But what about the riproaring, culture-defining success of Second Life?! I’m really hoping this is Zuckerberg’s white whale and that he crashes the whole company trying to convince people they’ll LOVE working in virtual cubicles.
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LOL…at first I was like “Why the hell (and how the hell) is he doing Zoom calls on his Wahoo?!?!?”
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You mean not all people are doing Zoom calls during VO2Max intervals? 
#painface
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It’s a new beta feature on Wahoo computers- Zoom calls. For when you are “Working at home”.
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Agree that Apple will put real pressure on Garmin. G has shown they are responsive to the market and are good followers. They may not be the innovation leaders but they seem to take the good ideas and do enough to stay competitive. Their maps, good sensors and rugged hardware are a key differentiator, even if the UX and software are a bit behind at times. They’ve also been doing hardware for a long time, so they have battle scars the other players do not, that they learn from.
I remember when Suunto used to be the go-to sport watch and they seem to have faded. Garmin vs others seems like the tortoise & the hare: Garmin isn’t there first, but they do enough to stay competitive.
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Garmin is a leader in other areas such as aviation instrumentation where it is the market leader for the small plane and light jet markets. That stuff is way more sophisticated than anything in the sports market and Garmin has been a serious innovator there so they clearly have the horsepower to do cool things. A GPS bike computer is nothing compared to getting FAA certification and producing stuff that can sell for $100K plus and can kill you if it doesn’t work. The frustrating thing is that they they clearly have a lot of capabilities but they seem to be fine doing just enough in the sports market to stay half a step ahead of competitors. Apple is after a slice of the sports market but Garmin has only been half trying up to now so it should be interesting to see where this goes.
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I’ve been reading reviews of sports watches for many years, and I honestly can’t ever remember reading one where the reviewer didn’t give the Suunto some caveat like “It looks amazing, but there are better watches for less money”
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I managed to get in before the take over and my package is just for RGT (not Systm) and its less than half the price of Zwift. You’ve always got the option to ride it for free but you are limited to two courses unless a paying member invites you to a race. That’s what I was intending on doing but after RGT made it completely free during lockdown , I
thought I’d give something back and subscribed.
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Out of curiosity, what kind of features does the 830 have and Wahoo’s cycling computers don’t? (No intention of starting a flamewar, I promise 
)
My reading is that Apple is after the majority of the sports market, not just a slice. That’s why I think Garmin focusses on smartwatches with very long battery life and the like.
I don’t think money plays a big role here: Apple’s smartwatch offerings are not more expensive than comparable smartwatches from Polar or Garmin. Quite the contrary, for the average person Apple is a household name and Garmin is not. There are also a few very useful and relevant feature where Apple is really ahead, e. g. LTE connectivity. Apple offers it with any of its model and is included with the Ultra by default. Far fewer Garmin and Polar watches have full LTE connectivity with the option to call people.
Regarding battery life, just have a look at what Apple is doing, they are steadily extending battery life while adding other features you have a hard time getting with other smartwatches. At a certain point, battery life becomes a non-issue for most. Is 3- vs. 4-day battery life going to be a deal breaker for most customers? I doubt it.
Thanks for your feedback.
From what I understand, Wahoo tried to obviate the need for greasing the bearings. Many customers likely did not do it or did not do it often enough in the past. (My Crankbrothers pedals are similar in this respect.)
Does it? From my understanding Peloton is bigger than Zwift.
I would buy an Apple Watch with legit 4 day battery life. Right now it’s still pretty much a charge daily device unfortunately.
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According to reviews, the Ultra has 2±day battery life and ordinary Apple Watches are 1 day + change. Battery life regressed when Apple added the always-on display, and it is slowly increasing. I also would emphasize that e. g. the Ultra has LTE and battery life figures assume you are using LTE connectivity. That’s a significant battery draw for a very useful feature — I could leave my phone at home when going on rides. IMHO there is no way competitors could get week-long or even month-long battery life if that included LTE connectivity.
Personally, I don’t think charging a Watch is such a big issue, to me longevity is. My wife replaced her Apple Watch 3 after her battery became old. If her Watch Series 3 had had 2 days of battery life, she would have had to charge it only half as often, doubling the lifetime of her Watch.
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My problem is that Zwift is arguably employing anti-competitive monopoly practices to crush competition. Either through their size or access to private funding they are able to sell the Zwift hub at a loss or at least at absolutely no profit (presumably - I have no data to back this up) by subsidizing the HW cost through their subscription income. Hypothetically, other companies who are forced to actually make money on their HW can’t compete, go out of business, then Zwift just jacks up the price of their HW and pulls in the profit. Classic anti-competitive behavior stuff.
First obvious counter-argument is that Zwift is not a monopoly which is true - but they are clearly big enough to be able to heavily shape the market, e.g. they may effectively kill everyone besides Garmin with the Hub alone. Second counter is that Zwift is not launching the Hub to kill competition, they’re doing it to provide a cheap entry-point to the trainer space and increase their subscription user base. That may be true, but not sure how much their stated motivation matters if the effect of killing competition is the same.
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- Ray Maker has stated that Zwift is most likely getting a small profit from the $499 USD pricing, not a loss.
That aside, your basic point rings true from the limited bit I gather. They have a size and funding that may allow them to make choices not possible or practical for others in the same space.
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Zwift wants users. That is where to money is. They have barely even begun to start cashing in on their potential digital ad and data revenues. They’ll never have the mass numbers the big social media sites have but they do have a great loyal user base that leans towards higher income demographics. We’ll know they are staring to get serious when the first individually targeted billboard goes up somewhere on Watopia ;-). They already have the tech to show individual users unique visuals, (e,g, banners during workouts). All they have to do is tie that in with some data and start selling ads.
Seriously: Zwift is a working version of a slice of the Metaverse FaceBook is spending billions to try and create. They only need the Hub because they want more eyeballs.
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Wahoo still uses an IBD network, which definitely hampers their ability to compete price-wise. They’re pretty traditional on the sales strategy/structure front, I know because I’m on their dealer e-mail list.
I hope they can right the ship, as I’m a big fan of the brand.
This is the thing I don’t get…. Granted I don’t have an Apple Watch… but they talk about the sleep tracking being such a feature, but you have to charge it every day, presumably at night. Am I missing something?
Hate to say it but if Apple picked up ant+ support to pair a power meter, I’d probably jump ship on my next watch from a garmin fenix. The idea of being able to go for a ride without my phone but have emergency contact is pretty appealing. With what it has now, it’s a total toy for my uses, but that could change
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I switched to Garmin where I have 10 day battery, but when I had an AW, I would charge it while clearing out my inbox in the morning and at the end of the work day if needed. I actually got great sleep tracking from Apple, but I know some don’t. A few folks here have told me that the newer AW’s charge very quickly and get more than 24 hour battery life. Another downside to the older AW’s is that I constantly scratched or cracked them, so I wanted a new one almost every year. I’m not sure if that has improved.
Between using it as a camera and as a backup gps, I can’t imagine ever going on a ride without a phone. I use my phone on rides all the time.
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Heh heh…I just made a presentation today to a major retailer about a sleep device we are working on
I specifically noted that current sleep devices require recharging, often at inconvenient times and called the Apple Watch out as an example.
That will be kinda funny if that happens. Could be a meme gold mine
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Agreed but I addressed that above. It doesn’t matter if their publicly stated and primary objective is to grow the user base if the actual result of that is it that it also kills competition.
It’s all hypothetical at this point, but I find it hard to believe that if they do find themselves suddenly being a dominant player in the market that they aren’t at a minimum going to start resuming their plans to offer or partner to provide premium trainers with higher profit margins. Why wouldn’t they if the opportunity was clearly there. If that did play out, it’d basically have manifested the classic predation and recoupment stages of predatory pricing, a monopolistic practice from econ 101.
I don’t think this is their actual evil plan, my whole point is I don’t care about intent if the end result is the same.