Latest Garmin app update ruined my home page

We did as beta testers, but our feedback was ignored.

forums.garmin.com/.../question-for-beta-test-participants

KrapfenKringel said:

We did as beta testers, but our feedback was ignored.

There's an assumption implicit here that everyone was against the changes. It's always possible that the majority are happy with the changes hence no need to do anything immediately. Certainly, I've not seen anything to cause me any distress. And I cannot believe I'm the only one who gave positive feedback.

philipshambrook said:

I cannot believe I'm the only one who gave positive feedback.

You're not. So at least 2 of us.

philipshambrook said:

There's an assumption implicit here that everyone was against the changes. It's always possible that the majority are happy with the changes hence no need to do anything immediately.

And you're assuming that just because the majority of people are positive or apathetic about a given state of affairs, then it necessarily follows that it's a "good" thing (either from the POV of Garmin or the userbase as a whole.)

e.g. From the perspective of utilitarianism: If you're simply looking to maximize the total or average happiness of Connect website users, then it's possible for a relatively small number of newly unhappy users to lower the average happiness of the userbase, if the other users are mostly unaffected by the change. To be fair, the average happiness won't change much.

However, utilitarianism is often criticized because it prioritizes the well-being of the group over the well-being of any given individual.

A different approach would be to apply a principle that comes up in AI research: minimizing the maximum "harm" / bad consequences to any one person in the group. In this case, Garmin has clearly failed to minimize the maximum anger that Connect users feel as a result of these changes.

Yeah, it's just a consumer website, it's not life or death.

But is it worth royally pissing off an (allegedly) tiny minority of your users to implement a change that the other users barely care about?

By the same logic, the majority of Garmin users (*) probably don't use the Connect website at all, so it should be no problem if Garmin simply shuts it down tomorrow, since the majority of people will be unaffected. (* If not the majority of all Garmin users, definitely the majority of newer Garmin users, and/or the type of user who is more likely to have bought a new watch in the past 5 years instead of holding on to their FR235 from 2015).

Zooming out even further, the majority of smartwatch users don't wear a Garmin. Walk around any large North American city in the past 5+ years, and clearly most people who are wearing a smartwatch are wearing an Apple Watch. Garmin watches were niche even before Apple Watches existed. By the logic of "majority rules", it should be no problem if Garmin just decides to go out of business tomorrow, since the majority of smartwatch users will still be happy.

EDIT: Oh, and clearly the vast majority of Garmin users don't post on these forums (or even read them), so by the same logic, it's ok if the forums cease to exist tomorrow.

The vast majority of Garmin users don't use third-party Connect IQ apps either (except for Spotify and maybe some watchfaces), so it's ok for Garmin to discontinue CIQ as well (outside of a few curated apps like Spotify).

MD;DR

(More Diatribe; Didn't Read)

LOL! 

Huge majority:

If you don't see the issues you probably never bothered to setup a complex custom dashboard with the old system. You never used your car to drive anywhere, so you are happy they removed those useless wheels, while not caring that others enjoyed driving it.

LOL! Massive response of 134 votes. Stunning!

You can edit home page it but it can never be as useful as previous version - new version is all about different visuals while usability is worse. For example, I used to have concise summary of all information on dashboard at once when I open the app, and now I have to swipe and scroll several times to see all that information. Not everyone wants dumbed down version of the app with big tiles and wasted empty space. 

Only just upgraded to a fenix7. As much as i love the watch, this software update has crippled it. Any suggestions for the best non garmin watch? I am so pissed over this. Would never have bought the watch if I knew they were butchering the companion software so badly.

Sorry. Didn't realise I posted it 3 times. Can you delete the copies please.

Many thanks

From moderator: 9538088 no worries, and thanks for understanding. Extra posts removed.