How will the Connect IQ be regulated?

Why not find out? Create a Polar or Suunto watch face and see what happens ;)

Specifically what's to stop people adding cool apps/functions to the Vivoactive that cannibalise features in Garmins more expensive watches? It seems like the apps will have pretty much all the data available to them from internal and external sensors

Fields and watch faces have a lot of limitations, and for example tempe sensor field and recording can't be implemented. Or navigation. And only two fields per profile.
So no, they did everything to make developing more difficult.

This situation may change for the better in next version of ConnectIQ, I hope :)

update: Thanks for explanation, AlfaMonkeyC: https://forums.garmin.com/showthread.php?191355-Connect-IQ-versions&p=486977#post486977

The Connect IQ SDK means that developers can create a plethora of apps for the Vivoactive. My question is how will the Connect IQ "marketplace" be regulated?

Specifically what's to stop people adding cool apps/functions to the Vivoactive that cannibalise features in Garmins more expensive watches? It seems like the apps will have pretty much all the data available to them from internal and external sensors - surely Garmin aren't going to let apps get too good otherwise they'll make some of their other product lines redundant or at least seem like a very expensive proposition.

We have a developer agreement that you have to accept when you upload an app. There is a lot of CYA in the developer agreement which is pretty standard in the industry. My translation of the legalese is "Garmin can do what it wants when it wants to", though I'm sure it's more subtle than that. So yes, if we feel threatened, or have a cold, or maybe because McDonalds gave us a "Pull an app for a free Big Mac" pay-with-hate offer, we can pull an app. The question is: would we?

Lets say for example a developer writes a Golf app for something that is not our Golf watches. I think with a mobile phone and Connect IQ someone could make a very good golf experience Would we take it down? It depends. Usually our dedicated wearables have hardware specific to the use case, and if the golf wearable can be matched feature for feature by a Connect IQ/Mobile app, we should really question if we have enough features in the dedicated wearable (might I remind you that in CIQ preview 1 'break' didn't work). If people like the golf app might give people a reason to buy a different wearable, but Garmin still has a customer. If we pull the app, what kind of bad publicity will that cause? It's a complicated and nuanced question, and would be treated as such.

If you have any question on if you think your app might be pulled, I would contact [email][email protected][/email] and ask before you start down that path. Honestly, I don't think it should be a big concern; we have the power, but we know that if we use it there will be consequences. Connect IQ is supposed to enable cool use cases for our products that we never thought of. It might enable things we did think of; that's how these things go.

-Alpha Monkey

My major concern is quality control. I've held off putting anything on to my 920XT for the moment because I have doubts about the quality control of the apps.

It appears to be a recipe for disaster at the moment. With the 920XT not really being what I would call a stable product, I am loathe to introduce anything further into the mix that might confuse matters even further.

My major concern is quality control. I've held off putting anything on to my 920XT for the moment because I have doubts about the quality control of the apps.

It appears to be a recipe for disaster at the moment. With the 920XT not really being what I would call a stable product, I am loathe to introduce anything further into the mix that might confuse matters even further.

I don't think you have to be that concerned. If a watch face fails, the device reboots with the default watch face. If a data field crashes, it's replaces with the Timer field. If the device crashes on it, it reboots and resumes your activity. There's not that much that can go wrong.
Both watch faces and data field are limited in their capabilities. They can't use communications and they can't write to (fit) files. There's absolutely no way a data field could corrupt your fit file.

I don't know much about software, but I do understand the law of unintended consequences -

http://rc3.org/2008/01/24/definition-of-the-law-of-unintended-consequences/

"Not that much that can go wrong" is not the same as "nothing can go wrong".