Nowadays, companies see the users of their platforms as captive audiences, and they try to extract as much money from them as possible.
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.
I'm on holiday at the moment so reopened the app to transfer photos from my camera directly to my phone again after a while of not using it (at home I just use the microsd card readers in my computers). Anyway, I discovered Canon now has a mandatory account requirement. There wasn't even an account option when I bought the camera. Luckily the old apk from APK mirror still works on my phone.
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."
As for the timing... If you BOUGHT the product before October 13th and simply didn't activate an account yet - then it might still be worthy of a complaint. I'm not saying they are actively false advertising, I haven't checked every one of their store fronts after all. But it is a valid path for someone who did get swindled.
If you bought from a big-box retailer and you’re considering ditching ecobee because of this, you should try to return them. Even if you’re outside the return policy, if you’re pleasant to the customer service staff they might be able to help you.
Amazon reviews are essentially meaningless at this point, the important un-fakeable stat is return rates. Brands care, and retailers track it and will drop products with high return rates.
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.
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.
Fun story: when I got my Withings watch 5-6 years ago couldn't get it Bluetooth paired with my phone. Contacted support.
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.
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.
This only applies if the sole reason of the purchase is to gate an apple capability. If the purchase does more than that, literally anything, you can gate all the apple parts on an iPhone.
The fee is to unlock something on their own back end, triggered by using a non Apple device. So Apple’s license probably doesn’t apply (the corner case that could cause it to apply is the app generating a key and sending it to the Withings infrastructure, I suppose).
I can’t wait till somebody figures out how to reverse engineer these with a LLM so we can just sync the scale data ourselves. I purchased one of these devices, but I am somewhat regretting my decision now.
I can't help but feel that something soon gonna break, and break big. Like, the decompilation stuff either gonna get criminalized, or forbidden in training, or I don't know. Current state of affairs became super imbalanced, where I can decompile 400k+ lines big game in a weekend and rip it's engine; or, as pointed in sister thread, as someone cloned music processor device in 2 hours.
I'm also surprised when reading stuff here like "agent harness app %X% is a new moat!". I mean, I can point even GPT itself on their own new app and it happily obliges in dumping all features, writing product doc or disassembling itself.
Not that I want it -- my tokens are not free -- but it's here. Up for grabs.
What AI are you using? Image generators are kinda like this but AFAIK no LLMs do this. Maybe a little or warning about copyright at most for specific use cases.
Local AI will be made illegal under the guise of security, and then they'll just purge anything "revolutionary" from services. The endgame currently getting pushed by the big players is pretty obvious.
It'll be made illegal in the same way piracy is. Major platforms won't be able to host it but anyone who wants it will trivially be able to torrent the latest model and do whatever they want.
Other countries won't care and let people reverse engineer away.
This is the unfortunate truth. I've gone through 2 Withings scales because the battery basically had planned obsolecense. Then I bought a Quardio smart scale, but the company went bankrupt and all cloud syncing went down. Meanwhile my mom's $20 dumb scale works perfectly 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.
True but it's good to see access to our own devices democratized, for once.
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've had pretty good luck using Google Appscript to either access web APIs or screenscrape, then parse into a Google Sheet (which I either use as-is or as the source to populate a web app).
I give it at most a week. People freed the Whoop pretty quickly. I mean, you could probably do it yourself if you have the time and an LLM, it's probably not that locked down.
Pretty sure it's already possible. I have a small service running on homelab that syncs all the withings data to garmin. Has needed no attention in years and just works.
I'm not as optimistic. I think we're in a very small golden window and once companies catch on that reverse engineering is taking off in a big way, they're going to panic and start demanding cryptographically-sealed binaries with remote attestation everywhere. And they'll probably get it, because what the consumer wants barely matters anymore.
I don't see the appeal of heated seats, I've never turned the ones in my cars on. OK, I suppose when you've left your car in below zero weather it's useful.
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"?
I have some sorta skin condition that I can not stand either the heated seats and the heated steering wheel.
But my wife ... in winters, the first thing on entering the car is to activate the heatings seats. Some people like them. And yes I paid for the subscription (or a package that cost me a bunch but gave me everything all inclusive).
If you do not have a garage and live in a cold weather climate they are fantastic. Heat up almost instantly when the engine might not warm up entirely to get the heat going for a good 15 min.
> Heated steering wheel on the other hand; that's heavenly
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.
I don't think either of those are consumer benefits at all. And the hardware was charged for when the car was initially sold - it was part of the total unit cost of creation. The subscription was a consumer hostile way of increasing spend with the brand. The genius' at BMW looked at Tesla's Plaid mode and FSD and thought they could replicate that model but failed to realise that people don't view their brands the same way - people treat a Tesla like a software purchase, but a BMW like an expensive toaster.
Sounds like some PM is jealous of Whoop and trying to launder the cost and boost adoption of their unwanted AI feature/subscription behind a heavily used existing feature.
Apple is adding ads to their services, and it looks like they're going to force Siri AI onto every recent-enough device they have. Don't get comfortable.
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.
I have a Withings sleep sensor. They recently sent me a marketing mail, based on my previous night’s sleep, with a pitch to improve my sleep through a paid program. I had already opted out of marketing emails so their unsubscribe link had nothing to unsubscribe from.
Is anyone doing scales, sleep sensors, and BP cuffs that don’t use the cloud at all?
I was actually in the market for a scale to replace my Wyze (still works, but the app is just not very reliable) and was strongly considering a Withings Body Smart.
With Withings firmly off the list, what's the best alternative for something that's accurate and reliably syncs with Apple Health?
And that will be the end of me buying anything more from Withings. Good job guys, I was happy enough with the scale, but I do not pay yet another subscription just to get the readings put into Apple Health. Bye.
I got their blood pressure cuff for a couple years ago. I declined the setup and BT sync, partly from privacy, partly from apathy of "when will it break".
The cuff works well, I enter the numbers manually, no failures so far.
The Withings app has just got consistently worse and worse over the last few years. I just wanted some scales that would sync to my phone and record my weight over time.
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.
Noticed this in the Withings app too. Sadly I've seen this trend with a lot of apps. For example 98% of the time I open the Audible app I want to play an audiobook, but they make you click multiple times. They want you to buy books, not listen to them.
Other players in the field like Garmin are super restricted.
For my own use case i swapped to Health Connect (Android) though. Whatever might happen with that.
Of course i am also appalled about this change and also the pretty much non-response from the customer service in the forum about this, no good arguments have been mentioned.
In some cases, sensor data requires further transformation/processing. If you do it in the app, others who decompile your app can copy the implementation; if you put it behind an API, it makes it much harder.
For those who want to have a bottom line impact and have time & money to spare, purchase a scale or a blood pressure monitor from Apple Store online, try to set it up on your phone until you hit the new paywall, and then call and arrange to return it; when asked, explain that it requires a $100/year subscription for Apple HealthKit support and that you’re offended at Apple for omitting that. It’s quite possible that Withings made this change without notifying Apple, and a handful of such returns could lead Apple to pull all Withings products from their sales channels in response. Or it could just be wasted time, and Apple’s fine with it, but there’s no easier way to find out — and this sales channel is probably valuable enough to Withings that losing access to it might cost them their entire projected revenue gains from the fee.
Well, crap. I really like Withings's scales. They're very nice and the results closely match medical equipment readings I've had, so in my experience they've been great for keeping track of things between checkups. Their privacy policy is (or at least was) one of the only ones I'd trust with medical data. The iOS app started to get annoying with its extra subscription features, which I couldn't care less about because I get them through other means.
But subscribing so that the scale in my bathroom, which syncs to the app in my phone, can sync to another app on that same phone? LOL, hell no. That simply will not happen. And even though it only applies to new users now, if there's not enough pushback that it loses them more business than it gains them, my official prediction is that within a year it'll cover new accounts, or new devices added to existing accounts.
I wish ios would allow sideloading because the current model makes this stuff not viable. Few people are going to pay $100/year to host a free reverse engineered app.
Whoever wrote https://didac.dev/blog/i-made-my-withings-scale-sync-to-home... apparently got it working with Bluetooth LE and an esp32 chip. Sadly, they didn’t share their code yet, and as I lack their social media options I can’t email them requesting they post it. Perhaps they’ll see this comment, or perhaps someone else will repeat the solution and post it this time — but without the HealthKit path, there’s not much gain to be had over just manually typing the weight measured into the Health app.
Is that my problem? I figured that WiFi access was enough to hit my phone to update HealthKit, but I never gave the scale access to the Internet ("you can go live over there on the IoT VLAN with the other tattletale devices").
Well, fuck that. Now I'm really, really, really not going to buy a Withings product again.
Mine died after a year, which I suspect is because my spouse used it after showers, and they’re not designed to handle bathroom moisture. Not even rated as water resistant.
It used to work that way but there was an update that forced it to go through their app and you needed to make an account. I had used mine for a couple years until this became a requirement then I just gave it away and went back to my dumb scale and manually entering the value into the Health app
Withings opened my eyes. I’d been using cheap crappy devices that didn’t do much at all. “Upgraded” to withings and holy crap, the new user experience was a complete tour of my personal health data they wanted to ingest and control. I was finding no way to opt out. I couldn’t use the thing until I answered all the questions. It’s clear they’re all-in on vacuuming up data for their own purposes. I went back to a dumb scale and dumb bp cuff. I’d love to have things that automatically connect and record in my software of choice. But you can see what withings feels that costs them. They want you to pay not even to escape their confines, but just to allow your data to go to your own system. This shit has to end
Why do people use these (watches, bands, smart scales) when they are so inaccurate? It's like believing in astrology!
I am convinced people go into the market with money and a desire to get scammed and never bother to check any claims companies make about their products.
Other than tracking steps and heart rate, they aren't accurate for the other things they claim to do.
I can't believe people are using these devices and believing they are accurate.
If you want an accurate body fat percentage measurement, get a DXA scan.
Good BIA devices from InBody that are anywhere near as accurate as DXA (still far off) cost thousands of dollars.
For impedance based machines, look up InBody 970/970S and how much they cost!
Believing your Withings smart scale is accurate at all for body fat percentage measurement is like believing in a unicorn.
And for body weight measurement, you can use any cheap Chinese scale, take a photo, and most agents can read the readings off the photo and log it for you in any app, no Health Connect or HealthKit needed!
how much precision you even need for bodyweight? Chinese cheap scales are good enough and mass produced, dirt cheap. Also, your bodyweight does can vary by as much as 1.2kg or 1% of BW on day to day basis simply due to changes in hydration, gut content or hormonal effects etc... You'll need to use a "weight trend" method something like EMA-14 or SMA-7 which many fitness apps use.
We use KTS-3 (Kalman Trend Smoother) in macrocodex free app for weight trend, it's slightly better than EMA-14 but visually it's much better for the users specially the ones who aren't good at reading a chart!
OK, so you want other apps to read this data? Read on.
How much effort is needed to write an app that can take a photo, read the display, and write it to Health Connect or HealthKit? Barely a few minutes!
The same is true for a blood pressure monitor. How often do you even use it? How much effort?
Do you really even need an API? LOL.
You can find a few studies on this:
>A 2020 systematic review by Fuller et al. found that consumer wearables often perform poorly at estimating energy expenditure, even when they measure steps and heart rate reasonably well. Across brands like Apple, Garmin, Polar, and Withings, calorie burn estimates frequently showed substantial error, often in the 15–40% range and sometimes exceeding 50%. Wearables can still be useful for tracking trends, but not for precise calorie calculations.
And at the end, if you are interested in "Calorie Expenditure" or TDEE or Maintenance Calorie tracking, our sensorless approach is much more accurate and we've a completely free app with 17,000+ users already! We basically use a Neural Network, see the method here:
https://macrocodex.app/knowledge/rethink/adaptive-tdee/
You can read reviews, and we guarantee results for weight loss or weight gain within 2–3 weeks (validation based on 17,000+ users), with no money, no ads served, and not even a name, phone number, or email (on Android) collected! Every user is just a number; no personally identifying information is collected.
It doesn't matter if a person has PCOD, thyroid issues, prediabetes, or is genetically resistant to fat loss: results within guaranteed 2–3 weeks and 80% will see results from the very first week! If you think our claim is outrageous, read the reviews :)
This is sort of an old-man-yells-at-clouds comment, but I recently realized that most of the new stuff companies sell is pretty much a solution in search of a problem. Apple's whole announcement this past week was like this, but I'm feeling the same way about smartwatches, smart homes, and the like lately as well.
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.
Tell me, what part of your workout program you're pitching can inform me how much I weigh? How about my body fat percentage? Can it tell me my heart rate?
I just don’t understand why companies think anyone would pay for that when there are alternatives. Or indeed even when there aren’t alternatives. $8/mo to save me typing in a number into apple health? In fact who even gives a shit about Apple health.
Oh. Wait. Apple does. Seems like a clever move Withings!
I own a couple of Withings devices (a scale, and a blood pressure monitor) and this doesn’t affect me (for now!) as an existing user, but it still infuriates me. Saving my data in Apple Health is the *primary* reason I bought those devices.
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.
I realized this week that most health tracking is absolutely bunk.
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.)
So that's what I did. However, 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. (Don't get me started on sleep tracking!)
Living my life without a Watch these last two days has felt 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.)
As far as Withings is concerned. They created the first smart scale, which is genuinely useful (much less so iwth this change) but haven't been able to materialize much outside of that. Their smartwatches are too little, too late, and their more expensive scales are basically "we will sell you vibes and premium materials for loads; you should buy". This move feels a bit canary in the coalmine to me.
Withings can go ahead and charge for this. Either savvy people with Claude up an app 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.
I honestly don't have anything against them moving apple sync behind the paywall. It's really hard to justify doing any kind of ongoing maintenance and rnd from one-time sales. If they ship good durable things, there might not be enough people willing to buy that stuff, they're also forced to constantly find new customers.
It's really hard to justify doing any kind of ongoing maintenance and rnd from one-time sales.
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.
They do need to keep up with API changes. But that’s not that hard. Even then, they could expose a stable local API so someone else can maintain the adapter.
Why would someone else maintain the adapter? Would they be charging for maintenance (or selling data / network) as well? What company should give their business to somebody else?
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.
Right, but they need to keep up with those changes to support their continuing sales anyway, so it’s “free” to keep supporting the existing installed base too.
I replaced my deprecated Apple Watch Ultra with a Seiko 5 GMT. It has about two days of life on a single charge, and it takes me about 10 seconds to charge it each morning by winding the little knob on the side. It's pretty and has built-in Do Not Disturb mode.
I spent a decade with a smart watch. Then I took the ultimate step against enshittification. There's nothing to subscribe to on this thing, even if I wanted to, which I certainly don't.
#1 - If you bought the product with Apple Health sync in mind and it doesn't do that for free, file a complaint with your OAG. It's false advertising.
#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).
Nowadays, companies see the users of their platforms as captive audiences, and they try to extract as much money from them as possible.
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.
I'm on holiday at the moment so reopened the app to transfer photos from my camera directly to my phone again after a while of not using it (at home I just use the microsd card readers in my computers). Anyway, I discovered Canon now has a mandatory account requirement. There wasn't even an account option when I bought the camera. Luckily the old apk from APK mirror still works on my phone.
Tricking the customer into an exploitative subscription is more profitable than earning loyalty by providing good value.
> file a complaint with your OAG
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."
I agree, that's a great use for AI.
As for the timing... If you BOUGHT the product before October 13th and simply didn't activate an account yet - then it might still be worthy of a complaint. I'm not saying they are actively false advertising, I haven't checked every one of their store fronts after all. But it is a valid path for someone who did get swindled.
Can I do the same for like EcoBee?
I bought them a year ago and today they showed me an ad ON MY THERMOSTAT.
If you bought from a big-box retailer and you’re considering ditching ecobee because of this, you should try to return them. Even if you’re outside the return policy, if you’re pleasant to the customer service staff they might be able to help you.
Amazon reviews are essentially meaningless at this point, the important un-fakeable stat is return rates. Brands care, and retailers track it and will drop products with high return rates.
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. :-)
> Why do they even bother?
It's what they were taught in business school.
Not at a good one.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Fun story: when I got my Withings watch 5-6 years ago couldn't get it Bluetooth paired with my phone. Contacted support.
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.
https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines
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.
Nordictrack does this with iFit as well. Can’t sync to Apple Health without a paid account. Syncing is somewhat janky too.
I've always felt that YouTube is also breaking this rule by making background playback a Premium feature.
This only applies if the sole reason of the purchase is to gate an apple capability. If the purchase does more than that, literally anything, you can gate all the apple parts on an iPhone.
The fee is to unlock something on their own back end, triggered by using a non Apple device. So Apple’s license probably doesn’t apply (the corner case that could cause it to apply is the app generating a key and sending it to the Withings infrastructure, I suppose).
But they are monetizing the export button you press before the api call is made.
I can’t wait till somebody figures out how to reverse engineer these with a LLM so we can just sync the scale data ourselves. I purchased one of these devices, but I am somewhat regretting my decision now.
I already did, the scales local sync with bluetooth is at https://github.com/NavistAuLabs/esphome-withings-wpp
I can't help but feel that something soon gonna break, and break big. Like, the decompilation stuff either gonna get criminalized, or forbidden in training, or I don't know. Current state of affairs became super imbalanced, where I can decompile 400k+ lines big game in a weekend and rip it's engine; or, as pointed in sister thread, as someone cloned music processor device in 2 hours.
The question is who and when first blinks.
Luckily we have open weights models that can't be banned. Even if you tried, it would be impossible to enforce, like Napster/Bittorrent again.
I’m surprised it’s not already forbidden in training. They won’t even mention brands or characters because that’s wrongthink.
I'm also surprised when reading stuff here like "agent harness app %X% is a new moat!". I mean, I can point even GPT itself on their own new app and it happily obliges in dumping all features, writing product doc or disassembling itself.
Not that I want it -- my tokens are not free -- but it's here. Up for grabs.
What AI are you using? Image generators are kinda like this but AFAIK no LLMs do this. Maybe a little or warning about copyright at most for specific use cases.
Local AI will be made illegal under the guise of security, and then they'll just purge anything "revolutionary" from services. The endgame currently getting pushed by the big players is pretty obvious.
It'll be made illegal in the same way piracy is. Major platforms won't be able to host it but anyone who wants it will trivially be able to torrent the latest model and do whatever they want.
Other countries won't care and let people reverse engineer away.
Yeah, some additional friction. For the curious but not for the masses..
> Local AI will be made illegal under the guise of security
Molon labe
got a link to that comment in the sister thread?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50104955
I don't have the scale, but I got the protocol for the watch and it'll probably be similar enough.
Been using my implementation exclusively for months, seems fine.
https://github.com/davidventura/withouthings
I'm coming to the conclusion that my life is improved the more I can leave these technologies alone.
This is the unfortunate truth. I've gone through 2 Withings scales because the battery basically had planned obsolecense. Then I bought a Quardio smart scale, but the company went bankrupt and all cloud syncing went down. Meanwhile my mom's $20 dumb scale works perfectly 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.
This came up on HN about a month ago: https://didac.dev/blog/i-made-my-withings-scale-sync-to-home...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49550436
Used to be a thing before LLMs too.
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.
[0] https://github.com/oliexdev/openScale/issues/786
True but it's good to see access to our own devices democratized, for once.
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've had pretty good luck using Google Appscript to either access web APIs or screenscrape, then parse into a Google Sheet (which I either use as-is or as the source to populate a web app).
We need an open firmware for these scales.
I just need a scale that syncs with my phone, and none of those subscriptions.
I give it at most a week. People freed the Whoop pretty quickly. I mean, you could probably do it yourself if you have the time and an LLM, it's probably not that locked down.
Maybe LLMs are going to help free us from enshittification. For now.
Reverse engineer anything with agents, from app behavior down to native binaries - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50058850 - October 2026
https://github.com/morluto/rea
https://rea.tools
Pretty sure it's already possible. I have a small service running on homelab that syncs all the withings data to garmin. Has needed no attention in years and just works.
I'm not as optimistic. I think we're in a very small golden window and once companies catch on that reverse engineering is taking off in a big way, they're going to panic and start demanding cryptographically-sealed binaries with remote attestation everywhere. And they'll probably get it, because what the consumer wants barely matters anymore.
Something something think of the children.
Except it'll all be locked down into a lower-bidder insecure state too.
This is up there with BMW charging a subscription for heated seats.
I don't see the appeal of heated seats, I've never turned the ones in my cars on. OK, I suppose when you've left your car in below zero weather it's useful.
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...
Turn it on on the passenger seat to keep your take out food warm while you drive home.
Also good for those of us with back issues. I use mine even in the summer sometimes for that reason.
I have some sorta skin condition that I can not stand either the heated seats and the heated steering wheel.
But my wife ... in winters, the first thing on entering the car is to activate the heatings seats. Some people like them. And yes I paid for the subscription (or a package that cost me a bunch but gave me everything all inclusive).
> when you've left your car in below zero weather it's useful
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.
If you do not have a garage and live in a cold weather climate they are fantastic. Heat up almost instantly when the engine might not warm up entirely to get the heat going for a good 15 min.
> Heated steering wheel on the other hand; that's heavenly
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.
I see you did not grow up going out to the driveway to start the car before breakfast :)
Grew up in a warm place. Currently my car sleeps in a relatively warm underground carpark of the apartment block.
We had to plug our (gas) car in at night. I don’t recommend it.
You can buy the feature outright when you order the car.
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.
I don't think either of those are consumer benefits at all. And the hardware was charged for when the car was initially sold - it was part of the total unit cost of creation. The subscription was a consumer hostile way of increasing spend with the brand. The genius' at BMW looked at Tesla's Plaid mode and FSD and thought they could replicate that model but failed to realise that people don't view their brands the same way - people treat a Tesla like a software purchase, but a BMW like an expensive toaster.
Sounds like some PM is jealous of Whoop and trying to launder the cost and boost adoption of their unwanted AI feature/subscription behind a heavily used existing feature.
And this is why we buy apple products. Imagine buying a third party slopwatch and then being told you have to pay $99 to read your own data.
Apple is an interesting example to choose, they have some of the worst "vendor lock in" practices of any company.
Green text bubbles, "[Person] reacted to this message", and mandatory $150 monitor stands come to mind.
mediatory monitor stand... right
It was a thing. Apparently it was actually $1000 though lol:
https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-monitor-stand-price-re...
Apple is adding ads to their services, and it looks like they're going to force Siri AI onto every recent-enough device they have. Don't get comfortable.
Not relevant to the discussion at hand, but sure.
Reminds me of Chamberlain and their garage door openers...
What’s withings?
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.
But how do you know when to stand?
You don’t stand on a treadmill. Ever. That’s how I know.
I love how the Apple Watch patronizingly congratulates me for standing in the morning. Can’t wait til the battery dies and I can get a Swatch.
Good news you don’t have to wait. Sell the thing.
Or you could just, you know, turn that off.
Best thing about minimalism is realising you don’t need mental load junk.
I have a Withings sleep sensor. They recently sent me a marketing mail, based on my previous night’s sleep, with a pitch to improve my sleep through a paid program. I had already opted out of marketing emails so their unsubscribe link had nothing to unsubscribe from.
Is anyone doing scales, sleep sensors, and BP cuffs that don’t use the cloud at all?
I was actually in the market for a scale to replace my Wyze (still works, but the app is just not very reliable) and was strongly considering a Withings Body Smart.
With Withings firmly off the list, what's the best alternative for something that's accurate and reliably syncs with Apple Health?
I will bet that $99 they can’t make it stick. 1990s business practices in an age of reverse-engineering LLMs
And that will be the end of me buying anything more from Withings. Good job guys, I was happy enough with the scale, but I do not pay yet another subscription just to get the readings put into Apple Health. Bye.
I got their blood pressure cuff for a couple years ago. I declined the setup and BT sync, partly from privacy, partly from apathy of "when will it break".
The cuff works well, I enter the numbers manually, no failures so far.
The Withings app has just got consistently worse and worse over the last few years. I just wanted some scales that would sync to my phone and record my weight over time.
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.
Noticed this in the Withings app too. Sadly I've seen this trend with a lot of apps. For example 98% of the time I open the Audible app I want to play an audiobook, but they make you click multiple times. They want you to buy books, not listen to them.
To Withings defense: At least to my experience they have the most open API going on: https://developer.withings.com/
Other players in the field like Garmin are super restricted.
For my own use case i swapped to Health Connect (Android) though. Whatever might happen with that.
Of course i am also appalled about this change and also the pretty much non-response from the customer service in the forum about this, no good arguments have been mentioned.
But there’s no need for the API at all. Scale to phone over BT then to Apple Health on the device. It’s the API that should be the add-on.
In some cases, sensor data requires further transformation/processing. If you do it in the app, others who decompile your app can copy the implementation; if you put it behind an API, it makes it much harder.
Me and my partner bought Withings watches - neither of us will buy them again. Very very poor customer service
Back in 2016, an update bricked my Withings scale. I don't think I've considered them again since.
For those who want to have a bottom line impact and have time & money to spare, purchase a scale or a blood pressure monitor from Apple Store online, try to set it up on your phone until you hit the new paywall, and then call and arrange to return it; when asked, explain that it requires a $100/year subscription for Apple HealthKit support and that you’re offended at Apple for omitting that. It’s quite possible that Withings made this change without notifying Apple, and a handful of such returns could lead Apple to pull all Withings products from their sales channels in response. Or it could just be wasted time, and Apple’s fine with it, but there’s no easier way to find out — and this sales channel is probably valuable enough to Withings that losing access to it might cost them their entire projected revenue gains from the fee.
Alright lads, what scale are we moving on to now?
I do not care for Withings software or subscriptions, but their hardware is so nice.
Well, crap. I really like Withings's scales. They're very nice and the results closely match medical equipment readings I've had, so in my experience they've been great for keeping track of things between checkups. Their privacy policy is (or at least was) one of the only ones I'd trust with medical data. The iOS app started to get annoying with its extra subscription features, which I couldn't care less about because I get them through other means.
But subscribing so that the scale in my bathroom, which syncs to the app in my phone, can sync to another app on that same phone? LOL, hell no. That simply will not happen. And even though it only applies to new users now, if there's not enough pushback that it loses them more business than it gains them, my official prediction is that within a year it'll cover new accounts, or new devices added to existing accounts.
Has anyone vibe-coded a reverse engineered clone app yet? Should be doable today.
For Android+watch, yes, scale likely compatible with some small amount of work
https://github.com/davidventura/withouthings
I wish ios would allow sideloading because the current model makes this stuff not viable. Few people are going to pay $100/year to host a free reverse engineered app.
I was gonna say, I’d be shocked if it already wasn’t from the home assistant community.
Assuming the Withings app is on the same phone as the HealthKit account, there's no "cloud" involved. This is 100% grift. I hope nobody buys these.
Yeah, I got turned off when I realized you can’t sync these devices via Bluetooth or LAN.
Required path is: Scale data -> WiFi -> Internet -> Withings app -> HealthKit
There’s an HA integration path for the scale to HA but I don’t believe anyone has yet built the HA to HealthKit side of that.
Doesn’t that require using the Withings API (cloud)?
Looks like HA updated their documentation to reflect the $99/yr requirement: https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/withings/
Whoever wrote https://didac.dev/blog/i-made-my-withings-scale-sync-to-home... apparently got it working with Bluetooth LE and an esp32 chip. Sadly, they didn’t share their code yet, and as I lack their social media options I can’t email them requesting they post it. Perhaps they’ll see this comment, or perhaps someone else will repeat the solution and post it this time — but without the HealthKit path, there’s not much gain to be had over just manually typing the weight measured into the Health app.
Looks like the Body+ and WS-30 models have an official “Bluetooth networking mode,” but alas, my model does not.
:(
Is that my problem? I figured that WiFi access was enough to hit my phone to update HealthKit, but I never gave the scale access to the Internet ("you can go live over there on the IoT VLAN with the other tattletale devices").
Well, fuck that. Now I'm really, really, really not going to buy a Withings product again.
Mine died after a year, which I suspect is because my spouse used it after showers, and they’re not designed to handle bathroom moisture. Not even rated as water resistant.
Never again.
Seriously? That’s awful by design. I figured it was BT from scale to phone app.
It used to work that way but there was an update that forced it to go through their app and you needed to make an account. I had used mine for a couple years until this became a requirement then I just gave it away and went back to my dumb scale and manually entering the value into the Health app
Withings opened my eyes. I’d been using cheap crappy devices that didn’t do much at all. “Upgraded” to withings and holy crap, the new user experience was a complete tour of my personal health data they wanted to ingest and control. I was finding no way to opt out. I couldn’t use the thing until I answered all the questions. It’s clear they’re all-in on vacuuming up data for their own purposes. I went back to a dumb scale and dumb bp cuff. I’d love to have things that automatically connect and record in my software of choice. But you can see what withings feels that costs them. They want you to pay not even to escape their confines, but just to allow your data to go to your own system. This shit has to end
Withoutgs
Why do people use these (watches, bands, smart scales) when they are so inaccurate? It's like believing in astrology!
I am convinced people go into the market with money and a desire to get scammed and never bother to check any claims companies make about their products.
Other than tracking steps and heart rate, they aren't accurate for the other things they claim to do.
I can't believe people are using these devices and believing they are accurate.
If you want an accurate body fat percentage measurement, get a DXA scan.
Good BIA devices from InBody that are anywhere near as accurate as DXA (still far off) cost thousands of dollars.
For impedance based machines, look up InBody 970/970S and how much they cost!
Believing your Withings smart scale is accurate at all for body fat percentage measurement is like believing in a unicorn.
And for body weight measurement, you can use any cheap Chinese scale, take a photo, and most agents can read the readings off the photo and log it for you in any app, no Health Connect or HealthKit needed!
how much precision you even need for bodyweight? Chinese cheap scales are good enough and mass produced, dirt cheap. Also, your bodyweight does can vary by as much as 1.2kg or 1% of BW on day to day basis simply due to changes in hydration, gut content or hormonal effects etc... You'll need to use a "weight trend" method something like EMA-14 or SMA-7 which many fitness apps use.
We use KTS-3 (Kalman Trend Smoother) in macrocodex free app for weight trend, it's slightly better than EMA-14 but visually it's much better for the users specially the ones who aren't good at reading a chart!
OK, so you want other apps to read this data? Read on.
How much effort is needed to write an app that can take a photo, read the display, and write it to Health Connect or HealthKit? Barely a few minutes!
The same is true for a blood pressure monitor. How often do you even use it? How much effort?
Do you really even need an API? LOL.
You can find a few studies on this:
>A 2020 systematic review by Fuller et al. found that consumer wearables often perform poorly at estimating energy expenditure, even when they measure steps and heart rate reasonably well. Across brands like Apple, Garmin, Polar, and Withings, calorie burn estimates frequently showed substantial error, often in the 15–40% range and sometimes exceeding 50%. Wearables can still be useful for tracking trends, but not for precise calorie calculations.
And at the end, if you are interested in "Calorie Expenditure" or TDEE or Maintenance Calorie tracking, our sensorless approach is much more accurate and we've a completely free app with 17,000+ users already! We basically use a Neural Network, see the method here: https://macrocodex.app/knowledge/rethink/adaptive-tdee/
You can read reviews, and we guarantee results for weight loss or weight gain within 2–3 weeks (validation based on 17,000+ users), with no money, no ads served, and not even a name, phone number, or email (on Android) collected! Every user is just a number; no personally identifying information is collected.
It doesn't matter if a person has PCOD, thyroid issues, prediabetes, or is genetically resistant to fat loss: results within guaranteed 2–3 weeks and 80% will see results from the very first week! If you think our claim is outrageous, read the reviews :)
Don't trust? just read the reviews!
Never buying a Withings product again and will be getting rid of the scale that I already have. This is such anti-consumer bullshit.
This is sort of an old-man-yells-at-clouds comment, but I recently realized that most of the new stuff companies sell is pretty much a solution in search of a problem. Apple's whole announcement this past week was like this, but I'm feeling the same way about smartwatches, smart homes, and the like lately as well.
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.
https://darebee.com/
Why does everything on this website have to be a bait-and-switch funnel to some kind of (self-)Promotion.
Tell me, what part of your workout program you're pitching can inform me how much I weigh? How about my body fat percentage? Can it tell me my heart rate?
I just don’t understand why companies think anyone would pay for that when there are alternatives. Or indeed even when there aren’t alternatives. $8/mo to save me typing in a number into apple health? In fact who even gives a shit about Apple health.
Oh. Wait. Apple does. Seems like a clever move Withings!
The entire economy is a grift now.
I own a couple of Withings devices (a scale, and a blood pressure monitor) and this doesn’t affect me (for now!) as an existing user, but it still infuriates me. Saving my data in Apple Health is the *primary* reason I bought those devices.
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.
I realized this week that most health tracking is absolutely bunk.
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.)
So that's what I did. However, 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. (Don't get me started on sleep tracking!)
Living my life without a Watch these last two days has felt 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.)
As far as Withings is concerned. They created the first smart scale, which is genuinely useful (much less so iwth this change) but haven't been able to materialize much outside of that. Their smartwatches are too little, too late, and their more expensive scales are basically "we will sell you vibes and premium materials for loads; you should buy". This move feels a bit canary in the coalmine to me.
Withings can go ahead and charge for this. Either savvy people with Claude up an app 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.
But but... it has an "AI Connector" now (this is literally one of the reasons).
I honestly don't have anything against them moving apple sync behind the paywall. It's really hard to justify doing any kind of ongoing maintenance and rnd from one-time sales. If they ship good durable things, there might not be enough people willing to buy that stuff, they're also forced to constantly find new customers.
It's really hard to justify doing any kind of ongoing maintenance and rnd from one-time sales.
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.
What if their model is sustainable only when new people keep buying? Once all who would buy bought, they can't survive on existing customer base.
What ongoing maintenance is required beyond what would be needed to keep their app working for future sales anyway?
They do need to keep up with API changes. But that’s not that hard. Even then, they could expose a stable local API so someone else can maintain the adapter.
Why would someone else maintain the adapter? Would they be charging for maintenance (or selling data / network) as well? What company should give their business to somebody else?
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 would give it a shot. Home assistant is full of adapters like this.
I though the CSV export was manual, you can’t automate it.
I assume you can reverse engineer the device API and release the compatible free app with apple health sync (and other connectors).
Right, but they need to keep up with those changes to support their continuing sales anyway, so it’s “free” to keep supporting the existing installed base too.
What?! How about providing value so that it is actually worth purchasing a subscription?
Subscription isn't required to use the device.
Buy a Pebble, is a better watch.
And it is all open-source, the best guarantee against enshitification.
I replaced my deprecated Apple Watch Ultra with a Seiko 5 GMT. It has about two days of life on a single charge, and it takes me about 10 seconds to charge it each morning by winding the little knob on the side. It's pretty and has built-in Do Not Disturb mode.
I spent a decade with a smart watch. Then I took the ultimate step against enshittification. There's nothing to subscribe to on this thing, even if I wanted to, which I certainly don't.
Counting steps or any thing else on a Apple Watch is sad, just like this.
Pointless accounting, life is not an account or stock graph.