FYI I know this MacRumors post was mostly written from a PR released by Strava, but there's an interesting story in how this update has been received by the installed base of Strava users.
Check out this thread on Strava's support forum:
https://support.strava.com/hc/en-us...0-Updated-Strava-app-for-Apple-Watch-Series-2
The TL;DR version is:
The old version of Strava's watch app was basically just a second screen to the existing IOS app. You could start your run on the phone or on the watch, either way all features were available.
This new version is a complete ground-up redesign to take advantage of the GPS in the series 2 watch, but as a result the app is almost completely separate from the IOS app both in feature set and functionality. For instance if you press start on the watch, then open the IOS app, as far as you can tell on the phone you are not doing a run. And vice versa - if you start it on the IOS app, you can't get your current distance or speed on the watch.
The problem with this redesign, which you can see in that thread above, is that it has broken lots and lots of use cases for existing users. For instance, if you want heart rate data in your run, you have to use the watch app. But if you want to use the recently introduced Beacon feature (that lets loved ones track where you are LIVE as you run), you have to use the IOS app. And so on with voice prompts, route maps and other things not being accessible when using the watch app now. And there are yet other things that bike users rely on that are now unusable with this new watch app.
The kicker is that some of these features like Beacon are Premium features, for which users pay a monthly/annual subscription fee. So Apple Watch users suddenly can't access features they are paying for. Many are threatening to cancel their subscriptions.
After an initial round of complaints, Strava pinned a summary reply you can see at the top of that thread above, and this part in particular has got many users even more angry:
> Add option to keep watch tethered:
> (Recording with power/cadence sensors, checking recording on phone)
>
> "This is something we're considering but it's not on our immediate roadmap. It's a significant
> engineering lift to ensure a seamless experience. We want to better understand the use cases and
> how the Apple Watch itself will evolve this year before we make any concrete plans."
The "not on our immediate roadmap" thing has people livid!
This reminds me of back when Apple redesigned Final Cut Pro and pissed off all their professional users a couple years back. There's definitely a story here in how NOT to keep an existing user base happy.
