Active Captain Sharing Discontinued?

[wkearney99]

So just read this on Active Captain fb page:

Todd Driscoll's comment is very important. Benjamin Stein and I just got off a conference call with Garmin on this subject and they emphatically confirmed that what he wrote is where they're headed. We'll have the whole story on Panbo soon but the news is good, as in:

"Garmin has no plans to end the ActiveCaptain Community and is actually working to update the community... We hope that current and new application developers will work with us and include the ActiveCaptain Community in their products. As always this product will continue to be free for users and developers."

They bungled announcing this but what's been driving the change is EU laws regarding user privacy. They're worthwhile regs but present some serious challenges to how a lot of software architecture is structured (and that's being kind). Since Garmin sells worldwide they're in a position to have to abide by these regs and the way the existing AC setup was structured wasn't going to work. There's lots of blame to go around but these weren't suddenly issued regs and Garmin should have had a plan in place already. They didn't and then they bungled announcing how the change was going to take place... right at the start of the boating season in one of their largest markets.

So, yeah, it's a mess but it's not an insurmountable one. The question now is whether Garmin will step and make the changes necessary to keep what was useful about AC alive.

 

[BandB]

They bungled announcing this but what's been driving the change is EU laws regarding user privacy. They're worthwhile regs but present some serious challenges to how a lot of software architecture is structured (and that's being kind). Since Garmin sells worldwide they're in a position to have to abide by these regs and the way the existing AC setup was structured wasn't going to work. There's lots of blame to go around but these weren't suddenly issued regs and Garmin should have had a plan in place already. They didn't and then they bungled announcing how the change was going to take place... right at the start of the boating season in one of their largest markets.

So, yeah, it's a mess but it's not an insurmountable one. The question now is whether Garmin will step and make the changes necessary to keep what was useful about AC alive.

Garmin didn't make the announcement. Polar did and they misrepresented what was going on. It does require some rewrite of code on both sides, Garmin and the receiving company. Polar has chosen not to do so.

 

[angus99]

Garmin didn't make the announcement. Polar did and they misrepresented what was going on.

Which is pretty much the textbook definition of Garmin “bungling the announcement.” Failing to foresee that this would be important news to some of their customers; allowing someone else to initiate and control the message; not anticipating that some other affected organization could break the news; apparently not having a contingency plan to immediately respond to misinformation . . . this is all communications 101, or the absence of it.

 

[BandB]

Which is pretty much the textbook definition of Garmin “bungling the announcement.” Failing to foresee that this would be important news to some of their customers; allowing someone else to initiate and control the message; not anticipating that some other affected organization could break the news; apparently not having a contingency plan to immediately respond to misinformation . . . this is all communications 101, or the absence of it.

I believe to Garmin this would have been normal course of business type activity. We make changes to adapt to new regulations and you, our customers, make changes as well. They announced it well in advance to the ones involved. They didn't announce to consumers because with customers doing their part, consumers were not to be impacted. Other customers of Garmin responded with appropriate action. Polar had only one intent with their notice and that was to make Garmin look bad instead of themselves.

Our software vendors make changes all the time that require us to make changes as well. They don't require and shouldn't include announcements to the public, but are just normal course of business. Credit card processors upgrade to put in added controls. Look at the change to chips and some retailers still haven't put in working equipment. Look at payroll tax changes. Congress makes last minute change, IRS tries to react as quickly as possible but it's already into the next year, every software provider or company reacts, each company updates and, if smart, does testing to be sure it all went right. Then we, the employer, explain to our employee why it's late and how it might impact them. In the case of this year, we also warn that it's just a temporary patch from the IRS as this wasn't a change in rates only but in the entire calculation and it will be far longer before they develop new tables structured as the new tax laws are. Not by any means either the first time we've had retroactive changes. As the employer, we simply do it and make it happen.

Polar's announcement only served one purpose, trying to divert the blame from themselves, where it rightly belonged, to Garmin.

 

[wkearney99]

There's certainly going to be situations where a degree of opaqueness is to be expected. That doesn't make the analogy work, however. That and combined with the other moves Garmin's made in the past don't build a warm and fuzzy feeling among people using what has been an actively community-driven data exchange.

That and the change isn't just to the data, it's also to the considerably more tilted agreement necessary to participate. Along with a dearth of actual information about what the API change will actually entail. In an unexpectedly compressed timeframe.

So, yeah, Polar has certainly made noise and drawn attention to this. We, as the people contributing to and using the community data deserve better performance out of all the players here. None of them get a pass in this mess.

 

[Airstream345]

A POV post on the Garmin.com blog would go a long way to assuage community concerns; at least addressing the issue and ideally stating intent for the community's future.

 

[ranger58sb]

FWIW...

Today I updated AC markers for TimeZero on one laptop, plus Plan2Nav and MX Mariner on three Android devices. No issues.

Recently checking prices at one specific duel dock, I noticed the various apps are batching their updates, so offline data in several apps may not perfectly match all the time (even if all downloaded on the same day), and may not perfectly match online data available on the AC site. Not a big problem...

-Chris

 

[texasnielsen]

Latest news from Garmin on Active Captain support

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