For example, I know there's always discussion about altimeter issues with various devices and not just garmin. I think the average athlete using their garmin for cycling/running rarely gives a rats a** about the altimeter. The avg athlete I run into wants their cycling computer to track speed, time, maybe power and cadence, at least give them some breadcrumb directions, handle laps, etc. Maybe a few other features but not much.

[..long list of exceptional use-cases...]

But, all that is to say "you're not normal"...against, the chorus of "everything works great for me!" from the more middle-of-the-road users. There's always a limit or a set of corner cases, and the closer you get to them (or the farther outside you get), the more likely you are to have experiences like you have had.

I don't think its quite as bad as your experience suggests. I, like the other middle-of-the-road use-cases, have had precious few problems with my Garmin Devices of choice (wife has a Vivofit, I have a 920xt).

I've been a product engineer for 25 years (good lord that sounds like a long time). I've seen the real-time embedded industry go from proprietary special purpose OS's on 4 and 8bit microprocessors, to off-the-shelf OS versions on 64bit processors, today. I used to write the OSes myself, and counting instructions in assembly was standard practice.

In the handheld form-factor and up, the system capabilities have largely exceeded the needed capacities for real-world uses. CPU/Memory/NV storage/connectivity/battery/etc all allow for the use of machine abstraction and largely device-independent (and sometimes language independent) methodologies. The wrist formfactor though, needs a few more generations to reach that of the handheld---we've really only just barely reached that point with the handhelds with this current generation.

I agree, its only a matter of time before that transformation happens to the wearable market. Will that be the death-nell for Garmin, or will they (have they already) had the foresight to get out in front of it? That takes a long time to plan, and longer to implement. But, its very difficult for incumbents to also be disruptive to their own models. So, Garmin's days very well could be numbered---but that number might be in the 1000s.

I don't know that the answer is a Handheld OS (android, iOS, etc). Honestly, I think the next disruption might be true machine/OS independence where the p-code, data-models, and message busses are totally separated from the platform OS---we are only partway there now. We are already seeing the start of that with containerized tech, and other virtualization methods. Eventually, I'll be able to tailor an OS to a platform scale, and the software won't know the OS it is running on.

Garmin will HAVE to move out of the semi-walled garden state that it is in today. I think their market-space is too small to support the amount of "proprietary" work that they do (special purpose OS, special purpose hardware, special purpose API, special purpose Apps, special purpose Webfront). All of that incurs significant cost/risk, at what value? Its as "bad" as Apple (ie, just as "walled off"...maybe worse), and its not as "good" either (doesn't have the market size to provide the long term cashflow to support all the R&D needed to make it worth it).

The way out of that is to find their core competency, and divest the rest...or rather reinvent it in an Open Architecture form. That's risky, and requires vision, leadership, and some balls....so that you come out the transformation with greater value than you went into it with.

I'm picking up the new Apple Watch today...It seems so completely obvious that sports tech as an ecosystem should look like the cell phone space, and it feels like the pieces are finally there.