Apple Had a Chance to Dethrone Strava—And Blew It

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I can't believe I haven't written about this before, but here we are.

For a company that prides itself on seamless user experiences, Apple's Activity app on the Watch is shockingly bad. Even more frustrating is that Apple had all the tools to dominate the fitness tracking space, yet it completely fumbled the opportunity.

If you've ever tried to track long-term progress using the Apple Watch, you already know the pain. Want to see how many miles you ran last month? Good luck. Need a quick comparison of your workout trends over the previous year? Apple makes it ridiculously hard to access.

Meanwhile, Strava, Garmin, and even lesser-known platforms like WHOOP or TrainingPeaks make this data effortlessly accessible. Apple had a shot at eating Strava's lunch, but instead, they built a UX disaster wholly disconnected from what serious fitness users need.

The Failure of Apple's UX Approach

Apple's Activity app is designed to track daily behavior change rather than long-term performance. This is great if your only goal is to close your rings, but what about people who want to track progress?

1. Where Are My Weekly, Monthly, and Yearly Stats?

One of the Activity app's most significant failings is its inability to surface historical data meaningfully. You can see your daily movement, exercise, and stand goals, but anything beyond that requires digging into the convoluted Health app.

Compare that to Strava:

• Weekly mileage? Right on your dashboard.
• Monthly summaries? One tap away.
• Yearly trends? Visualized, with insights into performance over time.

Apple collects all this data but refuses to display it meaningfully, which is a massive missed opportunity.

2. The Rings System Is Too Basic

Closing your Move, Exercise, and Stand rings might be a good motivator for beginners, but the system breaks down when you get into more serious training.

For example:

• The Exercise ring is locked to 30 minutes, no matter how much training you do. If you run 10 miles or bike for three hours, it's treated the same as a quick HIIT workout.
• The Move ring is based on calories burned, which is fine for casual users but doesn't factor in intensity, performance, or training adaptation.
• The Stand ring is the least useful for fitness-minded users. Standing once per hour doesn't contribute meaningfully to training progress, yet it remains a core part of the experience.

Compare that to Strava, which rewards users based on effort, volume, and personal records. Strava gives you a sense of progression, while Apple's ring system resets daily.

3. No Meaningful Training Insights

Apple Watch collects data on VO2 max, heart rate variability, resting heart rate, and even stride length, but what does it do with that information? Nothing useful.

• There's no way to see how your VO2 max has changed over time.
• No insights into recovery or training load.
• No recommendations on when to push harder or take it easy.

Garmin and WHOOP have mastered this by providing in-depth training analysis, fatigue tracking, and effort scores. Apple, despite having better hardware and integration, has done almost nothing with the data beyond throwing it into the Health app's black hole.

The Opportunity Apple Wasted

Apple had every advantage to crush Strava:

1. A massive user base – Every Apple Watch owner automatically gets the Activity app, while Strava has to fight for downloads.
2. Deep ecosystem integration – Apple controls both the hardware (Watch, iPhone) and the software (iOS, HealthKit), meaning they could have created a seamless fitness tracking experience.
3. Superior hardware – Apple's sensors are arguably better than Garmin's, yet Garmin delivers a far superior user experience for tracking long-term fitness.

If Apple had built a system that combined the motivational benefits of rings with the deep training insights of Strava or Garmin, they could have created the best fitness tracking app on the planet.

Instead, Apple gave us a glorified step tracker.

How Apple Can Fix This

Apple's advantage is that they're still in the game, and they have the resources to fix this mess. Here's how they could instantly improve the UX of fitness tracking on the Watch:

• Introduce deeper insights into performance – Let users track trends over weeks, months, and years with meaningful stats, not just rings.
• Build a proper dashboard – Create a Strava-like summary page that surfaces key training data instead of burying it in Health.
• Customize goals beyond daily rings – Allow users to set weekly and monthly mileage goals, training load targets, and PR tracking.
• Improve social & community features – Apple Watch has zero community engagement. Strava thrives because of its network effect—Apple could build something better.

Until Apple makes these changes, the Apple Watch will remain a frustratingly limited fitness tool, forcing serious athletes back to Strava, Garmin, and WHOOP.

And that's a failure Apple should have seen coming.

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苹果 Strava Garmin WHOOP TrainingPeaks 耐克 newtonrunning.eu Under Armour Peloton Interactive Fitbit (now part of Google) ōURA Runner's World USA Cycling Professional Triathletes Organisation Endurance Sportswire, Inc. Wearable Devices Ltd