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Apple needs to take a page out of Garmin’s playbook
- Thread starter DMG35
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Not “nearly free” or even close to it.I’m sure Apple wishes they could buy thousands of systems for their data center, set them up running on infinite power, and just let them run forever without having to ever touch them for maintenance, patching, etc… BUT, unfortunately, quite a large sum of money is required to keep those services servers running. The ROI for services is very likely greater than for other segments, but it’s not free profit.
And, as most of Apple’s services are tied to Apple’s hardware (Apple One, for instance is not a good investment without Apple hardware), my thinking is that the focus is always first in on the hardware. Then, once getting the hardware into/onto hands, desks, and pockets, the goal is to make services that those people with the hardware want to use.
And you completely missed my point.
I'm sure that every corporation that is foisting SAAS onto their customers are doing it just for their customer's benefit, out of the goodness of their hearts.
Every time I opened a ridiculously priced small box containing a smaller credit card sized 'COA and License Number, I cringed. Microsoft made all of their costs for the creation of Microsoft Office MONTHS AGO, and having people buy a cheap box with a card in it, and have to fight (often) the problems of actually getting their software seemed user abuse.
So, Microsoft selling a $0.50 card and requiring people to download the software that took all of a couple of minutes, sure was worth the money I or a client paid for it. And the absurd part of SAAS is that some vendors tie ALL support to the paying over and over again for the software that was already paid for.
But the profit does help offset the cost of development of other software, and updates to the software that was currently received. But... I remember having Adobe Creative Suite, paying the yearly (ransom) fee, and waiting for an update that other vendors had successfully shipped months and in some cases MANY months earlier.
So, sure, maintaining servers and switches and large pipes does cost money, but on a given day, how many people are trying to retrieve their software, and how much of the cost (Microsoft) extorted from customers is literally gravy.
I'd like to see the figures. Pre-SAAS, and post-SAS, management pay, investor payoffs, stock purchased, planes and office renovations purchased. It's hard for me to believe that SAAS isn't a huge cash cow for vendors.
As far as music goes, there are servers that will 'serve' thousands and thousands of people at any given moment, and the fraction of a system second is likely so small.
But whatever.
If 'services' weren't enticingly profitable, I doubt that many corporations would want to be involved in it.
They likely write off a percentage of their expenses somehow anyway. *shrug*
There is truth to that but the Apple service I mostly use the watch for is Apple Pay. It is very convenient to pay with a something on my wrist.
I ordered a few different ones. The Ultra looks fantastic and I can't wait for mine to arrive.
I moved from an S3 to a Garmin FR245. I liked the Apple Watch but to be honest the only parts of it I used were workout related so figured I’ll get a forerunner. It’s definitely not as sexy, not something you’d wear out to dinner but it does all I need, I love how I can design a workout in connect and it’s on the watch with turn by turn navigation.
I may do something similar. The reason I bought the Apple Watch was the heart arythmia detection, since my mother, father and brother have all had such issues whereas I haven’t to my knowledge. But then again, a spot check every few years isn’t all that likely to catch the problem early… So, it’s been daily checks since the AW, and still no sign. Touch wood!
But using it as a running watch has been frustrating. The tap-and-swipe interface just isn’t reliable, and if I didn’t have heart troubles before, I’m sure that the adrenalin boost trying to get the watch to end or at least pause the run when I’ve crossed the finish line ON TOP of already being at max heart rate will create some. 🤣 Or a stroke. And those don’t write heart warming letters to Tim Cook either.
So I swapped the Apple Watch in my last race for a cheapo regular digital watch (don’t need GPS or HRM when running a race), because buttons actually work reliably and there is no lag when looking at the watch before it updates the watch face.
Maybe buttons on the watch will be like the screen size in the iPhone, and we will have Apple Watches with buttons sticking out everywhere in a few years. I’ll buy another AW for training when there are four or so.
I didn’t say it wasn’t profitable, I even said the “return on investment” was far better than anything else. I just said it wasn’t free profit. Every second of every day, whether a customer uses it or not, there are a massive number of servers running, cooling systems running, and people coming in to work on those systems daily. That’s a LOT of cost and not really “Free”.
If the point was “they make a massive profit on services”, then I get the point. But, without massive amounts of hardware out there, they’re not going to be selling quite as many iCloud subscriptions for backing up those devices.
And with those data centers being run on solar and wind generated electricity, and heavily insulated, etc, they likely do not cost as much as you think. Plus they also likely run megatons of other apps and things on that hardware and while it is a cost, it's also a somewhat fixed cost. No one stays there, no one likely has to clean there, maybe someone stops buy once or twice a month to check things out, unless something breaks. If someone was there, it would be a mind numbing job. Like watching paint dry. I'm sure the providers are doing quite well. (Plus who knows how many are actually Apple owned centers to begin with. They were hosting some of their stuff on AWS. But, yeah, I'm sure they are doing quite well...
I had clients quite often willing to throw more hardware at a problem. Hardware is cheap. Cheaper than people. And I'm done. Cheers!
Agreed! i.e. not “free”.
I also assume so, just one more thing that isn’t “free”.
Oh, no, we know.
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Cheers!
I’ve used Garmin and Apple watches since the first Fenix. One feature that the Garmin has which is most useful for me while swimming, kayaking and riding my SeaDoo is being able to fully operate the watch with the buttons, even being able to disable the touch screen on the Epix 2 with buttons. I have ordered and cancelled the Apple Watch Ultra twice now because I cannot tell if this is fully possible with the new action button. I understand it can perform some limited functions but can you use it to fire off a quick reply to a message? Answer call? Check tides? With the Garmin buttons I can do Anything on the watch even while under water. On the Apple Watch, when water lock is active you can’t do anything with the watch!
Anyone who has used both watches will understand what I mean.
Anyone who has used both watches will understand what I mean.
I have both at the moment, hoping the ultra can mean just one. All i do is run, i dont swim etc. While I do ultras, they're a couple a year, its shorter training distances of 13-26miles normally. And I have to keep switching watch ass I run each day, as apple cant hack it (unless its charged repeatedly). Hoping the ultra means I have one watch finally, even if I have to improvise those two times a year.
Really I should just stick with garmin, but 1) apple pay (my bank isnt with garmin) and 2) "microsoft authenticator" (work makes us "2FA approve" every time theres a single sign on event, and tapping approve on the watch is so much easier than picking up phone, doing face id, opening authenticator, doing it again, etc.). I normally have to approve 10-20 times a day...
Will be interesting to see what Apple does with that extra button, it is definitely moving in Garmin's territory now though.
One thing I used to do with my 310xt is strap it on my handlebars when going for a ride, I only want basic stats so don't want a dedicated bike comp. (and yet another device to charge).
I did try this with my AW a few years ago but had to disable wrist detection, when I put it back on I then had to re-authorise all of my bank cards for use of Apple pay on it, PITA!
I'm not sure if this has changed as I have not tried it since.
Wow, I never knew Garmin did really expensive watches until I clicked on this link. Wow...
$2,500 for 'a watch'? Yikes...
So did Garmin take a page out of Apple's book? Partially kidding, but I thought the fenix I bought was expensive, for a watch, and it was just less than half this price. Wow. Amazing what someone can justify.
$2,500 for 'a watch'? Yikes...
So did Garmin take a page out of Apple's book? Partially kidding, but I thought the fenix I bought was expensive, for a watch, and it was just less than half this price. Wow. Amazing what someone can justify.
Marq watches are Garmin‘s top of the range. Michael Fisher (MrMobile on YouTube) uses a Marq Captain.
Still a smartwatch lol.
Prob will be worth $50 to a nostalgia collector in 12yrs time.
I have been using a Garmin watch for years now as well for running which also has offline music support (2GB storage I think, approx. 500 songs) and supports a few music services (Deezer, Spotify) which also can be listened to offline via a bluetooth headphone such as the excellent Shokz (OpenMove). The fact that you can drag and drop mp3 files on the watch via a Windows Explorer on Windows is ideal and that I can listen offline via Deezer (with a subscription) and that it syncs when connected to WIFI when requested to update the playlists.
Due to the battery life not being so good anymore for my Garmin Vivoactive 3 Music and things like:
- GPS connection lost for a limited time during a run (shown a couple of times during every run even though there are no large building or such blocking it) as notification on watch indicates
- seeing runs multiple times (duplicate entries) in the Apple Health export (see also this very old forum post on Garmin's forum)
- limited data exports from Garmin Connect to Apple Health (see also this forum post on Garmin's forum)
- no homescreen (let alone Lock Screen) widgets on iOS / iPadOS
- the iOS apps (Connect and Connect IQ) are UI wise a bit outdated, lacks to work offline (as we have seen with the long outage when they had a ransomware attack back in 2020) and don't offer recent iOS features
The reason I look at Apple Health data is due to the limited features in the Garmin Connect app itself. I've tested tons of third party iOS apps to see my Personal Records and my favorite is Personal Best (by Codakuma Ltd) but that is (as most iOS running stats apps) tight in with Apple Health which can show my fastest x km (4,5,6,10 or whatever distance I set) in the app unfortunately it can't show a top 3 fastest runs for lets say 2 distances (5 and 10km) yet in the widgets (while there are homescreen and lock screen widgets available for this app).
As far as the Apple Watch I was hoping to see more third party apps (see my earlier response in another topic on this) supporting offline cloud download apps to support it such as CloudBeats Pro (which doesn't) but there are a few apps around if you don't want to tie yourself into Apple Music or subscribe to the big players (Spotify, Deezer). I'm aware that you can have your own music collection in Apple Music but I don't think that has the option to easily grab MP3 files with your phone (so no MacBook, PC involved) from e.g. iCloud/Dropbox/Google Drive and get them into Apple Music to transfer to your Apple Watch to listen to it offline or can you?
I will probably upgrade this or next year to a newer Garmin watch with (local) music support and that offer the same (although limited) third party services (subscription based: Spotify, Deezer) such as:
- Garmin Vivoactive 4
- Garmin Forerunner 245 Music
- Garmin Venu SQ Music
- Garmin Venu 2 Plus
I did also check Apple Watch SE (e.g. 2020 model) as well.
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Just saw this now. Obviously I hope that you get whatever Watch best meets your needs but for the specific issue of pausing a run as you cross the finish line, the Apple Watch provides that option by pressing the button and the crown at the same time. I use it to stop every run that I’m on at the exact time I want to stop recording. I can then go in and stop it a few seconds later but time and distance are accurate.
The regular AW has 5 buttons in essence, crown up, crown down, crown press, side press, crown+side together. The extra ultra button, whilst benefitting some, is clutter afaic
Probably the worst take I've read on the Apple Watch's lack of buttons.
What I'm trying to say is there are plenty of ways for me to interact with my regular Apple watch. If you want loads of buttons all over it then the Garmin is for you. I like the svelte minimalist design of the AW. The Ultra is a step in the direction of a 'tool' watch...and it's fugly.
Which is likely why they did the funky machining around the bezel/face. It's to 'elegance' it up I'd think. *shrug* I've only seen pictures, I didn't take notice of the shape of it at the Apple Store.
I have an Apple Watch Ultra and a SS Series 8 as well as a Garmin Fenix 7. The Apple products are by far and away the best smart watches, the Garmin Fenix is by far and away the better sports watch. I should have bought the Epix 2 for the better display but, it's not a big thing.