3 ms·

Disclaimer: I work for Fitbit, but am not involved in iOS development or policy. Fitbit has an API. Apple has developers. If Apple's app needs another app to g

by brlewis 10y ago

Disclaimer: I work for Fitbit, but am not involved in iOS development or policy. Fitbit has an API. Apple has developers. If Apple's app needs another app to get Fitbit data, hate Apple. Fitbit is trying to hire more iOS devs, and the ones we have are too busy trying to make our app better for us to loan them out to Apple to make Apple's app better.

MBCook 10y ago
I'm aware they have an API, that's how the app I use works to move the data around. If you're not aware Health stores data in a repository on the phone, it's not a cloud service. It doesn't really provide any features, it's just a central repository for all apps on the phone to share health data. It doesn't do meal planning or exercise tracking or anything else like that. You get those things by choosing other apps yourself (or using the Activity app if you have a Watch) Apple doesn't use the FitBit API because it doesn't use ANY API. It's job is not to go fetch data from other places, it's the repository that other places put their data in by the APIs Apple provides. MyFitnessPal is able to do this, along with RunKeeper, Pedometer++, and TONS of other apps. It's a nice little system and works very well. It respects my privacy. FitBit doesn't provide Apple Health integration. THEY want to be the repository, have the control, access the data. This reminds me of when game center was first created on iOS and many games decided not to support it and to support something else instead. You know what happened to those other things? They died. There was too much friction and having to have additional logins and multiple systems and friend list and all the other things that went with it. The stuff integrated into the platform provided by the OS vendor wins unless there is a very compelling reason. Right now every single health-based app I try works just fine on my phone and can access all the data. Except FitBit. Why should every single app I download have to have FitBit's API and have me sign in just to be able to read data that's already on my phone? Why should I have to re-authorize each of them every 30 days? Why should I have to depend on the cloud service working for data I enter in one app on my phone to show up in another app on my phone when there's a perfectly good system service available? FitBit's position isn't strong enough to win. Their approach provides no benefit to me, only to them. It makes my life harder. The only reason their position is as strong as it is is because they were one of the first out of the gate with health trackers in their current form, giving them a very large market share. I think if you tried to start a new business today, even with a good brand name that already existed (coming from non-tech fitness brands) The approach that FitBit is taking would fail. Hard.
- brlewis 10y ago
  This is interesting; I use Android myself and assumed Health was just Apple's app. I'm likely not to reply back here on this thread, but I'll talk with coworkers about it internally.
  - MBCook 10y ago
    Sure, that's fine. I saw the news out of Pebble this morning and thought it was interesting that they committed to continue to integrate with Apple Health.

by brlewis 10y ago

MBCook 10y ago

I'm aware they have an API, that's how the app I use works to move the data around. If you're not aware Health stores data in a repository on the phone, it's not a cloud service. It doesn't really provide any features, it's just a central repository for all apps on the phone to share health data. It doesn't do meal planning or exercise tracking or anything else like that. You get those things by choosing other apps yourself (or using the Activity app if you have a Watch) Apple doesn't use the FitBit API because it doesn't use ANY API. It's job is not to go fetch data from other places, it's the repository that other places put their data in by the APIs Apple provides. MyFitnessPal is able to do this, along with RunKeeper, Pedometer++, and TONS of other apps. It's a nice little system and works very well. It respects my privacy. FitBit doesn't provide Apple Health integration. THEY want to be the repository, have the control, access the data. This reminds me of when game center was first created on iOS and many games decided not to support it and to support something else instead. You know what happened to those other things? They died. There was too much friction and having to have additional logins and multiple systems and friend list and all the other things that went with it. The stuff integrated into the platform provided by the OS vendor wins unless there is a very compelling reason. Right now every single health-based app I try works just fine on my phone and can access all the data. Except FitBit. Why should every single app I download have to have FitBit's API and have me sign in just to be able to read data that's already on my phone? Why should I have to re-authorize each of them every 30 days? Why should I have to depend on the cloud service working for data I enter in one app on my phone to show up in another app on my phone when there's a perfectly good system service available? FitBit's position isn't strong enough to win. Their approach provides no benefit to me, only to them. It makes my life harder. The only reason their position is as strong as it is is because they were one of the first out of the gate with health trackers in their current form, giving them a very large market share. I think if you tried to start a new business today, even with a good brand name that already existed (coming from non-tech fitness brands) The approach that FitBit is taking would fail. Hard.

brlewis 10y ago
This is interesting; I use Android myself and assumed Health was just Apple's app. I'm likely not to reply back here on this thread, but I'll talk with coworkers about it internally.
- MBCook 10y ago
  Sure, that's fine. I saw the news out of Pebble this morning and thought it was interesting that they committed to continue to integrate with Apple Health.