alt Hacker NewsSo close... but why the subscription? It just needs to stuff the data into Apple Health when it is within range of my phone.
It is actually tempting, but I can't support a subscription based hardware product. Just charge me whatever the device cost + profits.
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Full disclosure, I worked many years at Fitbit, in a very senior role.
The reason you want Whoop to have a subscription (and why I wear a Whoop now) is because it incentivizes the company to ship great hardware _and_ software. If you don’t have a subscription, your company becomes stuck on the treadmill of needing to have a new device to sell to the public every year (or even twice a year) so that you can continue to fund your business. Pebble found this out, too, and it led to their sale eventually.
Worse, the launch dates are not movable. People are largely not going to wait and buy your new watch in January if they wanted to get a Christmas gift for their spouse. The same goes for Mother’s Day. The scope is also not movable, because it has to have certain things for people to be interested vs last year’s model. We all know what happens when you fix scope and date in the iron triangle — quality suffers.
The subscription model has a great property — you can ship the device to your customers when it’s ready and meets your quality bar, and you can theoretically do it for free, because they are already paying a subscription. I realize Whoop did not take this path with their latest device release, they are clearly trying to goose their revenue for a quarter or two. That said, at the end of the day, their full product offering will either earn your subscription or not, which means that you can be confident that they are aligned with your interests. You generally cannot say that about a pure hardware company, unless they are remarkably disciplined with respect to hiring. I have not seen an example of this in the wearable/health space.
I think you can derive a general principle from this, which is that if a company is incented to sell you crap, they will eventually do so. If instead they are required to repeatedly earn your business, they will either maintain high standards for their products or they will go out of business. I mostly choose to spend my money on products made by companies with the latter model.
I've had one since October and really like it.
I justify the ~$20/mo the same way I justify a gym membership: it's a bargain if it's compelling you to make positive choices about health/sleep/exercise. If it's not, then yeah, it's just an expensive mood ring.
Of course, there are also smart rings (Oura) and much cheaper devices (FitBit https://store.google.com/category/trackers).