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Interesting, I've had 2 Garmin Smart Watches and never felt like Apple was restricting them. I am curious what things the iPhone does that others aren't allowe

Interesting, I've had 2 Garmin Smart Watches and never felt like Apple was restricting them. I am curious what things the iPhone does that others aren't allowed to do. Most of the differences between Garmin and Apple Watch seem like they were conscious decisions where they each decided to take a different direction. It's one of those weird things where it seems like the case has a bunch of holes. You can use an iPhone with some but not all non-Apple Smart watches. You can use a non-Apple phone with non-Apple smartwatches. There are other non-Apple smart watches that those manufacturers have decided can't be used with an iPhone, no different than Apple. Lots of choices in the market, I certainly don't feel restricted. I am not sure how requiring something like WeChat to break into multiple apps would be a big issue. Apple even breaks it's own apps up into different apps.

atourgates 3y ago
My guess is around notifications and handoff to iPhone apps. I tried Garmin watches, and they're certainly better as "exercise tracking devices" than anything Apple offers, but they weren't tightly enough integrated with my iPhone to make it "worth it" to me to wear them all the time. An Apple Watch Ultra - on the other hand - is a poorer exercise tracking device, but gives me enough "integrated with my iPhone" benefit to become the first watch I've worn consistently in 30+ years. I assumed this was the result of design and development choices by Garmin, but it'll be interesting to see if their are meaningful ways that Apple restricts smartwatch developers from including similar levels of integration.
- 0xffff2 3y ago
  Can you expand on what "integrated with my iPhone" means in concrete terms? I don't really understand what you mean.
  - S_A_P 3y ago
    Not the original poster but for me it means not having to look at my phone for many tasks. I can see who texted or messaged me and the message without opening my phone. I can take or ignore a call. Basically anything that hits your message alerts can be displayed on the watch in most cases. Maybe the Apple Watch is not the best fitness tracker watch but it’s plenty good for me and it’s health integration is pretty good especially with the ultra.
    - atourgates 3y ago
      Yep. That's exactly right. When a phone call comes in, or I get a notification (text, calendar, app notification etc) - my Apple Watch does a really good job of (quite often) giving me enough info from my wrist that I don't need to pull my phone out of my pocket. Garmin watches have some of this integration (IIRC you can definitely get texts, I don't remember what else) - but certainly not all of it. I haven't tried smartwatches from other manufacturers.
    - mousetree 3y ago
      Does a Garmin watch not do that? I often see people looking at notifications on their non-Apple watch.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    - shagie 3y ago
      When setting up my Windows machine I was given the opportunity to pair it with my iPhone via Phone Link. In doing so, my Windows machine was able to get all of the notifications that I saw on the Lock Screen of my iPhone, and call history (make and receive calls too). https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/sync-across-your-devices https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/sync-across-your-dev... and https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2023/04/26/phone-link-for-ios-is-now-rolling-out-to-all-windows-11-customers/ https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2023/04/26/phone... I assume that this functionality is available to other devices too.
      - afavour 3y ago
        It’s a poor subset of the functionality available to the Apple Watch. One obvious example is that you can reply to a message on an Apple Watch, not so over the API Windows uses.
        shagie 3y ago
        Here's a description of the functionality on Windows which includes replying to a message. https://youtu.be/M4ihxL7B2ug?t=157&si=AaA6wvzbTuIL3eOC https://youtu.be/M4ihxL7B2ug?t=157&si=AaA6wvzbTuIL3eOC https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2023/04/26/phone-link-for-ios-is-now-rolling-out-to-all-windows-11-customers/ https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2023/04/26/phone... https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/sync-across-your-devices https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/sync-across-your-dev... > Read and reply to messages with ease, make and receive calls, and manage your device’s notifications right on your PC (1) (2) > 1 Messaging feature is limited by iOS. Image/video sharing and group messaging is not supported. Messages are session based and will only come through when phone is connected to PC. > 2 Phone Link for iOS requires iPhone with iOS 14 or higher, Windows 11 device, Bluetooth connection and the latest version of the Phone Link app. Not available for iPad (iPadOS) or MacOS. Device compatibility may vary. Regional restrictions may apply. Trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
  - InsomniacL 3y ago
    I don't use smart watches but I have an example on the trackers. Tile created trackers and every so often I get an annoying popup > ~"Tile has been using your location, do you want to stop this?" Apple then created a competitor product, 'AirTags', but their product does not have these popups. This is anti-competitive because Apple bypass the restrictions they made on their platform for their product that their competitive have to follow.
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      I would bet most people already know using an Apple product and agreeing to the Find My and other terms in intial setup means Apple is always tracking you. So a pop up from Apple saying that Apple is tracking you makes no sense, it is already known, and accepted by the device user. Someone other than Apple tracking you, however, is notable, and so people (at least I) would always want to know if someone other than Apple is tracking me via software operating on the device.
      - Draiken 3y ago
        Why? Because a user allowed them to track them when using one app, it doesn't mean should extend automatically that to every app they ever develop. This is clearly Apple apps being treated differently.
        lotsofpulp 3y ago
        >Why? Because a user allowed them to track them when using one app, it doesn't mean should extend automatically that to every app they ever develop. The whole point of the notification is to notify you when an entity is tracking you. If you already know Apple is tracking you, then it does not make a difference if Apple's App A or App B or App C is tracking you, it is all Apple.
        Draiken 3y ago
        I must be missing something because that's simply not true in Android. I can individually grant/revoke tracking permissions for each app. I assumed the same would be true for iPhone. For me it makes no sense to make it only about the entity. It's like saying "the US government is tracking you", instead of saying "the US government is tracking you through this app right now"
  - bitcurious 3y ago
    A Garmin watch can’t track heart rate during an Apple Fitness Plus workout, an example.
    - SllX 3y ago
      Yeah but that’s a separate paid service tied to specific hardware, not so much an iPhone feature as an Apple TV and Watch feature. Garmin can integrate into HealthKit as well as any other fitness tracker.
      - 8note 3y ago
        That is to say, they communicate directly with each other and not through the iPhone?
        SllX 3y ago
        So IIRC, you need the Apple TV to actually participate in the Fitness+ workouts, this is used to display them and as far as I know this hasn’t changed, but if it has, someone else can chime in and correct me. The Apple Watch itself has WiFi and optionally LTE. It does like to boost off an iPhone’s Bluetooth and let the iPhone do the heavy lifting, but it isn’t required to connect to the Internet and honestly works better when it does (at the cost of battery life). So yeah, more or less, but you still need the Watch paired to an iPhone (because it is an iPhone accessory at its core), and the data is going to be logged to the Health app, and the relevant data (heart rate, workout time, whatever else gets logged for the workout) can be made available to an ecosystem of independent hardware and services. The weight my scale logs for example gets tracked by the vendor service, the Health app, and my food tracker via the Health app. Either way, Fitness+ is a premium service, not a feature of the iPhone. That it requires specific hardware doesn’t make it particularly special in this regard either.
      - bitcurious 3y ago
        Apple's main fitness competitor Peloton supports non-peloton fitness bands, cadence meters, etc.
  - shrew 3y ago
    Not the parent, but just a few things I’d guess would be Apple Watch specific: - I’ve had employers that require a confirmation step from an app as a form of 2FA. If my phone isn’t awake, the notification comes to my watch and I can approve my login from my wrist - If some action requires typing on my watch, I get a prompt on my iPhone to do the typing there instead of on the tiny watch keyboard. The characters I type via the phone appear in real time on the watch as if I were typing directly - Dismissing and snoozing notifications syncs so I don’t have to dismiss and snooze notifications on multiple devices - Similarly, if I set an alarm on my phone, the alarm will ring on my phone and, if I’m wearing it, vibrate my watch without further setup. Again, actions I perform to that alarm can all be performed on the watch or phone. I’d guess these are all tiny, tiny quality of life features, but I’d be very surprised if other non-Apple watches have the ability to implement them.
  - wlesieutre 3y ago
    It's been years, but IIRC the main disparity was with responding to notifications. On Android you could pick a pre-written reply to texts or even dictate a response. On iOS you couldn't do anything but close the notification.
  - GnarfGnarf 3y ago
    For example, the Apple Health App automatically talks to my dieting app, so when I walk, I get credit for the calories.
- fennecbutt 3y ago
  >weren't tightly enough integrated with my iPhone to make it "worth it" to me to To buy them in the first place, for many consumers. Which is exactly what apple had hoped to achieve.
0xffff2 3y ago
Likewise, I'm a happy Garmin watch owner. Wondering what I'm missing because I don't feel like I'm missing anything.
- ben7799 3y ago
  Almost all the stuff Garmin leaves out is the stuff I don't want to do on my watch anyway. I bought an Apple Watch and it was so fiddly and always trying to get my attention to the point I returned it.
dktp 3y ago
> Interesting, I've had 2 Garmin Smart Watches and never felt like Apple was restricting them. Sending messages from watch for example. Apple only allows that for Apple watches
- LeifCarrotson 3y ago
  I've also had two Garmin watches and I've always been on Android. I also have had Tiles since long before Airtags existed. Both Garmin and Tile work flawlessly on my Android devices. I've tried to help my wife add them to her iPhone and it's just not worked right, it's a fight to keep things connected and the Tile app only works when it's open and you can't reply to messages from the Garmin and on and on. I appreciate the efforts to protect privacy and battery life, I can certainly imagine a different Bluetooth device than the Garmin with a worse app that would use the permissions granted it for nefarious purposes, or a worse tracker than the Tile that would wear down battery life with poorly-coded constant background activity, but Apple are clearly also acting in their own selfish interests.
Wowfunhappy 3y ago
The Pebble was very obviously hampered by iOS limitations. In order to offload any code to the phone, you either had to write the code in Javascript (so it was basically a web app) or direct the user to manually download a separate companion app from the App Store. If iOS killed the companion app because it hadn't been opened on the iPhone recently (because, y'know, you were using it on your watch and not your phone), you had to manually relaunch the app on your phone. This is all before even getting into things like ecosystem integration.
- shagie 3y ago
  The Pebble was released in 2013. The two way communication SDK with Pebble was released in May of 2013. In February of 2015, the 2.0 Pebble SDK was released with further integrations. The first iWatch was announced in September 2014 and released in April of 2015. The Pebble was discontinued in 2016. What integrations are you expecting Apple to have released prior to its own release? What functionality did iOS lack that android provided that hampered Pebble's development on iOS?
  - daghamm 3y ago
    "The first iWatch was announced in September 2014 and released in April of 2015." Just a side note: apple has in past started limiting other companies products as soon as they decide to create a competitor and sometimes years before it hits the market. IIRC Spotify has been bitten by this at least once, which resulted in a lawsuit.
    - shagie 3y ago
      What limitations did Apple place in 2013 (or 2014 or 2015) that reduced the functionality of Pebble in light of a forthcoming iWatch? If it was a "it worked and then Apple took away this API that we were going to use" that would be one thing. If it was "the iPhone didn't have the functionality for other devices to read messages over BlueTooth until 2015 with iOS 8" - that's a different claim.
      - 3y ago
abawany 3y ago
replying to sms is one: garmins can do this on Android but only recently (venu 2+, venu 3) got limited ability to do so on ios.
hnburnsy 3y ago
> Interesting, I've had 2 Garmin Smart Watches and never felt like Apple was restricting them. > The two main differences are notifications filtering (choosing which apps can send notifications to the watch) and actioning notifications from the watch.
- gnicholas 3y ago
  Huh? I can filter notifications with third-party smartwatches. Did it on Pebble, Fossil, and others.
  - hnburnsy 3y ago
    Maybe Garmin chooses not to implement it but it is all or nothing on iOS-> Garmin.
    - gnicholas 3y ago
      Huh yeah looks like they just push anything for which “Notification Center” is enabled. Seems like a crude proxy.
  - bdavbdav 3y ago
    Not on a garmin sadly.
  - daruk 3y ago
    In the Garmin Connect iOS app, you can choose to display notifications for any combination of Calls, Texts (i.e. Messages app), or Apps (i.e. every other app). With Pebble and Fossil, are you for example saying you can choose to display Instagram notifications but hide Snapchat? Garmin seems to indicate that their limitation of iOS, as the Android Garmin Connect app allows the user to choose individual apps to display on the watch. https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=TLeDN92ZU0AgN4df6HakwA&productID=125677&tab=topics https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=TLeDN92ZU0AgN4df6HakwA...
    - gnicholas 3y ago
eitally 3y ago
With non-Apple Watches, you can't 1) reply to texts, 2) answer phone calls (or place calls), 3) interact with other native iPhone applications (like Apple Health). You'll pry my Garmin from my cold, dead hands but there's no mistaking it for an actual "smart"-watch. I value it entirely for health & fitness, and the very few "smart" things it can do are just nice-to-have icing on the cake.
- mscrivo 3y ago
  not sure "non-apple watches" is accurate here. I can do all of those things with my Pixel watch edit: as comment below points out, I was missing the obvious context of paired with an iPhone.
  - rezonant 3y ago
    OP obviously meant non Apple watches paired with iPhones.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- parl_match 3y ago
  FWIW you can answer and place calls via smartwatches on ios. Also, you can interact with Apple Health from any smart device via a companion app. You just have to grant permission. #1 is valid though.
- promiseofbeans 3y ago
  Also I don't believe you can control music
  - rattus_rattus 3y ago
    You can! I use my garmin a lot to switch songs on my iPhone, change volume, etc. But like the other commenter said, you can’t reply to notifications or calls when the watch is paired to an iPhone, but you could when paired to an Android, which is a feature I definitely miss from when I had a Pixel.
gnicholas 3y ago
You can't reply to text messages from other smartwatches, or at least not organically (only canned responses).
king-of-turtles 3y ago
Yeah, there are some inconsistencies with Apple products interop-ing with non-Apple stuff. I've noticed this with wireless bluetooth headphone pairing. Sometimes it works, othertimes there are odd limitations and devices unpair randomly. Also Samsung's Adaptive Fast Charging sends lower wattage through the cable if it detects a non-Samsung device. So Apple is not the only offender here.
bdavbdav 3y ago
I’ve got an iPhone and an Apple Watch. Wife has an iPhone and a Garmin. The Garmin sadly misses out on notification filtering, focus modes, replies, solid Bluetooth (it drops out from time to time and the app needs reopening).
Lio 3y ago
> Interesting, I've had 2 Garmin Smart Watches and never felt like Apple was restricting them. Apple block Garmin watches from replying to text messages as they do on Android for example. Only Apple Watches are allowed to do that. I also note that iOS regularly tries to nag me into blocking Garmin Connect from sending notifications to my watch. Ostensibly that’s to preserve battery life but they don’t do that for their own watches either.
milkytron 3y ago
I've had friends that have trouble syncing their Garmin devices with syncing to their iPhone. I've wondered if this is caused by their wireless communication protocol that is proprietary and only available on other apple devices. Airpods and other bluetooth Apple devices seamlessly sync with iPhones because of a wireless protocol they use that is only available on Apple devices. I forget what it's called, but this definitely limits connectivity of devices that aren't made by Apple.
lordloki 3y ago
I used to be able to approve my duo notifications from my Garmin when I had an Android phone, but that functionality isn't available when using an iPhone. I found out recently that you can still do that from an apple watch on an iPhone, when my wife got one. So there is at least one area of functionality that Apple is likely restricting.

atourgates 3y ago

My guess is around notifications and handoff to iPhone apps. I tried Garmin watches, and they're certainly better as "exercise tracking devices" than anything Apple offers, but they weren't tightly enough integrated with my iPhone to make it "worth it" to me to wear them all the time. An Apple Watch Ultra - on the other hand - is a poorer exercise tracking device, but gives me enough "integrated with my iPhone" benefit to become the first watch I've worn consistently in 30+ years. I assumed this was the result of design and development choices by Garmin, but it'll be interesting to see if their are meaningful ways that Apple restricts smartwatch developers from including similar levels of integration.

0xffff2 3y ago
Can you expand on what "integrated with my iPhone" means in concrete terms? I don't really understand what you mean.
- S_A_P 3y ago
  Not the original poster but for me it means not having to look at my phone for many tasks. I can see who texted or messaged me and the message without opening my phone. I can take or ignore a call. Basically anything that hits your message alerts can be displayed on the watch in most cases. Maybe the Apple Watch is not the best fitness tracker watch but it’s plenty good for me and it’s health integration is pretty good especially with the ultra.
  - atourgates 3y ago
    Yep. That's exactly right. When a phone call comes in, or I get a notification (text, calendar, app notification etc) - my Apple Watch does a really good job of (quite often) giving me enough info from my wrist that I don't need to pull my phone out of my pocket. Garmin watches have some of this integration (IIRC you can definitely get texts, I don't remember what else) - but certainly not all of it. I haven't tried smartwatches from other manufacturers.
  - mousetree 3y ago
    Does a Garmin watch not do that? I often see people looking at notifications on their non-Apple watch.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - shagie 3y ago
    When setting up my Windows machine I was given the opportunity to pair it with my iPhone via Phone Link. In doing so, my Windows machine was able to get all of the notifications that I saw on the Lock Screen of my iPhone, and call history (make and receive calls too). https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/sync-across-your-devices https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/sync-across-your-dev... and https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2023/04/26/phone-link-for-ios-is-now-rolling-out-to-all-windows-11-customers/ https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2023/04/26/phone... I assume that this functionality is available to other devices too.
    - afavour 3y ago
      It’s a poor subset of the functionality available to the Apple Watch. One obvious example is that you can reply to a message on an Apple Watch, not so over the API Windows uses.
      - shagie 3y ago
        Here's a description of the functionality on Windows which includes replying to a message. https://youtu.be/M4ihxL7B2ug?t=157&si=AaA6wvzbTuIL3eOC https://youtu.be/M4ihxL7B2ug?t=157&si=AaA6wvzbTuIL3eOC https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2023/04/26/phone-link-for-ios-is-now-rolling-out-to-all-windows-11-customers/ https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2023/04/26/phone... https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/sync-across-your-devices https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/sync-across-your-dev... > Read and reply to messages with ease, make and receive calls, and manage your device’s notifications right on your PC (1) (2) > 1 Messaging feature is limited by iOS. Image/video sharing and group messaging is not supported. Messages are session based and will only come through when phone is connected to PC. > 2 Phone Link for iOS requires iPhone with iOS 14 or higher, Windows 11 device, Bluetooth connection and the latest version of the Phone Link app. Not available for iPad (iPadOS) or MacOS. Device compatibility may vary. Regional restrictions may apply. Trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
- InsomniacL 3y ago
  I don't use smart watches but I have an example on the trackers. Tile created trackers and every so often I get an annoying popup > ~"Tile has been using your location, do you want to stop this?" Apple then created a competitor product, 'AirTags', but their product does not have these popups. This is anti-competitive because Apple bypass the restrictions they made on their platform for their product that their competitive have to follow.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    I would bet most people already know using an Apple product and agreeing to the Find My and other terms in intial setup means Apple is always tracking you. So a pop up from Apple saying that Apple is tracking you makes no sense, it is already known, and accepted by the device user. Someone other than Apple tracking you, however, is notable, and so people (at least I) would always want to know if someone other than Apple is tracking me via software operating on the device.
    - Draiken 3y ago
      Why? Because a user allowed them to track them when using one app, it doesn't mean should extend automatically that to every app they ever develop. This is clearly Apple apps being treated differently.
      - lotsofpulp 3y ago
        >Why? Because a user allowed them to track them when using one app, it doesn't mean should extend automatically that to every app they ever develop. The whole point of the notification is to notify you when an entity is tracking you. If you already know Apple is tracking you, then it does not make a difference if Apple's App A or App B or App C is tracking you, it is all Apple.
        Draiken 3y ago
        I must be missing something because that's simply not true in Android. I can individually grant/revoke tracking permissions for each app. I assumed the same would be true for iPhone. For me it makes no sense to make it only about the entity. It's like saying "the US government is tracking you", instead of saying "the US government is tracking you through this app right now"
- bitcurious 3y ago
  A Garmin watch can’t track heart rate during an Apple Fitness Plus workout, an example.
  - SllX 3y ago
    Yeah but that’s a separate paid service tied to specific hardware, not so much an iPhone feature as an Apple TV and Watch feature. Garmin can integrate into HealthKit as well as any other fitness tracker.
    - 8note 3y ago
      That is to say, they communicate directly with each other and not through the iPhone?
      - SllX 3y ago
        So IIRC, you need the Apple TV to actually participate in the Fitness+ workouts, this is used to display them and as far as I know this hasn’t changed, but if it has, someone else can chime in and correct me. The Apple Watch itself has WiFi and optionally LTE. It does like to boost off an iPhone’s Bluetooth and let the iPhone do the heavy lifting, but it isn’t required to connect to the Internet and honestly works better when it does (at the cost of battery life). So yeah, more or less, but you still need the Watch paired to an iPhone (because it is an iPhone accessory at its core), and the data is going to be logged to the Health app, and the relevant data (heart rate, workout time, whatever else gets logged for the workout) can be made available to an ecosystem of independent hardware and services. The weight my scale logs for example gets tracked by the vendor service, the Health app, and my food tracker via the Health app. Either way, Fitness+ is a premium service, not a feature of the iPhone. That it requires specific hardware doesn’t make it particularly special in this regard either.
    - bitcurious 3y ago
      Apple's main fitness competitor Peloton supports non-peloton fitness bands, cadence meters, etc.
- shrew 3y ago
  Not the parent, but just a few things I’d guess would be Apple Watch specific: - I’ve had employers that require a confirmation step from an app as a form of 2FA. If my phone isn’t awake, the notification comes to my watch and I can approve my login from my wrist - If some action requires typing on my watch, I get a prompt on my iPhone to do the typing there instead of on the tiny watch keyboard. The characters I type via the phone appear in real time on the watch as if I were typing directly - Dismissing and snoozing notifications syncs so I don’t have to dismiss and snooze notifications on multiple devices - Similarly, if I set an alarm on my phone, the alarm will ring on my phone and, if I’m wearing it, vibrate my watch without further setup. Again, actions I perform to that alarm can all be performed on the watch or phone. I’d guess these are all tiny, tiny quality of life features, but I’d be very surprised if other non-Apple watches have the ability to implement them.
- wlesieutre 3y ago
  It's been years, but IIRC the main disparity was with responding to notifications. On Android you could pick a pre-written reply to texts or even dictate a response. On iOS you couldn't do anything but close the notification.
- GnarfGnarf 3y ago
  For example, the Apple Health App automatically talks to my dieting app, so when I walk, I get credit for the calories.
fennecbutt 3y ago
>weren't tightly enough integrated with my iPhone to make it "worth it" to me to To buy them in the first place, for many consumers. Which is exactly what apple had hoped to achieve.

0xffff2 3y ago

Likewise, I'm a happy Garmin watch owner. Wondering what I'm missing because I don't feel like I'm missing anything.

ben7799 3y ago
Almost all the stuff Garmin leaves out is the stuff I don't want to do on my watch anyway. I bought an Apple Watch and it was so fiddly and always trying to get my attention to the point I returned it.

dktp 3y ago

> Interesting, I've had 2 Garmin Smart Watches and never felt like Apple was restricting them. Sending messages from watch for example. Apple only allows that for Apple watches

LeifCarrotson 3y ago
I've also had two Garmin watches and I've always been on Android. I also have had Tiles since long before Airtags existed. Both Garmin and Tile work flawlessly on my Android devices. I've tried to help my wife add them to her iPhone and it's just not worked right, it's a fight to keep things connected and the Tile app only works when it's open and you can't reply to messages from the Garmin and on and on. I appreciate the efforts to protect privacy and battery life, I can certainly imagine a different Bluetooth device than the Garmin with a worse app that would use the permissions granted it for nefarious purposes, or a worse tracker than the Tile that would wear down battery life with poorly-coded constant background activity, but Apple are clearly also acting in their own selfish interests.

Wowfunhappy 3y ago

The Pebble was very obviously hampered by iOS limitations. In order to offload any code to the phone, you either had to write the code in Javascript (so it was basically a web app) or direct the user to manually download a separate companion app from the App Store. If iOS killed the companion app because it hadn't been opened on the iPhone recently (because, y'know, you were using it on your watch and not your phone), you had to manually relaunch the app on your phone. This is all before even getting into things like ecosystem integration.

shagie 3y ago
The Pebble was released in 2013. The two way communication SDK with Pebble was released in May of 2013. In February of 2015, the 2.0 Pebble SDK was released with further integrations. The first iWatch was announced in September 2014 and released in April of 2015. The Pebble was discontinued in 2016. What integrations are you expecting Apple to have released prior to its own release? What functionality did iOS lack that android provided that hampered Pebble's development on iOS?
- daghamm 3y ago
  "The first iWatch was announced in September 2014 and released in April of 2015." Just a side note: apple has in past started limiting other companies products as soon as they decide to create a competitor and sometimes years before it hits the market. IIRC Spotify has been bitten by this at least once, which resulted in a lawsuit.
  - shagie 3y ago
    What limitations did Apple place in 2013 (or 2014 or 2015) that reduced the functionality of Pebble in light of a forthcoming iWatch? If it was a "it worked and then Apple took away this API that we were going to use" that would be one thing. If it was "the iPhone didn't have the functionality for other devices to read messages over BlueTooth until 2015 with iOS 8" - that's a different claim.
    - 3y ago

abawany 3y ago

replying to sms is one: garmins can do this on Android but only recently (venu 2+, venu 3) got limited ability to do so on ios.

hnburnsy 3y ago

> Interesting, I've had 2 Garmin Smart Watches and never felt like Apple was restricting them. > The two main differences are notifications filtering (choosing which apps can send notifications to the watch) and actioning notifications from the watch.

gnicholas 3y ago
Huh? I can filter notifications with third-party smartwatches. Did it on Pebble, Fossil, and others.
- hnburnsy 3y ago
  Maybe Garmin chooses not to implement it but it is all or nothing on iOS-> Garmin.
  - gnicholas 3y ago
    Huh yeah looks like they just push anything for which “Notification Center” is enabled. Seems like a crude proxy.
- bdavbdav 3y ago
  Not on a garmin sadly.
- daruk 3y ago
  In the Garmin Connect iOS app, you can choose to display notifications for any combination of Calls, Texts (i.e. Messages app), or Apps (i.e. every other app). With Pebble and Fossil, are you for example saying you can choose to display Instagram notifications but hide Snapchat? Garmin seems to indicate that their limitation of iOS, as the Android Garmin Connect app allows the user to choose individual apps to display on the watch. https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=TLeDN92ZU0AgN4df6HakwA&productID=125677&tab=topics https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=TLeDN92ZU0AgN4df6HakwA...
  - gnicholas 3y ago

eitally 3y ago

With non-Apple Watches, you can't 1) reply to texts, 2) answer phone calls (or place calls), 3) interact with other native iPhone applications (like Apple Health). You'll pry my Garmin from my cold, dead hands but there's no mistaking it for an actual "smart"-watch. I value it entirely for health & fitness, and the very few "smart" things it can do are just nice-to-have icing on the cake.

mscrivo 3y ago
not sure "non-apple watches" is accurate here. I can do all of those things with my Pixel watch edit: as comment below points out, I was missing the obvious context of paired with an iPhone.
- rezonant 3y ago
  OP obviously meant non Apple watches paired with iPhones.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
parl_match 3y ago
FWIW you can answer and place calls via smartwatches on ios. Also, you can interact with Apple Health from any smart device via a companion app. You just have to grant permission. #1 is valid though.
promiseofbeans 3y ago
Also I don't believe you can control music
- rattus_rattus 3y ago
  You can! I use my garmin a lot to switch songs on my iPhone, change volume, etc. But like the other commenter said, you can’t reply to notifications or calls when the watch is paired to an iPhone, but you could when paired to an Android, which is a feature I definitely miss from when I had a Pixel.

gnicholas 3y ago

You can't reply to text messages from other smartwatches, or at least not organically (only canned responses).

king-of-turtles 3y ago

Yeah, there are some inconsistencies with Apple products interop-ing with non-Apple stuff. I've noticed this with wireless bluetooth headphone pairing. Sometimes it works, othertimes there are odd limitations and devices unpair randomly. Also Samsung's Adaptive Fast Charging sends lower wattage through the cable if it detects a non-Samsung device. So Apple is not the only offender here.

bdavbdav 3y ago

I’ve got an iPhone and an Apple Watch. Wife has an iPhone and a Garmin. The Garmin sadly misses out on notification filtering, focus modes, replies, solid Bluetooth (it drops out from time to time and the app needs reopening).

Lio 3y ago

> Interesting, I've had 2 Garmin Smart Watches and never felt like Apple was restricting them. Apple block Garmin watches from replying to text messages as they do on Android for example. Only Apple Watches are allowed to do that. I also note that iOS regularly tries to nag me into blocking Garmin Connect from sending notifications to my watch. Ostensibly that’s to preserve battery life but they don’t do that for their own watches either.

milkytron 3y ago

I've had friends that have trouble syncing their Garmin devices with syncing to their iPhone. I've wondered if this is caused by their wireless communication protocol that is proprietary and only available on other apple devices. Airpods and other bluetooth Apple devices seamlessly sync with iPhones because of a wireless protocol they use that is only available on Apple devices. I forget what it's called, but this definitely limits connectivity of devices that aren't made by Apple.

lordloki 3y ago

I used to be able to approve my duo notifications from my Garmin when I had an Android phone, but that functionality isn't available when using an iPhone. I found out recently that you can still do that from an apple watch on an iPhone, when my wife got one. So there is at least one area of functionality that Apple is likely restricting.