With fitness trackers people ultimately care about how well the tracking data syncs with third party systems. Given that the Apple Watch is a fashion/status symbol that also happens to have a highly accurate fitness tracker in it as well I suspect people will be more willing to drop their Peloton than drop their Apple Watch so I hope Peloton knows what they are doing.

I’ve used a number of smart watches and the Apple one honestly just works better. Android wearables have just not advanced at all since they first came out.

I've played with and it is highly accurate and I like that it keeps the data "on the device" and doesn't send it to any 3rd party server. To query the data you actually need an iOS app running on the device. You can look at your data offline too when you're on a mountain with no cell service.

However this kills half their market because of people like me who are invested in the Android eco-system so much that having an iPhone is a non-starter.

The Galaxy watches from Samsung are equivalent though and I'd say about the same accuracy for things like step count, calories, distance.

The build quality is worse and mine gave up the ghost after a year.

Being able to sync different devices into one place is key. How do you get an overall view of fitness and health when information gets siloed into different applications/services. If you don't have a central datastore that they can all send info to, then you're forced to stay within a single ecosystem. Which sucks if you like different products from different companies and becomes impossible when you want equipment that the ecosystem you're stuck in doesn't even offer.

Peloton is a status symbol too, it’ll be interesting to see how this shakes out.

I bet in two, or three years, there will be free Pelotons on CL.

It may take a little bit longer, but $5 garage sale to free-if-you-lug-away is the ultimate fate of every home stationary bicycle.

This is why I joined a gym. The cost of one of these fancy home bikes will pay for several years of membership (edit: if Peloton costs $39/mo for services, that alone will almost completely pay for my membership indefinitely), and I don't have to worry about maintaining equipment or having it take up space in my living room. I have access to not only stationary bikes but also treadmills, rowing machines, and all manner of strength training machines and free weights. There's also a sauna which I don't have at home either.

And if I lose motivation and stop, I just cancel the membership. I don't have to dispose of equipment or have it sitting around reminding me of my failure.

Outside of the valley most people have still have never heard of Peloton. In contrast Apple is a house hold name.

100% not true. I live about as far away as you can get (Southeast) from SF and lots of people have Pelotons. Even my mom in her 60s has heard of it.

Man you live in a bubble if you think nobody has heard of Peloton "outside of the valley". wow.

But the Peloton people are more fanatical than the Apple people, especially lately after years of missteps and apple products no longer "just" working.

Also there are people who workout who use Android phones.

What he's saying is Peloton's market share and brand awareness is minuscule compared to Apple's. It's not about fanaticism. A minuscule market inhibits manufacturing savings at scale. They may be better off working with already-established players such as Apple and Fitbit. Creating their own fitness tracking market is going to be a tough slog.

With the ridiculous cost of the bikes and all their other workout equipment, I think they're probably correct in thinking their customers aren't the most price conscious

The bike price isn't that ridiculous for a quality spinning bike. I paid nearly as much for my Keiser bike. It's the $39/month fee that's expensive... That's almost $500/yr.

That $39/month permits several users and access to a lot of fitness classes beyond just the bike. If you've ever hired a personal trainer at a gym or paid for gym classes, you've almost certainly spent more than $39/month, and certainly more than that if it wasn't just for you.

If you just use it for the cycling classes and for yourself, it's probably not a great deal (financially). But if you also do the HIIT, running, yoga, strength, etc. classes and you (like many people) are a bit more consistent with a coach (even a virtual one) than working out by yourself, it can be worth it.

I pay $14.99 for the standalone Peloton app, which also lets me do all of of those classes. And if Peloton raises the price of that app to where I think it's too expensive, I can move to another one without losing all of my fitness tracking history since I track that with my Garmin watch.

You make an excellent point. It enables them to create a "workout platform" where all their products interface directly with their fitness tracker. Their customers presumably wouldn't mind wearing a separate Peloton fitness tracker while working out whereupon they could then upload their data to their phone if they so desire. Then they can move all the multi-device interaction complexity to a single product line, the fitness tracker, and the reset of their portfolio only needs to interact with a single product - the fitness tracker. This actually makes a lot of sense.

Its well known outside. One of the most famous riders of it has created problems with network security.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/19/us/politics/biden-peloton...

Its certainly a certain set of people who are most familiar with them - but that's not a "valley" vs "outside the valley" thing.

> Peloton was popular before the pandemic with a wealthy subset of home exercisers, but with the quarantine, it has become something of a phenomenon in a certain socioeconomic bracket. There are Peloton message boards (“Joe Biden has a Peloton,” Peloton Forum reported this week), and the company’s celebrity instructors have huge followings on Facebook and Instagram.

Right, based on this acquisition https://atlaswearables.com/

The article indicated that people were buying Apple watches specifically for use with Peloton, so there does seem to be at least some market there. By disabling Apple Watch, those people won’t have an alternative option.

If I bought a product for a specific feature and that company then removes that feature, I would absolutely not want to buy their new product - out of spite, in part, but it also just seems like an unwise investment

I’ll go one further: I ordered the plus version of the bike, and the sales guy spent a good 50% of the upswell from the regular bike explaining about the Apple Watch support. I’ll be cancelling the order (before it’s even been delivered) now, and probably never considering another product from them.

I don’t know about the US, but in Germany taking away a key feature from people who paid for said feature without compensation is enough for a big lawsuit.

>in Germany taking away a key feature from people who paid for said feature without compensation is enough for a big lawsuit.

Germany isn't exactly famous for harsh rulings on companies' unlawful activities.

I wonder if this is less to do Apple watch and more to do with Apple's Fitness+. It is a cheap alternative to Peloton with nice happy people and high production quality. Likely not as good as Peloton, but will squeeze out a lot of the more casual users. From a later comment on going to war with Apple it doesn't seem to be a good strategy. The games of hardware compatibility are frustrating and limiting to the whole industry. But monopolies don't seem to do much better either.

Orange Fitness has a smart watch that you only wear when exercising, and seems to have been thriving with it prior to the pandemic. Apparently it zero-interaction authenticates you to their gym equipment, which is a great user experience. Peloton cult folks might wear branded apparel and the watch beyond exercising, but everyday folks would no doubt wear the Peloton watch while exercising and then take it off afterwards, same as Orange.

They should just partner with Google/Fitbit, if they are going to do this.