Honestly, my real problem with the Apple Watch is that I don’t understand how to read the damn data for a workout in Apple Health. I’m so used to my pretty linear graphs in Garmin Connect…I just don’t get the AW data. 
With U, so I don’t … link to strava and view in strava or intervals,icu where the rest of my data is
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I can’t see how Apple Watch can be a device that athletes use whilst Apple doesn’t facilitate export to 3rd party services. Garmin makes this trivially easy.
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Apple Watch workouts go to Apple Health which then sends to Strava, TrainingPeaks, etc. It’s very popular for that middle ground athlete who only uses it for running or in addition to a bike computer. Plus with structured workouts sending to the watch, it’ll get even more popular.
A friend’s Garmin watch from eons ago did that. He had a handlebar mount to use it in place of a head unit. I’m not sure what the battery life was, but it was certainly enough for regular rides.
The only thing is that you will then need to wear a separate heart rate strap, because your watch is on the handlebars. Or, alternatively, you won’t really have much opportunity to look at your ride data.
I don’t buy that. The Apple Watch has no problem connecting to other Bluetooth devices like AirPods or a heart rate strap. I have never heard that this caused undue battery drain. And not being a focus, it should be table stakes for a fitness watch. They have shown people using an Apple Watch on their bike, they have a cycling activity, crash detection on the bike, Apple should just do this. And this is just software, so it has nothing to do with the Ultra. I also find their rejection of Ant+ a bit annoying. Ant+ has the big advantage that it is a one-to-many interface, and on older fitness devices which only support a single Bluetooth connection this can get a bit annoying.
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A lot of these issues can be addressed with third party apps vs native Apple support. I use Athlytic which uses the watch data and saves me a whoop subscription and wearing another device.
Was surprised to see a third party app mentioned in the presentation (Scuba app) so maybe now that they have this watch at least marketed towards adventurers and athletes more third party apps to do what we’re discussing will come out. Sounds like Apple at least doesn’t see the market for it.
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Isn’t an advantage of the Apple Watch (from a cycling standpoint) that you can make calls from it? Or can you do this from other devices? On long gravel races, I can leave the phone at home and call or text for help with the watch. I still take my Garmin. Saves weight and pocket space vs the phone for races.
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Theoretically, but a watch is a much smaller device than a phone and correspondingly uses a lower power radio and smaller antenna, resulting in worse reception than a full sized phone. If you ride somewhere with consistently good coverage you could ditch the phone, but many people ride in more rural areas to avoid traffic which means much greater chance of cell dead zone.
The use case where I definitely leave my phone at home though is running. Phones are giant and heavy now so running with just a cellular watch and airpods is amazing in comparison.
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My point is that if Apple is serious about this market it should be facilitating and owning the integrations. Not rely on 3rd parties to provide it.
As someone for whom the built-in functionality also wouldn’t be enough, I think you can make an argument that Apple already is providing the functionality. But just like Zwift or Peloton are aimed at a different type of customer, I think the native integration isn’t meant for people like us.
Allowing third-party apps to fill these gaps is, I’d argue a valid strategy.
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But Apple Health is owned by Apple. How is it different to a Garmin watch syncing activities to Garmin Connect which then integrates with other apps?
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The ways it’s marketed you’d have thought you could take it on expedition. The only one i ever did was up Mont Blanc and 2 other mountains beforehand. This watch would have run out of power the first day i forgot to or couldn’t charge overnight.
Ill stick to my Fenix thanks. I charge that once a fortnight.
I now remember why i sold my only Apple Watch.
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It’s not…they aren’t targeting athletes like us. As noted earlier, they are targeting the much larger, middle of the road, demographic. They aren’t trying to beat Garmin.
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I disagree. First of all, more casual athletes are athletes too. Second, they very much are going after runners, hikers, divers, triathletes.
No, they aren’t trying to copy every feature and they obviously aren’t yet going after cycling computers, but that may change over time. The Ultra watch and intervals and triathlon transition stuff this year showed they are expanding their scope. In the next year or two I can see them adding more cycling specific stuff. They really only need to add Bluetooth sensor support and the third party apps can do the rest
I think our agreement is getting lost in semantics. I didn’t say their target audience wasn’t made up of athletes…I said “athletes like us”. I agree 100% with what you posted right there.
They are clearly targeting “athletes” and yes, beginning to increase the scope of their reach…but still clearly not looking to take on Garmin, etc.
Garmin’s market strategy has always been a “Top Down” approach….go after the serious athletes and let others follow in their wake. Solid approach when you are first-to-market.
Apple started off by targeting the meat of the market and are slowly expanding their reach….but still far from targeting the top of the market.
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Since I use a cycling computer for cycling the Apple Watch use case for me is limited to any other sports I do.
I mainly will use it for steady state runs. Any interval workout where I need laps I use my garmin 935 since it has a lap button and more data fields vs having to swipe on my Apple Watch 6. Looks like new ultra Apple Watch has a button but it’s not worth $799 for me.
Really my favorite Apple Watch features are some of the apps I use where I don’t want to pick up my phone and messaging especially since I can respond to texts on the Watch. This is useful when I’m away from my phone or helpful cycling when my phone is stashed away and I just need ti respond to a text.
Apple Watch has always had a lap function that didn’t require any swipes. On newer watches you simply double tap the screen or, you’ve always been able to push the button and crown at the same time for active a lap. Clumsy, but works.
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I guess I never looked into enough since in those cases I would just use my garmin watch.
To that point, I’m using the TR low-volume plan. I do my three workouts per week using my Wahoo Bolt. However, I also do easy rides Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday that are not on my training plan. For these rides, I use my Apple Watch to record my activity. I really dislike having the headunit on my bike, so it’s nice to have the watch recording my activity in the background. I also usually leave my phone at home and just use the LTE feature on my watch if I need to contact someone.
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Makes sense. I would use a smartwatch on my commute.