If you use an Apple Watch, you may have to make a decision soon. Like Garmin, Polar, Oura and others, Apple will soon add new AI-powered features to its Health app, and you’ll have to pay a monthly or annual fee to access them.
The best Apple Watches and the Apple Health app are always free after you buy your first watch, with no additional costs other than paying for LTE through your phone’s data plan.
According to popular Apple watcher Mark Gurman, nothing will change. In his Power On newsletter (via MacRumors), says the new features will be available at a new paid tier that can be accessed through the Health app on iPad and iPhone, rather than through the Watch.
However, companies that sell hardware are different. Users often feel like they’re getting paid for free for premium subscriptions, because even after paying for the product upfront, they still have to pay to get the most out of it. While many tech companies promise that everything that was free when you bought the app will remain free when you use it, users still feel like they’re getting the short end of the stick.
Constantly updated technology products, such as: Some brands, such as Apple Watch and Garmin, often offer new features for your watch or applications, as long as the technology is supported and that value is included in the original price. For example, the top Garmin watches recently received the lifestyle tracking feature as a free update, and users of the top iPhones receive software updates every year, which often include a UI overhaul.
The big concern among users is that when paywalls are introduced, new features that should be available on your device will disappear behind the paywall to get more people to subscribe. This reduces the value prospects of the product because when you buy the device you wait years for new features and eventually you can’t access them without having to pay the membership fee.
This year, Garmin introduced the Garmin Connect+ subscription, which offers updated Livetrack features, an Active Intelligence service that recommends and motivates actions based on health data, and a new performance dashboard to better organize metrics. Concerned and angry, Garmin users took to TechRadar’s comment sections, Reddit threads and inboxes to express their anger.
A user of ours tiktok videos wrote on the subject: “This is bad news. All new features will now be paid for. And in a few years, when the initial furor dies down, they’ll put more and more features behind a paywall, like Strava did.”
Another emailed: “I’m worried that the new content will come with the new paid premium service and our current content will be eroded to the point where you no longer have the option to switch to a new/different provider or add a subscription.”
Eventually, we received so much communication on this topic that we started a live blog to report on it.
@techradar
♬ Original sound: TechRadar
Garmin users are very passionate about their watches and enjoy working on core things like data collection. Most people think Connect+ is a slap in the face, and if Apple isn’t careful it could suffer the same fate.
Apple Watch and iPhone users tend not to be as niche users as Garmin users, so additional optional subscription fees may not draw as much irritation. But Apple already has a Fitness+ subscription service, and it appears that the AI feature will not be built into the paywall but will be rolled out. paragraph Health+Service.
If Apple users feel pressured even after buying high-end devices (iPhones aren’t cheap, after all), they’ll definitely make it known, and the response won’t be nice for Apple.
