Comment by mikestew
4 days ago
Why do they even bother? This is going to hit the front page of every health/fitness/cycling/running blog site, there will be a big stink for a few weeks, then Withings will quietly (or loudly, "we've heard you!", as if they were listening in the first place) get rid of it. And they'll waste all this time, money, and customer goodwill for nothing, because no one could have possibly seen this backlash coming.
Doesn't matter to me, neither their POS blood pressure cuff nor their scale will sync to HealthKit anyway (oh, how I've tried), I'm not losing anything. So stomping my feet with "I'm never buying another Withings product!" won't make any difference, I was not going to buy their POS products again anyway. :-)
This change sucks (but as a long time Withings user doesn't affect me... for now), but I haven't had trouble with either the scale or BP cuff syncing to Apple Health. I don't have any suggestions besides double-checking the Withings app has permissions to write to HealthKit. I don't see any settings in the Withings app itself besides a prompt to check "Settings > Privacy > Health > Withings App".
Sorry if this isn't helpful.
Aside: all BP cuffs and their apps sorta seem to suck when it comes to sync. I also have an Omron. At least mine measure accurately. Make sure to validate yours with your GP.
I do appreciate your feedback, thanks. I just don’t worry about it anymore because I can just as easily say, “hey dingus, record a body weight/blood pressure reading of…”. I wish I’d figured that out after wasting time to get synch to work. :-)
... the process of validating the accuracy of my home BP monitor reminded me of the Physics 510 lab I did in graduate school!
Omrons do their primary job well but you run into the "IT is where great brands go to die" phenomenon that you run into everywhere -- like the stay I had at a Hilton where the staff was great but between bad wiring and bad React apps the IT experience was shoddy... Staff would be held accountable if they did a bad job but problems with IT are treated like the weather, something nobody can do anything about.
Because the expected lifetime value of the $40 scale sold just shot up to well over $200. If 50% of customers stop buying the $40 scales and the other half start paying $99 annually, this is an absolutely no-brainer from a revenue perspective
I dropped my Withings stuff after constantly dealing with inconsistent syncing behavior. I got a body fat percentage weight scale and a blood pressure cuff from essentially no-name brands on Amazon, and both sync instantly every time. The blood pressure cuff doesn't even require me to have the app open on my phone.
Tough to beat compared to Withings' system, which seemed to rely on everything going to the cloud, then going back to your phone, THEN Apple Health, if you're lucky. With each of those steps being on whatever interval it decides.
The last set of updates seems to have fixed my sync issues. I have no idea why this is so hard, except maybe their team architected things incorrectly.
I believe the readings go to their cloud first then the app reads from there, which is one of those things that makes you realize hardware guys shouldn't design software.
My Body+ syncs quite well now, after they fixed whatever hiccup it had with losing Wi-Fi credentials.
That said, more than once it has synced the entire family’s account to MY Apple Health data, which is infuriating.
I was considering their Scanwatch 2, but I dunno… After returning the sleep sensor and the occasional hiccup with the Body+, I think Withings has lost my business.
Shame, can’t just keep their products working without getting into all sorts of AI and subscription shenanigans.
Will they get rid of it? It seems more likely that they'll do damage control to wait out the news cycle (the official comment on the linked post is an excellent example of corporate deflection) and change nothing.
I used to have issues with my Withings scale not syncing to HealthKit, but I just checked and it had all of my weightings in there just fine. Can't even remember the last time I checked the Withings app.
Because people will pay; that's why.
Will they though? I can get a brand new scale for less than $99 that has apple health integration.
Maybe some brands can command a $99 annual fee, but has withings got some loyal fan base? Seems unlikely for a third-tier fitness gadget company.
Will enough people pay, is the question. Yes, they’ll lose some sales. But if they make it up in subscription fees they won’t care.
>his is going to hit the front page of every health/fitness/cycling/running blog site
No one serious uses them for anything, bodyweight can be measured using any cheap scale
Bodyfat%, withings is very unreliable for this.
Apology ads are the bees knees these days, so that checks out.
> Why do they even bother?
It's what they were taught in business school.
Not at a good one.
Are there good business schools?
Okay, mean, but I’ve done consulting at a Big 3 and the MBA kids are bananas. They’re incredibly hard-working but have the ethics of a second-hand Kallax that’s too wobbly to stand.
they work great, who needs healthkit? been using them for 10 years without it.
If all you want is the one mesasurenr, no reason to use HealthKit.
If you want to graph resting heart rate against steps per week over a year or two, that’s when HealthKit adds value. Or if your blood pressure cuff and scale are different brands and you want to see combined data.
yeah, I guess I have the stuff from their ecosystem watch, cuff and the scale, so I get that in the (free) app.