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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

#51

Post by oldstrangers »

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…

There's also the reality where their client base gets older and loses interest in taking their sport as seriously. My entire cycling circle stopped regularly using Strava years ago because we just all got older and no longer had that competitive interest.

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

#52

Post by mulmen »

notacoward wrote: post #40
mulmen wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 act…

I doubt the actual leaderboard calculation requires full granular data down to the meter. Segments can be aggregated from the meter level data in advance. I’m sure there are clever choices in creating those aggregates but that seems like the obvious (and admittedly naive) approach.

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

#53

Post by mulmen »

mdoms wrote: post #30
mulmen wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Incredibly ignorant statement. An activity can have thousands of data points across dozens of metrics. A record of your route to 1 meter or smaller precision for a 5 hour bike ride is alone thousands of data points. Along with hundreds or thousands of time series points for heart rate, elevation, cadence, power, respiration, etc etc... Millions of activities means tracking tens of billions of data points and perhaps…

There’s no reason all that granular data would be used to calculate a leaderboard. It can be rolled up in advance and for leaderboard purposes most of it can be ignored.

Parallelism along the location, customer and activity dimensions makes this an easily reducible problem.

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

#54

Post by sastraxi »

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #44
asdff wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are any apps at all actually good for route planning especially on a bike? It seems like that this is something in software that just sucks. I don't even bother anymore, I open up a topographical map and figure out routes by hand. No more turning left across six lanes from a stop sign. No more route thats "mostly flat", aside from the 400ft of undulating terrain that saps you. No sharing the road with semitrucks that…

https://cycle.travel/map Disclaimer - my site. It’s very focused on quiet routes, so will generally prefer a hilly road if the alternative is a traffic-infested one. Europe/North America/AU+NZ only at present.

Really impressive site, thanks for sharing it! Bonus: I'm just used to sites not having data / support for Canada; this was a pleasant surprise.

UX observation: clicking to create a start and end was relatively intuitive, but it took a while to find "Close route" to reset it (and be able to click for start / end points once more).

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

#55

Post by xsmasher »

voigt wrote: post #43

Is there any OSS/self hosted alternative to Strava? Where would be the challenges?

Strava has:

  * the database of "segments" created by users  
  * the leaderboard data for each segment  
  * the network-effects of being "the place to record data"
If you create a self-hosted Strava then it isn't really Strava; it's just a log of your workouts.

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

#56

Post by whimsicalism »

notacoward wrote: post #50
whimsicalism wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Doesn't that suggest that Apple is failing to detect and coalesce duplicates, like Strava and (AFAIK) other similar services like Garmin Connect or old MapMyRun do? That seems pretty damning, and also not Strava's problem.

It might be substantially easier to detect duplicates coming from the same device (ie. the Strava case) than duplicates that might have been repackaged by any number of N third parties (ie. the Apple case).

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

#57

Post by cheeze »

verisimi wrote: post #8
exabrial wrote: post #2

All of the (Garmin, Strava, Apple, and Google [who is trying really hard but failing]) want a monopoly on your health data. Garmin is the only one I actually trust currently, as they've shown 0 willingness to monetize your health information. The Strava/Garmin relationship is an interesting one: Strava has the social network, Garmin has the best devices [for serious Athletes, not casual users]. Garmin Connect is pret…

I'm still shocked and amazed that anyone would willingly share their health data with corporations. Why? What could go right? I say that acknowledging your point that this is possibly one of the better corporations out there. > Garmin is the only one I actually trust currently, as they've shown 0 willingness to monetize your health information. What about the concern that the company is bought out in the future? Or t…

Many people don't care about health data being monetized. I don't personally care if Strava sells my heart rate data or where I rode my bike today. I'm fine with trading them that data for their heat map, which is super useful in planning rides.

To me, it comes down to me being fine with this data being considered public. If others don't want to share it, that's totally fine and I understand their perspective. For me though? I couldn't care less.

Congrats, you sold some data that says I'm fat, out of shape, and don't like riding my bike on busy roads.

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

#58

Post by thematrixturtle »

pedalpete wrote: post #20
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…

From discussions I've had with people at Strava, they're trying to be more focused on implementing a few key features really well. When the original founders returned in 2018 or 2019, the app had a ton of features that had been half integrated, couldn't be found in order to be used, etc etc. They paired back things that weren't working, moved to focus on revenue (as they weren't going to be able to grow into the soci…

Re: "key features really well", they're not even doing this.

My normal morning jog goes under a large bridge. This often confuses my phone's GPS, leading it to return a spurious point or two a kilometer away. Strava is completely incapable of detecting these spikes (accelerating to 200 km/h when running is normal right?) and offers no way to edit them out afterwards, meaning all my speed and distance records, progression charts etc are ruined by junk data.

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

#59

Post by cheeze »

asdff wrote: post #41
adam-_- wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it’s just what you know but every time I’ve used Garmin Connect it’s felt like a dumpster fire compared to Strava. Even for route planning (years ago) which I would not say Strava is fantastic at, it still seemed worse. YMMV

Are any apps at all actually good for route planning especially on a bike? It seems like that this is something in software that just sucks. I don't even bother anymore, I open up a topographical map and figure out routes by hand. No more turning left across six lanes from a stop sign. No more route thats "mostly flat", aside from the 400ft of undulating terrain that saps you. No sharing the road with semitrucks that…

Komoot is by far the best IMO. It's not perfect, but it's pretty good.

My workflow is 3 monitor setup. Komoot in the middle, actually planning the route. Strava heatmap on the left to see where people often travel in an area. Gmaps on the right to see streets and street view.

It's still a pain to plan, but it's _so much easier_ with komoot.

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

#60

Post by cheeze »

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #44
asdff wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are any apps at all actually good for route planning especially on a bike? It seems like that this is something in software that just sucks. I don't even bother anymore, I open up a topographical map and figure out routes by hand. No more turning left across six lanes from a stop sign. No more route thats "mostly flat", aside from the 400ft of undulating terrain that saps you. No sharing the road with semitrucks that…

https://cycle.travel/map Disclaimer - my site. It’s very focused on quiet routes, so will generally prefer a hilly road if the alternative is a traffic-infested one. Europe/North America/AU+NZ only at present.

This is good. Guessing you're already ahead of me, but a feature that I find super useful in competitors is an elevation map of the route after I've selected it.
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