more things you’d know if you tried it instead of just speculating!
I do know this. Do you know you have to activate it by touching the contacts? Npe cable wakes up automatically. Am I wrong? When I stop my bike for too long, viiiiva goes to sleep. If I don’t dig out of my bag and touch the contacts again, it won’t bridge the data, because it's off. So much for coffee breaks. You can learn things without having the device. Try it out. Let me know. Did they change that feature at some point? (Technically viiiiva doesn’t support fe-c either or whatever the control profile is. Not an issue for me as far as I know)
bluetooth, only connects to the giant specific app.
Does the app then give heart rate to apple health and upload rides to some set of services? (I honestly don't think so) Because if it does, it just slammed specialized. Bosch probably can. I know it uses apple health and has a watch app. Not sure it posts to a range of services. Oh, there's the bike manufacturer that *has* an apple watch *and* apple health integration. So I guess it's ok for specialized to do it now?
the free strava app will receive your mission control data automatically and transfer it to apple health.
See, your "open system" just forced me to use *specific services* in order to get the data off the bike. So your “not walled garden” solution is: I must use mission control, enable strava, wear a second heart rate monitor, use a second navigation app (RWGPS) which I must explicitly disconnect from apple health (and possibly the watch) to prevent duplicate data, lose apple watch control of the ride and after all that the only bike service that has bike data and heart data is strava….. nothing walled garden about this. Nothing at all. Nothing to see here. Move along. For the peanut gallery:
This is literally, the definition of walled garden. Literally.
You are then going to say “you can take the files…. Blah blah blah”. Walled gardens aren’t just in concept. With your argument, apple isn’t a walled garden. Because I can take the files….and leave.
Is this really what you mean?
i’m once again not sure if you’re being intentionally obtuse or what, but i’ve asked several times for an example of an e-bike which broadcasts industry standard bluetooth data.
I am not sure if you’re being intentionally obtuse: I don’t care if no one has done it *on a bike*. That only shows how stupidly backwards the industry is. I have said multiple times that specialized should do this because it would make the industry better. Npe cable has shown that they *could* do it. On a bike. Phone metaphor time!
If you talked to steve and he said “I want to build the iphone”. Your response would have been “show me an example of someone else doing it”….. is this the hill you want to die on? Really? You are so against specialized doing something first? And *actually* being a leader? You know what, I know nothing about bike history, but if they followed your logic, I assume giant would have adopted ant+ first allowing specialized to do it. Is that true?
Because that is what your way of thinking means.
NPE Cable and Viiiiva have shown that *basic* data could be moved using other methods. Specialized has not done this. Specialized has also left their apps in an embarrassing state. If your "criteria" is "show me others that do it", I reference you to nearly every other fitness app on the app store. Take your pick. But it's a good thing they have an "open" environment....
the data is not proprietary to specialized, it’s a totally open/standard format. if they really wanted to create a walled garden, they’d encrypt it or use some wonky format.
Again, none of my apple data is proprietary formats either. I can take it all and leave (and have, in fact, done that before). Is this your standard for walled gardens? You can create the effect of a walled garden *without* intending to. This happened here when the number of general ant+ receivers dropped to near zero. Yeah, apple may have killed ant+ by refusing to adopt it when samsung did (and subsequently dropped it). I am sorry that apple is the 800 lb gorilla in the room. But it is. And the rest of the world has to live with that or stop buying apple products.
The fact that specialized has not bothered to share what they can with other ecosystems is not *encouraging* to the idea that their intent is *not* a walled garden. It is entirely possible they are simply using open standards because they couldn't build their own ecosystem all at once. Given they encrypted and blocked blevo with no middle ground (ostensibly for security reasons that any competent development team would have known before hand), don't support apple or android's ecosystems well and have made no other effort for cross ecosystem sharing *themselves* while only relying on 3rd parties to do it, it is *entirely* possible that their long term plans is to seal themselves off when ready. they simply aren't ready yet. But, hey, they give you a file.
But lets assume their values *are* about sharing this data. To date, they have done remarkably little to engage other ecosystems and make it easier to do so. Occam's razor? The simplest explanation here is that *they don't want to*. Only two bike services and no integration with either ecosystem their applications reside. Not a strong argument here.
What specialized did do is put ant+ on their bikes. And if the above is any indication, they didn't do it *because* it's an open standard, they did it because it made their internal bike communication better. Ant+ is *excellent* for this use case. It's not excellent for generic sharing because bluetooth basically ran it over in the market. Not because it *couldn't* have been, but because the market went a different direction.
Let me turn your argument around: what if none of the bike manufacturers are embracing true open delivery of data because they *want* to be the owner. And they *want* to control it. And ant+ just messed that up. And, you know what? Specialized development choices make that a *distinct* possibility.
Can you honestly show specialized's intent here?
The fact is, none of us know specialized intentions here. But their *actions* don't prove they have prioritized any kind of open sharing.
And here is what I bet *actually* happened. Because businesses aren't black and white:
Specialized, at some point realized they need iOS and Android applications to remain relevant in the industry. They said "what's the cheapest way we can do that" which is what any business would say when working outside of their main industry particularly while doing something based largely on market pressure (everyone else has an app...). Almost undoubtedly, either internally by specialized or externally by a development firm, a hybrid mobile app platform was selected so a code base could be developed once (mostly) and deployed to Apple's and Google's store. For some applications, these hybrid solutions are superb. They reduce initial work by a very large amount. Where you run into problems is apps that need to integrate with native things specific to each device or ecosystem for that app's industry. Once this happens, some frameworks have a way for you to "bridge" and develop code specifically for each ecosystem. Some don't. Some evolved enough to be missing very little native support. If they chose one that doesn't, the answer can be: "you have to re-develop this somewhere else". A *best case* is often that you still have to essentially develop specific code for each platform from that point forward. Why do I know this? Because I have been they guy they call to fix it. The end result here is the rush to do the early version of the app ends up costing far more later when the app needs to evolve and mature. Some companies choose this path because they would rather delay the cost even if it is far higher in the long term. Others get trapped simply because they didn't realize it could be a problem. I would not be surprised if the above is the reason specialized mobile apps are lacking so many integrations (not because they are evil. not because they don't want to. but because they dug themselves into a hole with poor technology management). This is *incredibly common* in these situations. Yes, I am an expert in this.
Their selection of e-commerce systems for their direct to consumer sales model is suffering similar issues. (You can call them and ask about it). Once you are charged, there is *no way* to re-charge you for the same order. This means that *any* billing issues that occur, for whatever reason, force you to return the order, and re-purchase (assuming there is stock). Since, you seem to need examples of bike companies that work differently: Priority. They can generate a different invoice, send you custom payment requests, and I just click the e-mail they send to buy it. Priority was, of course, born as a direct to consumer company. Specialized could learn a thing or two from them. Again, they could have picked a restrictive e-commerce system, *or* they have chosen these restrictions within a flexible one. We don't know. There are, of course, business reasons they might knowingly choose the second. Again, *I don't know*. All I know, is I personally experienced it.
Now BLEvo. If tampering was a concern, it never should have been unencrypted. It is kind of like starting an e-commerce store without SSL certificates. Just no. Now, I don't have any context on this one. But it definitely fits the pattern of rushing in and not thinking it through. It is quite possible that those older bikes should have been encrypted *from the start*, and you all got lucky if you use blevo. No context, but it fits the narrative. Either it should have been encrypted from the beginning, or it doesn't need to be. Is it sensitive data or not? Do they need to block the control path, or not? (and remember, disabling it in full is *not* the only solution here. even bluetooth can use authentication & authorization methods selectively).
Not going to comment on BLOKS. Not enough information.
So, on the surface, it seems to me that Specialized has a pattern of enabling the shortest path, without consideration to the problems and costs in doing so (either to customers or to them). Not because they aren't rider focused. But because they only think one step down the road. And they don't look at or consider that second step. Or the third. You know what my job often is? Preventing clients from falling into these traps around technology.
If the above is accurate, then their competency with this technology *is* in question. If it's not accurate, then what is left? A company that doesn't prioritize those things by direct choice?
And that only matters, because, as demonstrated above, this is a walled garden (please stop debating this. it fits the definition to perfection. get over it). And specialized is currently the keeper of the keys with no indication to us what it intends to do going forward. It *could* be a class leading open system. It also could be a class leading closed system (arguably, it is that today. I will concede that). But it is closed, perhaps not by specialized's active choice, but here we are.
Seriously, stop arguing the walled garden point. The things I am *forced* to use to get the data off the bike and still lose functionality have proven that point. It's a dead horse. Let it die.
