4.10:
You may not monetize built-in capabilities provided by the hardware or operating system, such as Push Notifications, the camera, or the gyroscope; or Apple services and technologies, such as Apple Music access, iCloud storage, or Screen Time APIs.
#2 - If you have the apps today, you should warn other users with a review (which may or may not be 1 star).
#3 - If you haven't reviewed the product on Amazon, you should warn other users with a review (which may or may not be 1 star).
This completely destroyed the resale value of this product as well. It's not a product we own, but it's their product we happen to use, and we're still subject to all kinds of ads and traps for subscriptions etc.
Honestly one of my new favourite uses for AI. Little things I wouldn't ordinarily complain about I can now engage the regulatory state on. (Currently pursuing LG under Wyoming's wiretapping statute.)
Though heading that off might be why this is only "starting from October 13th, 2026" and in respect of "any new Withings account."
APPLE enshittifying its platform was not on my bingo card.
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. :-)
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.
Me: hey bluetooth pairing isn't working I've tried A, B, C and here's additional context. Withings support: [over 24 hours later] Have you tried A? :) Me: ...Yes? Withings support: [over 24 hours later] Have you tried B? :) Me: As I said initially, yes. Can you please batch things to try to expedite this since replies are so slow? Withings support: [over 24 hours later] We have to do this in order. :) Have you tried having a different phone even though your phone meets our listed requirements? :) Me: ..................... Me: I debugged it myself in Android dev mode and got it working, I had to do X, perhaps you can relay the issue to your engineers. Thanks for nothing. Withings support: [over 24 hours later] oh
And as a bonus after an update a couple years ago it looses track of time within a couple weeks and has to be manually set.
Very pretty product once upon a time with horrid customer service and software.
The question is who and when first blinks.
Not that I want it -- my tokens are not free -- but it's here. Up for grabs.
Other countries won't care and let people reverse engineer away.
Been using my implementation exclusively for months, seems fine.
These days it's not true that if you pay for the item, you're the customer. Now you're just a potential revenue stream.
Here is a starting point. It includes a link to instructions on how to reverse engineer a Bluetooth scale[0], and it looks like someone dumped some data already.
It isn't far short of magical to watch Opus hack a piece of connected hardware. Everybody should try to take advantage of that capability at least once, if only to see it in action before they nerf it.
I just need a scale that syncs with my phone, and none of those subscriptions.
Except it'll all be locked down into a lower-bidder insecure state too.
The most recent watchOS release (watchOS 27) has terminally altered my relationship with my Watch.
Apple adding the non-optional Smart Stack to watchOS 10 and moving the Control Center to the side button (used to be dedicated to the app switcher) was (is) massively annoying, but I made do with it.
Them adding the -- again, non-optional -- Quick Apps screen between the watch face and the App Grid *purely to support a bullshit AI feature that I DO NOT WANT* was inexcusable and put me on the edge.
It missing two alarms yesterday was the final straw that had me move the thing from my wrist to a drawer for the first time in ten years.
Every other smartwatch is a massive downgrade on iOS thanks to Apple being anti-competitively Apple. However, moving to Android will be just as massively disruptive to many of my daily workflows, and with Google locking Android up on every release and them culturally being even more "airplane the AI into your mouth" than Apple is, I don't think moving will be as beneficial as it seems in theory.
The other option, of course, was to roll the clock back to 2013 and abandon smartwatches altogether. (I was a Pebble backer and bought several while they were still around.)
Re-evaluating whether I actually _needed_ a device to capture my health metrics was a big sticking point in that decision. I've long known that smartwatch calorie tracking has never been accurate -- too many variables related to biological makeup, and physicians never ask for HealthKit data anyway -- but there was a weird security and comfort that came with knowing that all of that was in Apple Health.
Living my life without a Watch these last two days has felt like letting go of all of that weirdly feels like losing an organ -- an appendix, more like. Not having a Watch sure feels liberating, though trying to make the iOS notifications system actually work for me is certainly a journey.
(I never realized how much of its clunkiness is by design. You can only set custom notifications for Mail, Calendar, calls and texts. Notifications for every other app falls into the "Default Alerts" bucket. There's no way to distinguish a ding from a ding from a ding by sound or feel (you can customize vibration patterns). You have to pick up the thing to look, but FaceID has already locked your phone...and you're deep in TikTok again. (I don't have TikTok but I could imagine this is how that cycle goes.)
Withings can go ahead and charge for this. Either savvy people with Claude up a script to extract those data points from Withings into Apple Health anyway, or they'll roll the clock back further and just log weight with pen and paper which, as far as I know, are enshittification-proof.
Is anyone doing scales, sleep sensors, and BP cuffs that don’t use the cloud at all?
With Withings firmly off the list, what's the best alternative for something that's accurate and reliably syncs with Apple Health?
Heated steering wheel on the other hand; that's heavenly.
I suppose if I ever find a BMW attractive enough to buy one despite this consumer-hating behavior (their grilles help me stay away), I'd figure out if I can unplug the seat from the control unit, and just plug it straight to a different power supply to get the heat. Or will they use something like HDMI's Digital Content Protection to prevent "heat piracy"?
Anyway it's all theoretical, it seems they've given up trying to pick your pocket for heated seats, but for other features they're still going to mug you: https://www.drive.com.au/news/bmw-admits-heated-seat-subscri...
Twice I tried it on rental cars it freaked the hell out of me. This is what I'd imagine people experiencing some exotic neurological collapse feel like - part of hands feeling warm, while surrounding bits feeling frozen. Mixed signaling, really bizarre dissonance. So now when I get a new car, I get pretty much every option except for the heated steering wheel.
Yup. Getting back from any snow sport where you wiped out and all the snow decided your butt's where it's going to hang out sells the product.
This is just them figuring out that if they pre-install the HW in every car they get enough payments to cover the units never used.
It has two obvious consumer benefits: second hand sales (the new owner may really want it), and very occasional use.
Dunno man, I just hop on the treadmill, do the thing for an hour, and hop off. Every day. I don’t need to count every single second or calorie I spend on it. Why all this paraphernalia around it all is needed is beyond me.
Now the app is absolutely bloated and I can barely find my weight, and the syncing has become _much_ less stable, and the app is constantly asking me to sign in again.
Amazing how they were from good, to bad, to terrible.
Required path is: Scale data -> WiFi -> Internet -> Withings app -> HealthKit
Looks like HA updated their documentation to reflect the $99/yr requirement: https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/withings/
Well, fuck that. Now I'm really, really, really not going to buy a Withings product again.
Never again.
Relatedly, I switched blood glucose monitor brands because my first device (Libre) did not sync to Apple Health: the data was locked in the device app where it was functionally useless to me and my doctor. So I switched to a more expensive brand (Dexcom G7) just so I could keep a complete history in Apple Health. If they ever remove or paywall that integration I will switch again.
For most folks, I feel like spending 20 minutes a day on Darebee would be more effective than their $20/month subscription to their $600 smartwatch.
What kind of water-carrying excuse is that? Multibillion dollar companies have been created doing exactly that for decades. Withings has somehow managed to stay in business for nearly 20 years...doing exactly that.
I assume writing and maintaining apps across all stack of devices is real work that someone has to do full time with a decent level of quality. Unfortunately, you can't just ship software and call it done, even without adding features, new devices are getting released, new OS versions are getting released, new security updates are getting released, server infra has to be maintained and patched.
I feel that all this work isn't getting appreciated and many think that this should be offloaded to somebody else to be done for free. They already offer a free app with free CSV export.
Also, they just might have taken on too much scope and paying for all that scope isn't sustainable from hardware sales alone, unless people continue to buy, but at some point all who would buy will have their devices and scope can't be covered anymore.
I though the CSV export was manual, you can’t automate it.
And it is all open-source, the best guarantee against enshitification.
Pointless accounting, life is not an account or stock graph.