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Strava abruptly ends 3rd party data sync to Apple Health

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Re: Strava abruptly ends 3rd party data sync to Apple Health

#31

Post by whimsicalism »

notacoward wrote: post #18

The weird thing is that they claim it's to avoid duplicate activities, but they totally know how to recognize duplicates already. Every so often, there's some sort of glitch in one of my activities getting from Garmin to Strava. If I'm feeling impatient, I download the .fit file from Garmin and upload it to Strava myself, and I never get a duplicate that way . Happened for the first time in a while just last week. Cl…

I thought they meant duplicate activities on the Apple Health side. If they can't read what the other services are writing to Apple Health then they have no way of avoiding duplicates.

Re: Strava abruptly ends 3rd party data sync to Apple Health

#32

Post by PragmaticPulp »

Gigachad wrote: post #4

I wonder what is going on at Strava. It feels like peak Strava was some time around 2018. Since then, it seems like features have only been getting disabled, hidden behind opt in flags, or moved to the paid plans. I completely understand the decision to move things to paid since their service does cost a lot to run and the subscription isn't expensive, but where are all the new and cool features that should have come…

They're starting to run it like a business.

Most apps/startups begin as an exploration of product/market fit. They'll try a lot of different things and use analytics (even simple server-side stats) to determine what people actually use in the app. Very frequently, you discover that the things you thought your users would want are actually only used by 0.05% of your customers. Eventually you have to start shedding rarely used features and limiting free plans, even if it makes the non-paying users angry.

Truth is, it doesn't really matter if you're losing someone who spend 5 years on the free plan but refused to sign up for the paid plan. They're not converting to paid unless they're forced to, and you're not gaining any money by letting them stay on the free plan for another 5 years.

> but where are all the new and cool features that should have come out over the last few years?

Cutting rarely-used features like this one could be a sign that they're trying to free up engineering resources to ship new features.

Re: Strava abruptly ends 3rd party data sync to Apple Health

#33

Post by renewiltord »

mdoms wrote: post #11

Garmin Connect is so much better than Strava it's not even close. The only reason I could possibly imagine preferring Strava is if I desperately need my social circle to be aware of my every workout. For those of us who do this for ourselves and not the approval of our peers Strava is miles behind.

Curious HN phenomenon: Describing reasons for behaviour as different from some hypothetical human with undesirable traits.

This one:

1. I don't use Strava because I am doing things for myself and not the approval of my peers

I shall shelve this along with my other HN faves which are (paraphrased):

1. I am remote because unlike everyone who goes to the office I have a life with hobbies and I don't like having friends only from work

2. For those of us who own a phone for productive reasons and not for social "clout", iPhones are terrible

3. If you want to do work and not just sit around in coffee shops posting about work, you would avoid a Macbook

Very enjoyable.

Re: Strava abruptly ends 3rd party data sync to Apple Health

#34

Post by artdigital »

samschooler wrote: post #3

Note: this restriction is limited to THIRD PARTY data, so: Strava -> Apple Health, still works Garmin/Fitbod/3rd party app -> Strava -> Apple Health, no longer syncs. IMHO this is better for me because now I don’t have duplicates in Apple Health and can sync to both services. But to each they’re own I guess.

Wonder if this includes third party sensor data that’s tracked with Strava. Like if I use a chest strap and record into Strava, will the exported data include the sensor data or is that considered “third party”

Re: Strava abruptly ends 3rd party data sync to Apple Health

#35

Post by stingrae »

samschooler wrote: post #3

Note: this restriction is limited to THIRD PARTY data, so: Strava -> Apple Health, still works Garmin/Fitbod/3rd party app -> Strava -> Apple Health, no longer syncs. IMHO this is better for me because now I don’t have duplicates in Apple Health and can sync to both services. But to each they’re own I guess.

Why not let users chose to enable/disable?

Re: Strava abruptly ends 3rd party data sync to Apple Health

#37

Post by asdff »

s1mon wrote: post #26
Gigachad wrote: post #4

I wonder what is going on at Strava. It feels like peak Strava was some time around 2018. Since then, it seems like features have only been getting disabled, hidden behind opt in flags, or moved to the paid plans. I completely understand the decision to move things to paid since their service does cost a lot to run and the subscription isn't expensive, but where are all the new and cool features that should have come…

Strava is extremely frustrating. I've been a paid user for 10+ years. They do add features from time to time, but it's amazing how slowly it happens. There's a forum on their web site for user feedback and suggestions, but it seems like they pay little attention to the users. So many of their users that I know feel like a run or bike ride didn't happen if they don't record it on Strava. It's a super addictive and sti…

I'm an occasional strava user because I wanted just something to log these data and strava seemed like the popular choice, but what a clunky app. First off there are so many features and I have no clue how to use any of them, half of them ask for a subscription. Feels like my junky cut rate wyzecam app always asking to upcharge me, or maybe Spirit Airlines. The auto pause feature rarely works correctly (maybe not at all?) on my cellphone. I'm sitting there still as a statue and I'm watching average speed tick down...

I used it snowboarding and there's some way to track runs and push out the whole day of skiing as one post, but I couldn't figure it out, so I just polluted my own feed with these single run posts. Then for some of them I forget to start recording halfway down the run because once again thanks to the broken auto pause feature, so now I need to remember to start it up at the top of the hill in addition to already having to put on a snowboard binding. Then thanks to the auto pause and me forgetting about pausing the run, it records me shuffling about in the lift line and then riding 25mph on the nose on the gondola.

Re: Strava abruptly ends 3rd party data sync to Apple Health

#38

Post by [deleted] »

Gigachad wrote: post #4

I wonder what is going on at Strava. It feels like peak Strava was some time around 2018. Since then, it seems like features have only been getting disabled, hidden behind opt in flags, or moved to the paid plans. I completely understand the decision to move things to paid since their service does cost a lot to run and the subscription isn't expensive, but where are all the new and cool features that should have come…

[deleted]

Re: Strava abruptly ends 3rd party data sync to Apple Health

#39

Post by datavirtue »

Instead of fixing shit like the issues pointed out in this post, they spent all their resources fucking up the UX in the app. The new activity save screen is complicated and is very obscure about where the various form data are going to show up in the final post. It used to be intuitive and straight forward. Feels like they were trying to be clever.

Re: Strava abruptly ends 3rd party data sync to Apple Health

#40

Post by notacoward »

mulmen wrote: post #24
notacoward wrote: post #18

The weird thing is that they claim it's to avoid duplicate activities, but they totally know how to recognize duplicates already. Every so often, there's some sort of glitch in one of my activities getting from Garmin to Strava. If I'm feeling impatient, I download the .fit file from Garmin and upload it to Strava myself, and I never get a duplicate that way . Happened for the first time in a while just last week. Cl…

Millions of activities is approximately zero activities. That's an inconsequential amount of data. Even if it is a couple orders of magnitude larger than I think geographic partitioning can keep the volume small enough to easily fit in RAM.

It's not the size (though as mdoms explains it's more than you might think); it's the complexity of matching activities to segments at the necessary level of precision. I know what a consequential amount of data looks like, having worked on a storage system that routinely fed multiple petabytes of data to each of many analytics pipelines simultaneously. Geographic partitioning is only what gets you to millions of activities instead of billions. There's still a computational component involved in delivering those answers so quickly, and that's what I'm curious about. There might be some interesting algorithms involved. Your blithe dismissal of any part other than the one you think you understand shows that you either can't understand the whole thing or didn't bother to try.
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