"I am kind of surprised at how unpolished the ecosystem is" - new Garmin user

https://forums.garmin.com/apps-software/mobile-apps-web/f/garmin-connect-web/316069/gc-development

Is there a roadmap for GC development? I just got my forerunner about a month ago, and I am kind of surprised at how unpolished the ecosystem is. To add to this, the things I see get updated are made worse.

What's the relevance, you might ask?

Garmin users and Connect IQ developers have been complaining about the same things for years. Everything on the software side is buggy, user-unfriendly and half-baked. It's even reflected in the forum platform that Garmin chose.

The predictable responses from forum regulars will always be "try a different company if you don't like it" and "people who don't think Garmin is 100% perfect are just clueless" (as if it's the user's job to adapt to a product and not the other way around.)

Nothing against any individuals at Garmin; it seems to be something embedded in the corporate culture as whole.

Why does a 17+ billion dollar company seem to care so little about the interface to our tech?

Sorry to sound a little ranty, but when you're $600 into a tech stack that KINDA works it's a little frustrating!

Just some food for thought.

FlowState over 2 years ago in reply to dpawlyk

dpawlyk said:
FlowState said:
All I can say is Garmin clearly made a watch (Venu Sq) which is (superficially) an Apple Watch clone

Round displays for computers is a big compromise. A square display for a wrist computer isn't an "Apple" idea (though, it's possible the Venu SQ was motivated by Apple). Some of the Garmin Forerunners had squarish displays before Apple (if I recall correctly).

Yep all of that is true.

I never said a watch with a square display was an Apple idea, I said that Garmin clearly released a watch (Venu Sq) which superficially resembles an Apple Watch, coincidentally after AW got insanely popular.

Fitbit did the same thing.

The fact that some of their older watches used to be square/rectangular and they moved those product lines to a round form factor actually kinda proves my point. As pointed out above, the Vivoactive (lifestyle) line used to be square/rectangular and it became round. The standard triathlon offering (920XT) was square, and later versions (735XT, 935, etc.) were round. At one point, I think all of their "current" watches were round.

Why move back to a square form factor for a new device, all of a sudden? There's an external reason for that. The resemblance of a Venu Sq to AW is undeniable imo. Same with Fitbit Versa. You think they're capitalizing on the small minority of ppl who miss Pebble or the original Vivoactive? Or could it be the vast majority of ppl who see Apple Watches everywhere?

Garmin also recently released a watch that has a speaker and mic so you can make calls and use your voice assistant while you have your phone with you. Coincidence?

I'm not suggesting "popular automatically means good", but at some level you do have to get a certain number of people to buy your product. You can be a niche product like Kindle, but what happens when enough people decide that an iPad or iPhone is "good enough" for reading?

Apple also has a long history of taking established ideas / tech and making them popular, for better or worse. They are good at marketing and UX.