Fitbit is now officially part of Google

I replaced my versa with Apple Watch when the versa died. I don’t necessarily regret it, but it didn’t feel like an upgrade and came with significant downsides.

In particular, Fitbit gives far more control over notifications, especially for built-in apps like messages. Fitbit makes media controls easily accessible - on Apple Watch, they’re always moving and hard to get back to especially during a workout. My main use case is skipping podcast commercials, so not being able to do that quickly is a problem.

Battery life was much better on the versa. It also charged faster, so it would almost always be done charging after a shower, Apple Watch only sometimes is.

Tldr there is definitely room to deliver a better product than Apple’s. Whether or not Google is capable of doing that is a different question that I won’t address.

I pray that this time, it's different, but I'm not holding my breath.

  Dear Customer,

  We are sorry for improperly sending out the "Broken
  Heart" alert to you on January 21, 2023.  We should
  have sent you the "She's Pregnant" alert.  In the
  future, please ensure both you and your dating partners
  are running the same OS version.  Thank you for your
  understanding.

  sorry,
  FizzyBaneFitness

This post is a tutorial on how not to handle an acquisition! It's generally a bad sign for an acquisition if staff from the parent company say words like that they are "fighting to impose the parent companies culture and conventions"!

It's an acquisition, but companies are made of people, and just because a parent company does something one way doesn't mean that it will fit the company they have acquired.

Take the acquisition of Disney & Pixar. Steve Jobs stated that he wouldn't sign up to the acquisition if it meant that Disney culture would be imposed, because “Disney’s culture [would] destroy Pixar and distraction will kill Pixar's creativity". The whole structure of how the acquisition was planned was to ensure that Pixar maintained creative control and autonomy, and wasn't bulldozed by Disney Corporate.

I've lived through an acquisition too - the real factor to success is to listen and learn from each other, and build a shared way of working. Unless you are buying a failing company, you have to appreciate that they are doing something right and know their own company more than you do. And if it means you use tabs and they use spaces, that's fine.