Perhaps it's a wrong section of the forum, but still: is there any mechanism in place, in Garmin ecosystem, to ensure that 3rd party developers update their watchfaces, apps, etc. in line with watch firmware updates? Example: recent update (7.00) killed the "My Watchface" watchface for me and several other people. The developer seem to be unreachable. What happens next? And, honestly, why aren't Garmin's firmware updates backward compatible with the existing things?
Alex, As a CIQ Developer, I thought I would provide my insight into your questions.
1) Garmin has no way to force any developer to update their applications/watchfaces/data fields. This, of course, is because Garmin does not pay the developers. If a developer loses interest in their projects, there is nothing that can be done. There are a couple of applications that I like that are no longer being actively developed and have issues at this time. I have reached out to the developers in question and have not received any answer-back. I have even offered to update the apps for them. There is nothing that can be done if the developer does not respond, except possibly build a new version with the same functionality.
2) Firmware updates and backward compatibility. That would be nice but is likely not always possible. This does add to the issue in your first question. How many times a developer is going to update their app/etc to fix compatibility issues really depends on the developer and their interest in Garmin wearables.
Disclaimer: These are just my own thoughts and may or may not reflect the thoughts of other CIQ developers.
Thanks a lot, it makes sense! I just wish projects/apps are not being abandoned completely - if the developer looses his/her interest in their own project, why not sharing the source code, so others can pick it up...But, as you said - it's entirely up to them. And I sincerely hope that the developer of that watch-face I used as an example is OK and in good health etc. :)
Its still a bad system, we could loose or favorite watchface forever with every OS update.
Of course you cant expect unpaid contributors to support their stuff for ever. But the way it is now is super annoying, their should be some kind of compatibility mode.
Yes, it would be great if updates did not break things. However, that is just not the way things work with software development. It would also be great if a developer who moves on would leave his source code for another developer to pick up But again, that is not always going to be the case. Even if that always happened, there would be no way to ensure that a new developer would pick up the project.
In general, apps don't have to be updated when new FW comes out - I have things I build long ago that run on the latest FW today. The best start is to use "contact developer" if you see an issue, as it might be a bug in the app that just showed itself (possibly due to a bug fix in the FW), and if it's the same thing with multiple apps, contact them all, and note that you see it in others too and which they are. If 5 developers are getting the same error, it' could be a new FW bug, and it might get faster attention from Garmin if they hear from 5 devs instead on a "one of".
Perhaps it's a wrong section of the forum, but still: is there any mechanism in place, in Garmin ecosystem, to ensure that 3rd party developers update their watchfaces, apps, etc. in line with watch firmware updates? Example: recent update (7.00) killed the "My Watchface" watchface for me and several other people. The developer seem to be unreachable. What happens next? And, honestly, why aren't Garmin's firmware updates backward compatible with the existing things?
When mine updated to 7.00 it defaulted back to a Garmin watch face, when i tried to change it back via the watch it was showing them as question marks - when i logged into the Garmin Connect app on my phone it showed them still there. I tried syncing my watch and reloading from the app, which did not work - finally i shut my watch off and turned it back on, and everything was fine! If you haven't tried it yet, hold down the light button until the hotkeys show up, then select "power off"......give it a minute or two and push the light button again to turn it back on, hopefully this works for you :)
Thanks :) If we are talking about the same watchface, most likely you were lucky, as the developer recompiled the watchface on 9th of December. Turns out he is still there, and updated the watchface, as it most likely stopped working for him too :). So, I guess in your case, your watchface got updated automatically after reboot...The new version of My Watch has is 1.5, you can check if that's what you have now installed.
