Nov transition update
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@fejker
with a voucher a watch at suunto is still more expensive than in several online shops -
Some great posts, comments and thoughts being shared. It’s clear that disappointment is the pervasive feeling among customers with older Suunto products.
And a few of the die-hards continue to defend the company, saying that the hardware is better than the competition. That’s debatable, but hardware and software cannot be separated from one another. And the software is in a sorry state. That is not debatable.
I get that things like Sport Modes, watch screens and workouts are hard to port, but seemingly basic features like importing/syncing routes not working just boggles the mind. As someone stated above, the products are still being advertised and sold on their website as having this functionality.
I agree with @andrasveres that it would be better almost to say they will end support full stop, rather than dangling the “bogus carrot of reconciliation” in front of us.
I don’t know man, it’s just a bit tiresome, this carousel…
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@andrasveres I know next to nothing about these things but, as a software developer, you might:
Could you modify/finish the Suunto FW for abandoned models if they released the source code? (Would they be likely to do so?) Also, MovesLink?
Could the Suunto FW be replaced with an OpenSource OS?
Could you write apps (or whatever) for such a platform to do what Suunto won’t and integrate them with a phone/computer app?
Or is everything too complicated, integrated and proprietal?
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@Fenr1r
Firmware development is not an easy task, but if you got all the documentation it surely can be done.
Replacing the firmware on an existing device with other OS need proper understanding of the underlying hardware and I doubt Suunto will provide such info.
As for Moveslink alternative or any other piece of software sure it can be done if they provide documentation or open source drivers to communicate with the watch, otherwise it needs time consuming work.
But as I know there are some good projects already, take a look here. -
@andrasveres Thank you: very interesting. I have adjusted my realism filters accordingly.
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@Fenr1r
I usually think when I am annoyed about something that somebody who is smart was annoyed by the same thing before me and provided a solution… -
@TELE-HO Or couldn’t either but has good reasons why. Which works, too: misery loves company.
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@dsc1401 But Suunto has your money now and new type of customers will probably arrive so why care… I am their new customer and of course would be Garmin’s if I had understood the changes at the time of purchase. Even if in the end it really turns out that in summer 2020 I don’t need to buy a new bloody phone compatible with my watch.
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@silentvoyager
Ok, that’s some fair comment.
However, in that case why not simply keep the current Movescount App as is for Ambit 3 and modify Movescount servers to export the data to the Suunto App backend if they want to retire the Movescount database moving forward? If they can do it for the variety of 3rd Parties they already support, (such as Strava and Training Peaks) they can surely do it for their own product with minimal development effort.In effect his would just be an extension of what they are already going to do in terms of trimming down the Movescount site to a config tool for Ambits, they just need add a pipeline to get the Move data to the new database instead of the old one. Given they already have a migration tool, the data mapping is already done so the development effort should be pretty minimal. They could just trim Movescount down to a small staging database and script periodic or event driven updates to Suunto App backend.
Why force us onto an app that doesn’t fully support our devices if they already have one that does? They don’t need to update or maintain the app, but removing it from the store seems unnecessary.
TBH I can live without the Movescount site as I mostly use it just to get my activities to Training Peaks, but the Watch configuration and Interval
Workout features of the Movescount App are things I actually need.At a pinch I can get by with cable connection for Sport mode configuration, but Workouts are only on the watch and Movescount App.
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@rob_nz said in Nov transition update:
why not simply keep the current Movescount App as is for Ambit 3 and modify Movescount servers to export the data to the Suunto App backend if they want to retire the Movescount database moving forward?
That would make sense, but I guess the Suunto App backend can’t be used to store the variety of data needed by Movescount frontend. All those sport specific settings that exist in Movescount - they likely don’t fit the current schema of SA backend database, and Suunto wants to avoid complexity of supporting two completely different families of devices. Suunto has shoot itself into foot by changing internal design of Spartan so drastically compared to Ambit. They moved away from having the master copy of all settings in the cloud, and all the difficulties we have today are consequences of that decision.
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@silentvoyager This is true (the complexity), but they ALREADY HAVE THIS CODE, it’s been working, for a very long time, years now.
Yes, I get that it needs some “porting work” (as a s/w engineer and tech-PM, I’ve dealt with this stuff most of my life), but it cannot be “so hard that it warrants this mess, for the A3”, I find that hard to believe.
Someone else brought up the (very important) point that this is their best-selling watch, ever. This means, that even if say 75% of these are in-use, by consumers, that they are just about to “really tick off a giant segment of their dedicated users”.Me, I sold my A2S, and have just about sold my A3S (a friend wants it, plans on “dealing with the mess”, he just hasn’t quite committed), and I have one A3 around, which I plan to keep, for now, mostly because I’m “quite curious how this all turns out for Suunto”.
Yeah, I know, too many watches, one “lives in my ski-gear bag”, another is in my cycling-kit, and a 3rd (the one I’m not selling) I use for more everyday stuff, or hiking/backpacking/climbing trips, it’s my “general use Ambit”.
I don’t plan on moving on to S9 or whatever though, this has left a pretty-bad-taste, for me. I get that products can’t live forever (not my background again), but then be up-front about it, and stop flip-flopping every couple of months, that just makes you look stupid-flaky, and unreliable.
I think Suunto customers are pretty loyal, I sure was, until about 8 months ago, when this all started to become apparent that it was a “big mess”, I’d been a customer since the early 2000’s (T6 and S6).
Once you “lose a loyal customer” particularly over a clearly “bad business move and clearly deciding against CS, even just EOL’ing things”, it’s VERY hard to get that base back.
I tend to think a lot of people will go to Polar, they’re the closest thing.
I’m pretty sure I’m going to Garmin, just because they’ve been dead-consistent with their watch support, for a VERY long time, and have “decent enough graphing tools”, and I can easily move that data to another site, given the pervasiveness of Garmin stuff.I wish it were otherwise, and Suunto had been MUCH more CLEARLY communicative here, but it’s not, unfortunately…
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@pgrey This!
November update has been so abstract and inconclusive regarding movescount that it is just plain stupid. Full stop. Suunto have left its users as clueless as before. Only clear thing is that ambit users will be able to cable sync.And still we Spartan users do not know if new fw updates will make it to our watches.
Time is going by and Suunto are just not making enough progress and not properly transmitting to its client base.
Right now I feel like I wouldn’t touch a new Suunto product with a ten-foot pole…
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It is too bad that management usually doesn’t care until it is too late. They usually just care about making the margins so the shareholders get their money. But this is shortsighted behavior and ends up being bad for the customers and the company, consequently the shareholders too. It is a lose-lose situation in the end.
If you ask me right now if I would upgrade from a SSU to an S9 Baro for free if it meant I had to keep it for at least a year, I would say no.
That is purely based on the bad communication by Suunto and poor transfer to the “new platform” which is still very much in alpha/early beta status compared to MC after more than a year of development. -
@fejker If it’s the “solution” for Suunto, the A3P will be the last Suunto product for me. It’s the best way for a “How to lose customers” tutorial.
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@pgrey 100% agree! There is also the effect on the developers themselves, no way everyone working on SA/MC agrees with this decision, so Suunto may lose a portion of their dedicated workforce over this. It’s an incredibly short-sighted move on their part.
At least I got to try a Garmin, so far pretty impressed with the watch and Garmin’s app/website.
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@Adam-Lantos
why should they not be motivated and how do you know? -
@TELE-HO usually a company has it’s philosophy and workers, if they want to keep their sanity and be happier at a workplace, agree with this philosophy and make it work - they feel good because they are not going against the grain and are cooperating with their employer. If one of these things shift, either the company changes their philosophy (usually happens when there is a merger or take-over) or the employees have a mind shift, then usually things go downhill - sometimes faster, other times it takes a couple of years.
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I guess they are trying to calm down people by providing a solution…but Suunto costumers want full featured solution not some workarounds.
I simply can’t understand why they don’t open source the firmware (or the part that makes sports modes, uplaods POIs, gpx, etc) so other projects like the openambit can make something.
From the day I bought my Ambit 2 Sapphire that suunto was never reliable on their online side (movescount was down several times)…that for a watch that relly on that site was not good.
Why not taking this as opportunity and change?
I am now an Ambit 3 costumer and don’t move because I don’t need anything more. If it stops to work we will see…I think suunto is improving on S9, and that is nice and valuable, but I guess they need to take concrete decisions like the grown up company that they are, not some workarounds like some new company. -
@André-Faria said in Nov transition update:
I simply can’t understand why they don’t open source the firmware (or the part that makes sports modes, uplaods POIs, gpx, etc) so other projects like the openambit can make something.
That would be awesome. Ambit3 hardware with open source firmware would be a geek’s dream, think pebble watch, but much better
But, it’s extremely unlikely to happen, unless the code was already written in way that could easily be open sourced. Otherwise every single patent troll out there would go and look at the code to find reasons to sue Suunto for copyright/patent/license infringement. It’s a giant pain, which is why most software companies don’t choose the open source route, unless they are forced to.
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@Adam-Lantos said in Nov transition update:
@André-Faria said in Nov transition update:
I simply can’t understand why they don’t open source the firmware (or the part that makes sports modes, uplaods POIs, gpx, etc) so other projects like the openambit can make something.
That would be awesome. Ambit3 hardware with open source firmware would be a geek’s dream, think pebble watch, but much better
But, it’s extremely unlikely to happen, unless the code was already written in way that could easily be open sourced. Otherwise every single patent troll out there would go and look at the code to find reasons to sue Suunto for copyright/patent/license infringement. It’s a giant pain, which is why most software companies don’t choose the open source route, unless they are forced to.
I think there is no need to open the watch firmware. It would be sufficient to publish the communication protocol so people out there (openambit) could write their own code for changing sport modes, tranfering POI + routes, structured training e.t.c
This way Suunto will not have to give anything from their patents that are related to the watch code (like Fusedspeed, FusedAlti e.t.c). So no harm done to them.
I personally think it is Suunto’s policy not to allow the user not to rely on Suutno’s services. Even if it means the watches will be rendered unusable in the future. A shame really.
