??? I’ve gone to the grocery store and my apps pulled the cycling workout from Health with all the data (power, cadence, speed, and HR from watch). Strava needs updating, it didn’t grab the gps data. But other apps read it just as if it came from a bike computer.
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Great for going to the grocery store. This summer I rode 2 rides over 8 hours and several that lasted ovef 5 hours. Current Apple products just don’t fit rides like that.
Well yeah, I have a bike computer for several reasons. And I’d rather not take my bike computer to the grocery store or gym.
My point is that all the data isn’t locked up in some walled garden. TrainingPeaks pulled it right out of Health. Strava tried but it needs an update. Garmin refuses to pull anything out of Health, but that’s on Garmin.
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IMO the walls around the Garmin garden are much higher. If you want to automatically upload the workout data to Garmin Connect, the only way is to use a Garmin device.
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The walled garden effect won’t begin till Apple has some traction in the space. At this point, they have very little. I also don’t leave my Garmin on the bike when locked at the grocery store. I don’t expect Apple to gain traction among cyclists with a watch. It’s dangerous to be looking at a watch while riding. I wear my AW for the cellular, and the accident alerts. One glaring example of how Apple develops the walled garden effect is the Itunes to apple music transition. It’s their template: Free capability gradually turning into subscription service. Technically, Itunes still exists, but has become almost unusable, and pretty much unsupported.
I love a good Saturday morning conspiracy theory 
Regarding iTunes to Music, I dunno, I’m still playing all the songs I ripped from CDs. And Spotify basically took over the space, and Music is Apple’s answer to that. Thats my view.
I’ve used an app called Rungap, runs on Iphone and will collect collect data from Health and export a .fit file
Every casual, occasional rider I know and ride with time to time uses an Apple Watch to record their cycling workouts and the rest of their workouts (running, etc.). They already own one, it is good enough. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are a couple magnitudes of order more workouts done on Apple Watches than garmin devices, cycling included.
Not a conspiracy theory, It’s Apple’s clearly stated financial strategy outlined in comms to shareholders and investors:
Move to mostly subscription revenue, and increased revenues from services. They will apply this strategy to every segment of their business if possible.
As a shareholder, I’m fine with it. As a cyclist, they have to bring significant advantages to the table for me to use them as a primary data system.
Yeah, I remember about 10-12 years ago my kids stopped buying music on iTunes and went full on Spotify. And paying annual subscription. That’s about the time buying music or movies became old skool.
I’ll mentally bookmark this conversation and come back and say I had it wrong, the day Apple stops free users from recording walks and hikes and bike rides.
I’m a die hard Garmin user and supporter, but their walled garden sucks. I’m using a paid app (RunGap) to push walks to Garmin. Too lazy to push strength to Garmin. Not interested in buying a Garmin watch. Love my Edge 840.
On the other hand TrainingPeaks imports stuff from Health. Strava too.
Garmin doesn’t play nice and manually entering weight (I have a Withings scale) is another annoyance and reminder that Garmin is the walled garden company in the sports world.
They all do it, fundamentally we agree. The models are different, with Garmin you pay your subscription fees up front in the hardware price, & Garmin connect is only really free to Garmin HW owners. The work around is you can get Trainer Road, Training Peaks and Strava to push to Garmin Connect.
I don’t ever see Apple charging for recording basic exercise events. I just see them pushing more and more functionality & analytics into Apple fitness to drive the subscription model.
I think the Apple subscription model will attempt to compete with gyms and Peloton - the mass market - and not Garmin. At least for the next 10 years. If not I’ll come back to this thread and admit I was wrong.
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If you want to automatically upload the workout data to Garmin Connect,
There are ways to do that…
And only a select few are given the opportunity to do that.
Given that it’s strength training. you can opt to record it on the Edge and upload it to GC then change the activity type (albeit manually).
manually entering weight (I have a Withings scale)
You can also get Withings Data into Garmin. Some, not all possibly. Its doable. In a way, Apple Health is quite nice - I’m finding that it’s nearly like Strava in how it’s a hub where other apps can write data to it and then anyone can write an app to read from it and then use that data to propagate it elsewhere.
I believe a lot are going down that route already. Not only Apple. Possibly one day, garmin will get there too.
Pretty happy with Athlytic and Apple Watch combo. It picks up exertion automatically without having to record. My strength training is really conditioning in the A+A kettlebell way.
The Apple One subscription beats the music service subscriptions, especially the Family version. In addition to getting access to all music, movies, etc. it also allows to share all app purchases within the family.
You could use a Garmin watch for cycling for years, probably over a decade. Garmin even sells a watch mount for handlebars. A friend of mine had one.
Not all cycling activities require you to have a handle on your second-to-second power numbers. I don’t pay attention to my Wahoo when I navigate technical terrain.
Or if I want to record commutes.