Important news concerning our digital services
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I want to start off by saying that I know as little about the future direction of the SA or Suunto’s plans going forward as anyone else commenting here, but that said I will add what I do know:
The Suunto App is very much a work in progress, and there are – at least – another 18 months to go before the company would consider it ready enough for prime time for it to scrap Movescount.
While SA still has leaps and bounds by which it needs to improve to have even some of MC’s basic functionality (cough, POIs, cough, exporting FIT files, cough), it has improved by enormous leaps and bounds in far less time than that already.
I’ve been using the app as a beta with my Spartan since early last spring, shortly after the Android beta became available. All it did back then was pull workout data from the watch and put it in the Sports Tracker database, if I could get it to connect at all. No sending those workouts off to any other services, no diary section with step counts, calories, sleep tracking, etc. No control of the watch at all: no customization whatsoever, no route planning, no heatmaps, nothing. It looked and worked like an experimental version of the Sports Tracker app that could pull a little data from a few watches. The ability to do any of those other things in the app has been built from scratch over the course of the last eight months or so.
While a heck of a lot clearly remains to be done over the next 18 months before Movescount goes away (and remember, that’s the minimum amount of time, it could stay around for longer than that), what remains to be done, while significant, is window dressing compared to what’s already been done in half that time, which probably explains why the company saw fit to announce the eventual changeover now.
And for people with Ambit3s and Traverses, consider this: the app didn’t work at all with any of those watches until a couple of months ago. A couple of months of basic functionality versus a minimum of 18 months of active development to go before Movescount leaves. A lot can happen between now and then, and a lot more has happened in half that time.
All that said, if I had an older watch like a T6 or an Ambit2 or didn’t use a smartphone, I’d probably be singing a very different tune right now. Here’s what we do know right now: the company only said Movescount will eventually go away. There was no word about Suuntolink, Moveslink or Moveslink2 going anywhere. As long as those things continue to be able to link a watch with a computer, update GPS, and get workout data onto that computer in some straightforward manner for users to be able to do with it whatever they want, all that actually remains to be done to ensure continued full functionality is for there to be a way for users to get routes and settings from their computer to the watch; there’s no reason Movescount has to be necessary for any of that in the future.
That said, I wish Suunto had been a heck of a lot more clear about all of that in their statement the other day, especially with watches and users needing a cable to computer connection. One of the biggest reasons I got a Spartan when I finally decided to join the 21st century and get a GPS watch was Suunto’s reputation for making durable, long lasting stuff. It’s really central to their image, and when poking through the guts of different companies’ websites and finding that Suunto continued to make available support software downloads for watches that were made 12 to 15 years ago, that’s one of the things that most convinced me to go in this direction: that they did in fact have things that old that were still in the wild, still being used, and still being supported. If that were to all change now, that would change everything, and not in a good way.
But there’s still at least a year and a half to go and a lot more that can be cleared up and changed over an awful lot of time, so for now I remain hopeful. -
@Tryfgr HI, you can get a huge amount of what you need from Strava without paying. Their free app tracks and generates maps, even annual stats for your workouts. The only feature I know I don’t have is the heat map, a nice feature when traveling to new places but otherwise not essential. And Strava sticks a little more to the facts of the workout and avoids all the undocumented advice about recovery times and energy estimates. I have never been very convinced of those stats, given how little backup literature Suunto has provided about them.
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@ianshowalter said in Important news concerning our digital services:
not sure it’s only ‘window dressing’ what’s left to do in SA but fair comment, may I ask do you use beside the SA the movescount.com website with your SSU before or parallel or only the app?
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@Tobias-F I’ve been and I continue to use both in parallel. One big sticking point for me so far preventing a full switch has been the lack of ability to set POIs on the watch from the Suunto app.
Someone above mentioned Strava as a free alternative for maps and some stats; that’s what I used to track runs with my phone for years before getting a watch and I have the Suunto App automatically sending everything over there.
Another good free site that frankly does analytics way better than Strava is Runalyze. It doesn’t sync at all with Movescount; at present I manually export FIT or TCX files of every workout from there and manually upload them to Runalyze. However, the site did mention in an end of year blog post that it will begin automatically syncing with the Suunto App sometime early this year. So be on the lookout for that sometime soon. -
Removal of web based services and moving towards purely App based services whilst pointing users to third party software is quite simply a step backwards.
I’m no tech geek but Movescount is a cracking tool for reviewing your data and a suitable tool for route planning/review. Regardless of the power/functions of the new app it will be limited by its screen size at the very least.
Garmin did something similar with the 310xt (gpx traces became a nightmare to upload) and that prompted me to buy the Suunto Ambit 3 peak based on my partners positive experiences with her Ambit 2 (which will now become a paperweight???).
Maybe it is time for me to move on again as I am not a happy bunny with this decision.
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@ianshowalter thanks for feedback, got it!
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@rsmacleod Strava is Social Media. Over and out.
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Maps need large screens, small screens are not useful and create fatigue, not matter how good the app is. Loosing the web would be a disaster
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I could understand a reasonable Suunto web subscription, like starting at 15€/year. The service it’s just as relevant as the watch, they are not separate things.
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there might be different views, if MC is a perfect tool, but definetily there needs to be a web based tool in ADDITION to any app. viewing my tracks on a smart phone is a nice gimmick, planning moves, viewing maps, i prefer to do on my 24" screen.
I sincerely hope an pray, that Suunto is listening to their customers, to snub your customers is never a good choice… (eg Nokia) especially as i cannot imagine anyone who is getting a benefit by switching off the web base service (beside some potential cost savings on Suunto’s side), but this “gain” will become a trojan horse, once customers are moving off… -
Suunto, how about an offline standalone windows movescount programme? I don’t know how technically difficult that would be, but it would enable most of us with older devices to do most of the things we need. Examples:-Every time I run under power lines in a snowstorm I get a spiked HR reading - this throws out the TE value for all subsequent sessions until I reset the max HR via movescount. If I want to customise the screens for a particular event or sport I can only do it via movescount. Likewise for entering waypoints, reviewing routes etc. I’d be happy to store my data on my own laptop and the only thing I would really miss would be the satellite updates - but how important are these anyway?- I never update my car GPS. I don’t think we need it to be online, so if you could produce such a programme (and maybe most of it already exists in the current movescount) I think you would go a long way towards mitigating the problem and satisfying owners of older devices.
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in case, please dont limit to windows - there are also mac users out there…
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@martin-groschner
And Linux -
Could be implemented using the Electron Framework. Running on Windows, Mac and Linux.
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Some thoughts about this from famous sport equipment reviewer DC Rainmaker:
https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2019/01/suunto-announces-decommission-plans-for-movescount-platform-impacting-some-watches.htmlSuunto Race
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@Emir-Karisik said in Important news concerning our digital services:
Maybe someone should tell him that “Sport tracker is not the official SA web platform” … not yet at least.
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@mbergi said in Important news concerning our digital services:
@rsmacleod Strava is Social Media. Over and out.
So true… and additionally, as @Brad_Olwin stated it is a “braggard board”… and I simply love that as a quote
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@Emir-Karisik said in Important news concerning our digital services:
Some thoughts about this from famous sport equipment reviewer DC Rainmaker:
https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2019/01/suunto-announces-decommission-plans-for-movescount-platform-impacting-some-watches.htmlI think this passage is especially cute:
they’re awaiting user feedback and then will determine a specific course of action from there. Which is a simple way of saying they’re waiting to see how many people scream (and how loud they scream).
No, my friend, no! Of course they are not “waiting to see how many people scream”. They know exactly how many people will scream, they have full MovesCount usage statistics for the older devices. It’s just these people would be the minority by the time of shutdown.
Don’t you think it was really obvious from the start that the decision to simply brick one of their most popular watch series of the past decade was not going to fly with just about anyone, starting with the current owners? Of course the damage has already been done, simply by the very fact of making such an announcement, and it wouldn’t be undone even if that decision could be reversed (which won’t really happen). This was actually expected.
What they might be really considering is their sales stats for Suunto 3 and Suunto 9 watches in the coming months. These are the first Suunto watch series with no official support for MovesCount - so if these still sell, everything is fine. Voting with your money is the only vote that counts.
All in all, the current markets are becoming oversaturated, so it’s time to move over to greener pastures. And if that fails, they can always dumb the platform down (i.e “make it simple and user-friendly”) to further cut on production and support costs.
As for the owners of current BLE watches, believe me, they will be eventually convinced to move over to the Suunto App. They just have no other choice if they want to continue using their watches.
Again, please understand that it was not a spontaneous decision taken without any consideration, and that it won’t be reverted, no matter the amount of possible backlash from the users. All that voting and petitioning is just for letting out the steam.
I’m optimistic Suunto will come up with a plan to solve things over the next few months. By going with a decommissioning date some 18 months into the future, they’ve given themselves plenty of time to come up with a plan and execute on it. Even if we don’t necessarily like it. Hopefully, that end plan will at least maintain core functionality for all watch owners, even if it lacks the extended functionality.
Wishful thinking at best. Do not expect some miracle to happen - 18 months from now would be barely enough to properly implement the announced transfer options and make the Suunto App usable.
Please only consider the features that have been outlined in the official announcement. These are the only ones that will be actually implemented, if all goes well. Do not rely on possible great new features that could be added in the future if they were not confirmed.
These are the simple rules of surviving product planning and release management from big multinational corporations.
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@DmitryKo agree, couldn’t have write it better, like the bit of sarcasm in your line:
“Wasn’t it really obvious from the start that the decision to simply brick one of their most popular watch series of the past decade was not going to fly with just about anyone, starting with the current owners?”
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@Tobias-F
For Ambit 1 & Ambit 2 series
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I went round and round with Suunto on this via e-mail, and the long and the short of it is that they’re awaiting user feedback and then will determine a specific course of action from there. Which is a simple way of saying they’re waiting to see how many people scream (and how loud they scream).
"From: dcrainmaker
It is also obvious from which company Suunto copied their new digital strategy.
Xiaomi (of amazfit fame) also has no web interface. A manufacturer of a sports watch that costs 130 euros that is based in China that has been referenced by moderators here as the model of things going forward.
To be fair, I think Xiaomi does not have an open API. -
About open API: problem with the api is that it’s not really open. You have to have company and real product. I was about to code some stuff, but can’t get access for ‘personal projects’…
