Dear Fitbit: technology is designed to make our lives easier
Over the past few years I have owned five or more Fitbit One trackers. Last year I got an Aria scale, which wirelessly transmits my body fat percentage and weight to Fitbit's servers. Of course, if you have bought into the Fitbit ecosystem you may also be aware that the company charges you if you want to analyze your health data. So it should be little surprise that the company, having tied this data analysis to its economic model, has chosen to not support HealthKit "at this time." I wouldn't hold my quantified breath that the company will choose to integrate its data into HealthKit.
That's a shame, really, and I will no longer be using Fitbit products as a result. Apple's Health app offers a dashboard of my health, albeit not a perfect one, as this cogent article from ReadWriteWeb illustrates. But what HealthKit does do well is save me time. It would be nice for all our devices to communicate and show a full report of our quantified selves, wouldn't it?
I'm just really exploring this world, but I find it rather annoying to have to type in my weight every day when there's no technical reason why Fitbit couldn't just allow that data to sail into Apple's Health app. Instead, I'm using Carrot Fit to track my weight by manually typing it in. No, this isn't like walking 8 miles for fresh water, but it shows a lack of understanding users on Fitbit's part.
Granted, Fitbit is likely making some money from its paid service. Server space, while cheap, isn't free, so I can't necessarily begrudge them in making a hard business decision. Also, Fitbit's Premium service comes with "trainers" who help you improve over time. I'm not sure how far away we are from Siri being your health coach, but I'm betting we're a long way off.
However, my understanding of HealthKit integration is that this would not be a tough thing to implement. It is, from all accounts, a rather simple thing to add into your app. So Fitbit has chosen the short-term notion of profits over the longer-term vision of a vibrant community of customers fiercely loyal to its brand. This is why I love Apple, and why you have Apple "fanboys." While you can argue they always want you to buy the next, newest thing (what business doesn't?), ultimately the point of Apple products is to make your life better, and simpler, by using technology. Apple gets it*. Fitbit doesn't.
*Apple definitely gets the concept, but unfortunately, as of now, it doesn't get it in implementation. I just today went to the Health app and days of logging data have all vanished. Friends on Twitter are reporting the same. So I can maybe understand Fitbit's position, considering Health and HealthKit have been somewhat of a data disaster since iOS 8 debuted. Apple needs to get its house in order ASAP.
