PSA: beta 16.09 is out

Jano22222 said:

And the rainmakerinfluencer don't often see errors in Garmin software.

I mean, I literally wrote about the issues I saw in this beta in the post and showed it in the video. But, ok.

3665098 said:

they prepare this marketing stunt: release new things at the same time dcrainmaker write about it (only the good things) and an offer for prime day...

Nobody coordinated anything, or even let me know about the sale or the beta ahead of time. I saw the public beta forum post, and then nearly 24 hours later I got around to posting about it (including getting my own unit updated). Right before I posted about it, I shot Garmin a quick note asking about the 265/965 and timing. At the same time, I was doing all the Prime Day sales (where I literally just manually sift through hundreds of pages to find deals), and stumbled into the 955 one.

In fact, never once, in the history of the entire 14 years that I've been doing this has Garmin let me know about a sale, nor have we ever discussed a sale. Seriously - never. If I find out about a sale beforehand, it's usually from a retailer somewhere, or like everyone else: In the leaked REI ads. Most of the time, I find out about sales when it shows up in my inbox like every other Garmin consumer from the newsletter thingy.

parentoft said:

When Garmin officially releases a beta - then DCrainmaker makes a blog about it - DCrainmaker and others are just getting the FW beforehand.

For Garmin's quarterly updates, I never get notice ahead of time. Just one time in the last year, for one SKU, merely because it overlapped with some unreleased stuff I was testing at the time (SatIQ), and they wanted to reduce any confusion. But even then, I didn't know when it was going to release. I found out the same time as everyone else, via the same way: The forums. And then I decide whether I'm going to post on it. Garmin released some other notable firmware stuff last night, I may or may not get around to posting on it today. I've gotta dig up one of those units, charge it up, update it, photo, write,  video, etc... We'll see.

Sometimes some of my units will actually have/get the new firmware on them days/weeks before, but I don't get release notes, so I actually don't typically know what's changed unless I stumble into it (some things are obvious, most things aren't). In other words, I'm like one of those blinded medical studies - I have no idea what's changed, but will tell them if something broke.

Anyways, I don't know why I bother to respond to some of the comments here...but...here I am.

About once every six months, you come back to these forums, and remember why you have not been here for six months :)

I am sure you have, but would be great if you could convey to the Garmin people how pi$$ poor their QA processes are please.

I agree

Every progress in development also have a setback, but something as crusual as CIQ-fields seems like really poor QA/Testing before the beta got released into "the wild among humans".

It decreases the trust in garmins ability to be able to do development of new functionality that actually works and even worse in the long run also makes you wonder... Do they make as many errors in the HW development part - that would be fatal at some point.

I made a long post about this a few months ago, from the perspective of someone who has led software teams and also headed a service for several decades.

Communication is key. Don't call something a release candidate if it obviously isn't. Acknowledge problems in a timely manner even if you're not going to fix them right now. Let people know you're working on things. Manage expectations.

It would be nice if, during the beta process, there was a list of acknowledged bugs with some sort of status on them, eg. "in progress", "analysing", "awaiting data", "backlog". It will exist internally, of course.

Hopefully, there will be an update next week. The CIQ datafield thing is probably an uninitialized variable, and as such an easy fix.

The source of the notification was terrible, nothing fits on the screen. That's not a release candidate. Polar doesn't release many updates, but the system is more solid. I'd prefer it that way.

CIAO, dico solo una cosa...dopo anni con fr935 e ora un anno con fr955...è vero che Garmin è l'unico marchio che può vantare mappe e navigazione a questi livelli ma...ma non si può dopo un anno vedo ancora che il tuo orologio si blocca durante la navigazione... lo tengo perché 600 euro sono tanti per un dispositivo come questo ma se lo sapessi prima rinuncerei ad alcune funzioni e proverei i suoi concorrenti, in la speranza che nella situazione "serie" non mi lasci in asso come Garmin. ma per ora è tutto

Yes, fix the basic features before you add more ♂️

For example I commented your video, with the information of problems with the altimeter and barometer, and that post disappeared from YouTube comments. 

Sorry, but I don't believe a word you say. Several times you have published a finished review at the same time as Garmin published some new watch / new software. But it doesn't matter, you don't have to defend yourself here. Everyone will make their own opinion about it.