyone using the devices to support a training program.

I think Garmin would be better served by making it easy for Connect and their devices to communicate and share with the other independent sites rather than trying to lock users in - that's tricky even for Apple.

I hope that Garmin will review their approach otherwise I see them starting to lose some of their specialist sporting market even though the devices are good.

J

I have to agree that Garmin still makes excellent devices. Certainly the competition is coming on strong now, and the market is going to have to decide if another will be the next "king of the hill" for the brief time that evolving technology will allow.

I have always seen Garmin Connect as a simple site for it's new users to get introduced to the information that their new devices can give them. Then as they grow more advanced, they'd eventually migrate to the independent sites that are created by those passionate enough and knowledgeable enough to develop a site devoted to a particular aspect of sport and fitness as seen through their vision. Not the vision of a large company trying to placate the masses from every genre of the sport/fitness world and simply force their perspective of what good for us while trying to remain in the budget confines of a "free" site where it's overhead costs get tacked on to the cost of our devices.

I have not figured out what Garmin's new vision is, but I'm skeptical of what it will bring. Certainly they have made some moves that seem to suggest they want to continue a relationship with independent developers, but I'm not sure that's enough. Just like Microsoft got caught up in a legal mess for including their own web browser with their software (before many of you were born), Garmin might get caught in a similar situation if they are too successful.