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Believe me, I thought the FitBit was a stupid device when I heard about it, but then I got one for free from work. Having it on your wrist all day and tracking

Believe me, I thought the FitBit was a stupid device when I heard about it, but then I got one for free from work. Having it on your wrist all day and tracking all your activity really did make a difference for me and for my friends that have it - to the point where I convinced friends to get the FitBit. The effectiveness of the FitBit, just by my anecdote, is that it tracks all your steps, even for little things such as walking to the bathroom, and shows you your total activity. Second, is when at the end of the day your are close to your target, its easy to convince yourself to go for a little walk to reach the target. Without tracking, you wouldn't have done that extra walk at night. I do agree with sentiments of others that the lock-in of data is pretty annoying, but the device and app work great for what they do.

MBCook 11y ago
> Second, is when at the end of the day your are close to your target, its easy to convince yourself to go for a little walk to reach the target. Having an external locus of control can make a huge difference for some people when it comes to exercising more or eating better. It helped for me. > ...but the device and app work great for what they do. That was NOT my experience with the app. I think it's pathetic they decided to try to be their own ecosystem instead of being part of HealthKit, but that's not their big sin. In the two or so years I used a Fitbit the app only got worse. Food logging was repeatedly changed, losing features, and getting harder and harder to use. They later changed exercise entry to make it work better for runners and harder for everything else. They took FOREVER to update from iOS 6 style interfaces to iOS 7. But the big thing, the KILLER thing, was that all my data was corrupted by a bug they knew about and refused to fix. There was an option to adjust your daily calorie goals based on activity (or something like that). Having that on used to be the default, but it caused all sorts of problems. I only found that out after noticing tons of my old data had almost exactly the same calorie count each day. Like within 10 calories. After numerous support emails (their support system was terrible) I was finally told to turn that option off. They knew it caused issues, that's why they started turning it off by default. But they didn't tell people who had it on about the issues it caused or detect if they were hitting the bug. They fixed it for new users and left older users screwed. So I have 2+ years of useless fitness data in FitBit. It doesn't matter if it can be exported for free or put in HealthKit, the data is junk. I don't remember having a single positive interaction with FitBit over support or other problems. They were at best neutral. My opinion of them went lower and lower and lower over time.
- click170 11y ago
  To be fair, they make it nearly impossible to get your data out of their servers to do anything interesting with anyway. Which is another huge failing on their part IMO.
  - mkopinsky 11y ago
    They have a resilient, stable API. We use it for a number of clinical trials evaluating incentives for walking, and it works fairly well. Better than most of their competitors.
- vilmosi 11y ago
  "I think it's pathetic they decided to try to be their own ecosystem instead of being part of HealthKit, but that's not their big sin." Why? Considering their platform existed before HealthKit and the current limitations of Healthkit... it sounds like a smart move to me.
clarky07 11y ago
But now, the big question is can it compete with Apple Watch? I didn't really "get" the idea at first, but now that I have an Apple Watch I have actually paid attention and enjoyed the activity app for all the reasons you stated above. Why not get the Apple Watch instead, and enjoy all of the other features you can have too? I think the comparison in a comment above to camera/video camera is spot on. It's a great feature for this other all purpose computing device I happen to have. I don't expect it will be a standalone product 5 years from now in any significant numbers.
mbesto 11y ago
> The effectiveness of the FitBit, just by my anecdote, is that it tracks all your steps, even for little things such as walking to the bathroom, and shows you your total activity. Second, is when at the end of the day your are close to your target, its easy to convince yourself to go for a little walk to reach the target. Without tracking, you wouldn't have done that extra walk at night. Your use of the word "effectiveness" implies you desired a particular result having used your FitBit. So, what precisely is your desired result? That you do your extra walk?

MBCook 11y ago

> Second, is when at the end of the day your are close to your target, its easy to convince yourself to go for a little walk to reach the target. Having an external locus of control can make a huge difference for some people when it comes to exercising more or eating better. It helped for me. > ...but the device and app work great for what they do. That was NOT my experience with the app. I think it's pathetic they decided to try to be their own ecosystem instead of being part of HealthKit, but that's not their big sin. In the two or so years I used a Fitbit the app only got worse. Food logging was repeatedly changed, losing features, and getting harder and harder to use. They later changed exercise entry to make it work better for runners and harder for everything else. They took FOREVER to update from iOS 6 style interfaces to iOS 7. But the big thing, the KILLER thing, was that all my data was corrupted by a bug they knew about and refused to fix. There was an option to adjust your daily calorie goals based on activity (or something like that). Having that on used to be the default, but it caused all sorts of problems. I only found that out after noticing tons of my old data had almost exactly the same calorie count each day. Like within 10 calories. After numerous support emails (their support system was terrible) I was finally told to turn that option off. They knew it caused issues, that's why they started turning it off by default. But they didn't tell people who had it on about the issues it caused or detect if they were hitting the bug. They fixed it for new users and left older users screwed. So I have 2+ years of useless fitness data in FitBit. It doesn't matter if it can be exported for free or put in HealthKit, the data is junk. I don't remember having a single positive interaction with FitBit over support or other problems. They were at best neutral. My opinion of them went lower and lower and lower over time.

click170 11y ago
To be fair, they make it nearly impossible to get your data out of their servers to do anything interesting with anyway. Which is another huge failing on their part IMO.
- mkopinsky 11y ago
  They have a resilient, stable API. We use it for a number of clinical trials evaluating incentives for walking, and it works fairly well. Better than most of their competitors.
vilmosi 11y ago
"I think it's pathetic they decided to try to be their own ecosystem instead of being part of HealthKit, but that's not their big sin." Why? Considering their platform existed before HealthKit and the current limitations of Healthkit... it sounds like a smart move to me.

clarky07 11y ago

But now, the big question is can it compete with Apple Watch? I didn't really "get" the idea at first, but now that I have an Apple Watch I have actually paid attention and enjoyed the activity app for all the reasons you stated above. Why not get the Apple Watch instead, and enjoy all of the other features you can have too? I think the comparison in a comment above to camera/video camera is spot on. It's a great feature for this other all purpose computing device I happen to have. I don't expect it will be a standalone product 5 years from now in any significant numbers.

mbesto 11y ago

> The effectiveness of the FitBit, just by my anecdote, is that it tracks all your steps, even for little things such as walking to the bathroom, and shows you your total activity. Second, is when at the end of the day your are close to your target, its easy to convince yourself to go for a little walk to reach the target. Without tracking, you wouldn't have done that extra walk at night. Your use of the word "effectiveness" implies you desired a particular result having used your FitBit. So, what precisely is your desired result? That you do your extra walk?