Who's Making the Decisions at Garmin?

Well, I sympathize with your position, but I think the specific example you gave can be explained by the simple fact that the Menstrual Cycle widget is a new app and all the other apps are older. I wouldn’t be surprised if older apps take longer to be updated, or in some cases are never updated. Another thing is that the Menstrual Cycle app is prolly a big marketing bullet point for Garmin (especially to keep up with their competition), while those other apps are not.

The Tides app is a funny one since it was ported to the MARQ Captain, but not the other MARQs. Does it really make sense to support the MARQ Captain and not the other MARQs? Seems like a deliberate decision to me, although someone else already complained about that and Garmin promised to look into it. 

I'll also say that the MARQ has a new set of fonts (different than the older devices) and the 245/945 have a new set of fonts (also different than the older devices), so it's likely not a simple matter of flipping a switch and supporting a new device. There's real time and resources that have to go into adding support for 945 for most apps.

After uploading a new app to the app store there is a short wait for approval from Garmin, but after that any changes (including adding new devices) are instant. AccuWeather simply hasn't uploaded a version of their widget yet that runs on the 945 (or the MARQ series for that matter) . Their reply that Gamin decides what devices it is available for strikes me as odd. It was probably written by some generic communications person rather than by someone who has detailed knowledge of CIQ.

There is also something going on on the CIQ store called auto-migration. If you upload an app for one device and Garmin bring out another similar device then they can include this new device in the list of supported devices. You can see that in the app store by hovering over the little settings symbol after the version number.

The problem with that is that Garmin decides how this auto-migration works and I have never been able to work out exactly when and how they do it. If the 945/MARQ devices are classed as an entirely new series of devices the auto-migrate functionality won't work as technically there is nothing to migrate from. Maybe this is what's going on with AW.

Hmm, it's strange that AccuWeather was seemingly auto-migrated for 245 and 245 Music, but not 945.

The 245 and 945 have the same fonts (which are different than any earlier devices), and the 945 has more memory, so you'd think that anything which was auto-migrated for 245 would also be auto-migrated for 945.

Then again, none of my apps were auto-migrated to 245 or 945, even simple data fields with no font dependencies.

The alternative explanation is that they explicitly added support for 245 in the last update on March 8, but that's way before the 245 was officially announced. Could be they had access to a beta CIQ SDK that nobody else did. I'm pretty sure Spotify had 245 Music support before anyone else did.

FYI you can sideload Tides and Air- they work fine on my 945.

That's not something you want to do in general as some apps are built for specific devices, and you may also run into issues with app settings, etc.

Understand it's not just making "App A" available for the 945, as with all  the new devices that just came out, it's "App A" available for 245, 945, 5xMarq devices, the 530, 830 and maybe the fr45.  And it can be more than just checking a box for each one, as there could be code involved and testing.

And there are quite a few apps that need to be updated (there could be 100's) and the number of people doing these ports isn't that large.

I know with my own apps (about 50), I kind of used two priorities.  If they only required a new check in a couple boxes, they were easy so I did those early, and if they were my most popular, I did those as soon as possible, even if they required code changes.  Things with fewer downloads over time and that needed code changes, came last.

Can’t speak to the general case. But in the specific cases of Tides, Air it’s fine. No settings, just find location, display results. Both work great for me. If you don’t need to modify the widget settings, or it doesn’t have settings, and the display works (as it will tend to for apps written for 945, MARQ, and even some fenix 5x apps), where’s the harm?

I’m also using certain sideloaded watch faces where I don’t need to modify settings- no fatalities have occurred. Also data fields for activities. No CIQ or watch crashes yet. 

Some excellent apps/widgets/data fields/ watch faces are no longer maintained, so this is the only way to use them.

FlowState said:

the simple fact that the Menstrual Cycle widget is a new app and all the other apps are older. I wouldn’t be surprised if older apps take longer to be updated, or in some cases are never updated

Well, I'm not a developer of apps, but I think this would be just the opposite. As already stated "Air" and "Tides" have been side loaded successfully, so it's only something minor Garmin would have to do to make them available, whereas I would think developing a new app would take much longer. I understand keeping up with competition is important, but I think based on gender sales of the 945, "Air" and "Tides" would have just as many; most likely more, users on the 945.  So again, the decision not to port them confuses me. 

How can I sideload Tides?

Don’t have another Garmin device.

Former Member It's pretty simple:

"We're making this new app, which we are heavily marketing, so naturally all new devices are getting it."

vs.

"This app already exists, so now we have consider whether to do the work to make it available to new devices."

You already bought a 945 even though "Air" and "Tides" are not available -- Garmin gains nothing except goodwill by making those apps available to you -- and we can all tell how much companies care about goodwill when they think they have a basically captive market. Look at how every new Garmin watch has endless bugs for the first 12 months or longer. We know this and we still buy them.

By adding the Menstrual Cycle widget to all watches (including new watches), maybe they tapped into a new demographic that wouldn't have bought a 945 before.

I dunno, I'm not a marketing genius. All I know is a bunch of mainstream tech sites reported the news that Garmin now supports menstrual cycle tracking, while I never saw anybody report that Garmin has some random Air and Tides apps, no matter how happy it may make individual users.

Just because those apps have been sideloaded successfully doesn't mean that they're "ready for prime time" to be released officially. As stated, the fonts for 245/945 are different than other devices, so it's possible that those apps work fine, but look a little funny. I had to redo all my apps for 245/945 and MARQ, other than the "simple data fields" -- i.e. the data fields which simply calculate a value and let the watch figure out how to display it. To release them "as-is" would've been embarassing, because they would've looked terrible, and in some cases the fonts would've been smaller than necessary.

Of course, it's possible that Air and Tides were written in such a way that they would automatically look good on the new devices. Either way, it's up to Garmin to port them officially, which still requires testing on their part.