Garmin’s Biggest Competitor Is Their Own Software Instability - DC Rainmaker

It reads like one of those self-help books - there's enough there to agree with, but far more to disagree with. Sure there are bugs in the software. There always will be; just like any complex product, Garmin do struggle to fix some issues, but generally do a pretty good job on others.

Yes, sometimes an update will sort some bugs out and introduce others. That's nothing new. We do see mostly problems here but that is not to say there aren't other disgruntled users out there who do not populate these forums. But I honestly think that the majority of people just use these devices quite contentedly. 

But no doubt Garmin could do a better job at communicating issues especially amongst their support network.

The 520 physio true-up and then the 520+ Bluetooth connection to my Samsung note9 was the final straw for me to ditch the Edges all together.

935 was mostly good besides the altitude failing after 11 months. Took weeks to get a replacement from Garmin AU HQ which is 20km away.

945 is fine some far (haven't open water swam yet) besides mushy keys. And as someone else wrote that the 945 is the Mini and if you wanted the best you should have bought the Marq, I disagree. Garmin's website calls the 945 a Premium watch. Each button should work and feel the same. Simple QA would have found this.

And let's not forget the Index Scale . Ahaha. Yes it told the weight but all the other advanced features (which was it's purpose) were rubbishly inaccurate.

I'd really like it if their release notes actually listed what they did. If they say "made open water GPS more accurate", that shouldn't break music playback.. as a hypothetical example.

I've installed Betas and provided feedback through the correct channels and it has been mostly addressed and responded to. That's what betas are for. Don't make GA'd software a beta for users .

It is very troubling from a modern software development point of view that Garmin regularly introduces new errors in functions that used to work correctly, when new fixes or features are being introduced. If that happened once or twice a year it could be attributed to a random glitch, but it happens so often that it points to a broken software development environment.

While I'm sure we would all love bug free software, the reality is there is no such thing. That said, i think some of the comments from DCR are a little over the top. He seems to think that no one swam with these watches before they got into the hands of the users. I'm pretty sure that isn't the case. While i do think that Garmin is moving pretty fast on this new GPS chipset, the truth is that they are getting far better results out of it than most of the other vendors that adopted, so clearly they are doing something right. Are there bugs? Yes. Are they likely to be fixed? Yes. 

Agreed.  There will always be bugs in software and there's no getting around this.  My pet peeve with Garmin is their technical support.  I've been a long time user of Garmin products and have emailed support on several occasions.  After trail and error, I made it a point in my emails to start each one off in capital letters stating I'm on firmware xxx and I've already restarted my watch.  The vast majority of the time, support replies back with the same #*/?@%$ response, "I'll be happy to help you with that.  Put first I'll need some information.  What firmware are you using and have you tried restarting your watch?"  Seriously?  I stopped contacting them by email and now call instead.  That has worked out great until today.  (Perfect timing of DCR's write up).  I had a question about maps and an additional question about BaseCamp.  The tech asked if I could be put on hold a few minutes so he could ask around because he was "unfamiliar with maps and has never used BaseCamp".  How can you work support for a watch with maps and be unfamiliar with them?  Imagine taking your vehicle to an auto mechanic and him telling you he's unfamiliar with changing an oil filter.  And one last thing. How is support logging trouble reports?  Is it really possible that I'm the first person to discover every single bug, because "this is the first time" support has heard about it and there's "no other reports"?  It's thing's that this I find unacceptable and that needs to be fixed.

What Rainmaker said is true. I have the Garmin Index Scale.  Look at how much trouble that product is.  You are welcome to read up on it.  I have trouble with LiveTrack many times.  Sometimes I have to go back to the old build until i find out that bug is fix before I update. I wonder if Garmin seems to care as long as they are making money! Sad!  Do it right Garmin!  Wake up!

I am firmly in Ray's camp. My belief is that Garmin tries to add too many features and ends up with things that are broken and some that basically never work.  Examples:

1) Livetrack, Grouptrack- Virtually never work.  Have never worked since their introduction.  The free RoadID eCrumb app works perfectly so it is possible to make this work.  But Garmin can't do it.  Why introduce the feature if it isn't reliable several years later.

2) Sensor Dropouts- Every Garmin product I have ever bought has a forum tread on sensor dropouts (like the 945).  After all these years why is this ever a problem?  Why does it work on one device and not the other?  Shouldn't the algorithms be the same?  It's a shame that something basic like this doesn't work.

3) Mid ride crashes and lost data- this has happened on EVERY Garmin product that I have owned.  My Pioneer head unit NEVER crashed even though Pioneer kept adding tons of features.  Data collection reliability should be the number one priority (see sensor dropouts).  All the fancy stuff doesn't matter if you end up with no data after your workout.

4) Add one feature, break another- On the recent 1030 release they changed the sound for the Varia radar.  Also killed all Connect iQ data fields.  How could those two possibly be related?  Don't they test anything?

I managed software development for several decades.  It appears that Garmin has poor architecture, poor regression testing, and poor bug reporting/tracking.  At least for their fitness products.  There is no excuse for some of these things.  Automated unit, module, and program testing has existed for 20 years.

Well, the first stop to fix a problem, is to recognize you have a problem. It's pretty well known now that Garmin has a software (AND HARDWARE) problem. See Ray's article and all the comments. Some may be over the top (like mine)? Maybe, but the reality is: things need to change. I've been tired of paying a lot of money to Garmin to be their beta tester. 

Perfect phrasing, I was about to post this feeling already.

I was an early adopter of 645M and after upgrading of 945:

Another thread mentioned that "firmware is there about 80% this time" and that makes me think.

I'm into software development for a living and don't get Garmin's strategy. It indeed feels like user founded beta testing to a point.

Thinking of product development and release, in my opinion there is kind of a feature baseline that the product has to meet prior to be released.

WRT 945M, the watch was usable for me after about 4 months of firmware updates: random freezes, restarts and lost sensor/bluetooth connections. Also the advertised (as a selling point from release on) Deezer/Spotify availability took half a year to be ready.

With my current 945, I don't think it improved much. Keep in mind that we're talking about an $600 watch. Basically top of the sports watch range (exclude premium MARQs or platinum coated whatever's) also compared to other manufacturers.

My buttons don't have a tactile feel on 3/5 - this is something also a cheap Casio waterproof to 100m provides...

My epoxy of the OHR starts cracking after 4 weeks of regular wearing. To pick up the cars analogy: I don't expect the tachometer of even a cheap Hyundai to break after half a year of usage...

Speaking of feature baseline, well... Initial release didn't contain gesture light after sunset, disabling the round button, was searching for sensors as soon as in prestart mode... For sure, one can bring those features via firmwares to market after initial launch. But do you think a product is "readily developed" if baseline features that all the other products have are not there?

Don't get me completely wrong. I like Garmin for their ecosystem and portal and the feature sets of their products. But these experiences make me think.

Agreed, most probably not a comprehensive enough Unit Test / Regression Test / Code Review kinda development environment ...