Many of you were not here.....

DmitryKo

@sartoric And your point is?

You’d think Amer Sports would really

A) announce ending of Movescount service and a move to Sports Tracker-derivative Suunto App as their new digital service model going forward, with no support for old watches, then

B) pause and announce Suunto App will actually get a web-based front-end similar to Movescount, and support for old watches ?

‘Look, we’re not actually changing anything in the end - we just love to confuse and disappoint our loyal customers for no apparent reason… anyone here?!!
I guess we learned not to do it again.’

@Brad_Olwin @DmitryKo @sartoric

…let’s stop bluffing and call it what the SuuntoApp(SA) really is:

SportsTracker 1.1

consisting of SportsTracker 1.0 plus a rushed out (juosten kustu) Suunto device sync client added with some tuned up bits&pieces for the Suunto3 Fitness watch.

There market players eying for device independent code platforms or/and using Universal/ProgressiveWebApps, Suunto decided to re-vitalize SportsTracker - a 16 year old codebase from 2003 - that was originally intended to utilize your mobile device along the inbuilt phone sensors (GPS, magnetic compass, accelerometer) as an activity tracker and first launched on Nokia’s S60 symbian platform that is long gone.

Or as a Finnish saying goes: “vanha viini uusissa pulloissa” (aka: old wine in new bottles)

Sports Tracker was never engineered to be an sync client for an feature rich sport instrument like your Suunto watch nor an complementary mobile companion app for an award winning web service like movescount.com

They didn’t even go to great length to conceal the visual and UI workflow similarities
between the two apps (see below for an sbs comparison) and as well the quirky workout
statistics Sports Tracker computes from your data
( example: 00.00.05 faster as before on any route" -> for an indoor strenght training )

What Suunto needs is the mature web platform movescount.com going forward and a re-developed Mobile Movescount app with state of the art technologies and a future looking system design adequate for the needs of an mobile client in 2020 and beyond.

That explicitly includes full compatibility (only insane people would have excluded this in the first place) with existing
devices in use today by tens of thousands of users and added support for newer and to be released devices (as deliberately excluded since Aug 2018 from Movescount.com customization pages)

Anything else will bring Suunto in a much weaker position that even threatens their existence in 2020, seeing the over 200 comments just in the past 4 days here in the forum of concerned user who are considering to leave Suunto as a brand and their products in regards for their Jan.15 announcement to terminate movescount.com and the movecount mobile app and go mobile only via the Sports Tracker derivate named Suunto App.

…

Luís Pinto

@Tobias-F this is calling bulls for their names!

@Tobias-F, Now I can see where that unusable pace graph with non-linear scale, that compresses the most interesting range of running paces and stretches out the uninteresting range of walking/stopping pace, comes from. SportsTracker had 15 years to fix that graph and they haven’t. What are the chances that it will be fixed in the next year?

That also explains why the development rate of making changes to this app is so slow.

Suunto would be much better off buying SportsTracks.mobi.
https://www.sporttracks.mobi/features

@silentvoyager said in Many of you were not here.....:

where that unusable pace graph with non-linear scale, that compresses the most interesting range of running paces and stretches out the uninteresting

exactly! there are more quirks (just take a look at the top5 issues for Android/iOS version) that are rootet in the Sports Tracker architecture and how Sports Tracker compute metrics and displayed on small screens

Luís Pinto

@silentvoyager Take my word developers: “Someone put even more pressure on your shoulders!”.

When there were a baseline, things for Suunto’s customers are in general clear. With this anouncement, things now have to speed up. If not many will replace their sport watch in next months. Yesterday i spoke to a friend that is Suunto client many, many years to this part, assured me that it will change brand very soon because of this. People when buy a sport watch want a ecosystem. Not beta, almost finished. Suunto is not understanding this. The worst publicity is the one that goes from mouth to mouth.

Luís Pinto

I would say that in the next 3 months SA will have to bring this:

Bugs solving - Commitment always;
Complete data migration from movescount - Commitment in Spring;
Complete support for all BLE past Suunto watches - Half commitment; Already sync with SA. For most people datafields customization and workout planner are crucial;
Segments in table of manual and programmable laps on the watch - Half present on app now. An IT senior can write code for this in less than 1 week;
Deep analysis of the athlete’s evolution and his best marks - No communication; very hard task;
Structured intervals for Ambit3, Spartan, S3 and S9, and i believe maybe an S5 or S7 there can be launch in future- not need to invent wheel… make it simple again: https://www.suunto.com/cs-cz/sports/News-Articles-container-page/Tutorial-Workout-Planner/ - No communication; one peculiar sign they remove this mention even in Ambit3 watches specifications, but yet present on manuals (very strange). Can be used previous code.

This will be the minimum for most people to be able to take the application as credible.

RoberGS

@Luís-Pinto Add the possibility to work in routes, POIs, maps… Just like we can plan in Movescount.

eerofinland

@Tobias-F Amen.

DmitryKo

@Luís-Pinto said in Many of you were not here.....:

I would say that in the next 3 months SA will have to bring this

@Tobias-F said in Many of you were not here.....:

That explicitly includes full compatibility (only insane people would have excluded this in the first place) with existing devices in use today by tens of thousands of users and added support for newer and to be released devices (as deliberately excluded since Aug 2018 from Movescount.com customization pages)

Very valid points, but you still do not seem to understand the nature of this announcement.

Suunto is scaling down their digital services. The full-featured web-based Movescount platform will be replaced by a lighter mobile-only app.
The decision has been made at least one year ago and all new devices are plugged into Suunto App / Sports Tracker instead of Movescount.
Suunto App cannot and will not maintain full feature parity with Movescount, as substantial changes to the underlying data model can break the related Sports Tracker app.
Any suggested merger of the two back-end platforms into one would be a non-trivial task and so far remains a pure conjecture.
Web-based and/or desktop Win32/MacOS versions of the Suunto App would be a massive new undertaking as the Sports Tracker code base and UI designs are not easily transferable to these different platforms.
Support for older warches would also require quite significant effort to refactor old code and possibly develop new firmware updates.

You have to face the hard truth that everything beyond the promised set of basic functions is unlikely to materialize. And even that basic set would be a huge undertaking.

They had one year to prepare for this transition and that’s how they could manage it to their best ability. It would be utterly naive to expect them to approve a much more ambitious roadmap and assign enough resources to implement it by Summer 2020.

Luís Pinto

@DmitryKo I understood everything very well a long time ago!
When there are no developments on the previous platforms, it means that they are no longer invested in them. Is obvious!

When was the MC web’s last resource? Yeah. You can only say this because you have never read what I have been saying and the pools that I have done since the forum exists! Search and see.

I’m just saying that for app be minimally viable, you have to have what’s exists at the moment, otherwise Polar and Garmin will have an exponential increase of new customers.

When people bought S3 or S9, on box what is information about supported app? And in Suunto webpage? SA. Not Movescount. MC app is very limited. Glad, bye bye, go to trash. Spartan are supported for new app. But for Ambit 3 they have to bring at least SW and Datafields customization. Unfortunately apps will go to away.

DmitryKo

@Luís-Pinto said in Many of you were not here.....:

I’m just saying that for app be minimally viable, you have to have what’s exists at the moment, otherwise Polar and Garmin will have an exponential increase of new customers.

I don’t think so. Current owners of Ambit3/Traverse, Spartan and 9/3 have no other choice than to move to Suunto App, and most of them will do. They might complain about loss of advanced functionality, but how many of them would actually shell out another €500 just to switch to a different brand?

As for the users of Ambit/Ambit2 and earlier models, I’m sure that potential damage has been evaluated in advance based on Movescount usage statistics, and many of these users are expected to upgrade to a second-hand Spartan or a new 9/3. There will be probably incentives or trade-in offers to facilitate such upgrades. Further steps to improve hardware compatibility, however trivial to implement, are unlikely to be taken.

So if you expect that user polls or feature request threads, here in the Suunto App support forums, demanding feature parity with Movescount or some older firmware, would have a slightest chance to result in a reversal of these decisions - at the current moment when any development effort has already wound down and the developers either let go or reassigned - then you are just up for another dissapointment. A few minor features might be approved, but not ‘pie in the sky’ functions requiring major effort to implement.

And no, the management is not stupid, uneducated, misinformed, overconfident, or whatever you may paint them for decisions that affect users in a bad way. Though they will sure look quite stupid if they actually reversed the course once again.

So at this point, the only thing you can really do is vote with your money - it is the only vote that counts. If you think Suunto App is grossly inadequate - fine, do not use the app, sell your watches if forced to use the app, do not buy new Suunto watches tied to the app. Anything else is not going to affect future product planning in any significant way.

Let’s just see how many users would actually be willing to act on their threats and whether that would convince Amer Sport to change direction.

Luís Pinto

@DmitryKo i saw many brands on past with good hardware go away because of faulty software and services. A sport watch is a training tool. Without software sport watch is one display, buttons, battery, cpu, memory and strap. Without interface is a empty basket without meaning.

Luís Pinto

@DmitryKo

So at this point, the only thing you can really do is vote with your money - it is the only vote that counts. If you think Suunto App is grossly inadequate - fine, do not use the app, sell your watches if forced to use the app, do not buy new Suunto watches tied to the app. Anything else is not going to affect future product planning in any significant way.

Never saied that don’t like SA. But also like MCweb. But if solution is switch off mc so should be fair to have a excelent SA. I’m not a recent customer. But patience for everybody have limits. Nothing is for eternity.

DmitryKo

@Luís-Pinto You seem to like an yet-unannounced future release of the Suunto App enhanced according to your feature requests. Suppose they don’t deliver such enhancements in these coming 18 months - what would you really do?

Sure there is a very active group of Movescount users who appreciate advanced features and comfort of big screen estate. Unfortunately they are a minority while most regular users seem to be OK with the reduced feature set on a small phone display.

The show goes on as long as the cash is flowing in and there are new customers buying Suunto watches. If sales of Suunto 3 Fitness and Suunto 9 are fine by now, then it was simply a right business decision for Suunto to stop supporting Movescount in favour of the Suunto App.
They can also cater to Sports Tracker users who will find it convenient to use a similiar interface with their dedicated hardware, as well as developing markets where a mobile phone is a necessity but a PC is still not.

But even if the majority of Movescount users would leave, this will not have any immediate impact. They have already paid for their watches and are not paying for the online services. So there will be no interruption of cash flow. In fact there will be an influx of new users from second-hand sales.

So again, please take the news at face value.

DmitryKo

I for one don’t want to buy a tablet just to be able to reorganize my workouts from the last 8 years, not to mention time and effort it would require. So I postponed my SS Baro upgrade plans and I will research other web platforms before Movescount goes offline. I’d think many of them would gladly offer an upgrade path for existing Movescount users.

angryrabbit

@brad_olwin said in Many of you were not here.....:

was howling and foot stomping and many, many complaints…

that was long before Suunto tied every of their new devices to Movescount so tight with Movescount that nearly 95% of the settings need to done there without a realistic chance to adjust it ‘on the fly’ on the watch, all products came out was prominently advertised “works with Movescount” in reality you need to have an Movescount account to operate your watch , now a decade later the same company don’t longer want to hear their old message to be heard but trying to get an easy cheating way out of this product strategy but to your point: no it’s not the same

ps; it’s always good to start a new topic with a patronizing headline “Many of you was not here”
make you a lot of new friends in a splitsecond