Bah Humbug

A straw man argument is arguing against something the other person didn't say. You said if you like a service, you'd pay. Where's the line? I liked Strava well enough to use them a bit, but the critical factor you're willfully not understanding is my lack of trust in them. They capriciously drop features and support, which means I have zero incentive to pay for a service which I do not trust to continue in the future. Also, once I hand over a dollar, my tolerance for bugs drops considerably, as I go from a guest to a client.

And yes, I've pointed out that this place is social media several times myself. However, in this context, I was referring to the Social Media companies. Surely you understand context?

And yes, my employers will continue to value my services. Thank you for your concern for my well-being, sarcastic as it comes off.

esarhaddon

If you want to make a segment type thing in Golden Cheetah. Right click on the Interval you want to make a segment of in the Interval Pane of the Sidebar and select 'Create a Route Segment'. Then you can name and save that segment, so it should show up in every activity that has that segment of road or virtual road, just like strava. To compare all of your times drag and drop it into the Compare Pane to do comparisons of the Data Graphs (later edit - I renamed the 'Performance' Chart -> 'Data Graphs' which makes more sense as a title to me for a bunch of graphs).

some pictures showing Golden Cheetah segments in action - https://imgur.com/a/YiOsW24

bbbean 

If Google decided to charge, I could make a reasoned decision as to whether the price being asked was worth the service being offered. There's certainly no reasonable reason to expect them to provide a service for free. As it happens, they get their revenue without charging for services, and that model has worked well for them. Time will tell if Strava's model works in the long run. I suspect their advertising revenue was coming up short, hence the fees for features.

BB

Bah Humbug

I know what you're trying to talk about, and I'm directly shooting down your attempt to split smartphones from "phones", be they the almost-nonexistent feature phones or landlines, to attempt to make a smartphone a frivolous expenditure. Phones are a fundamental utility essential to functioning in modern society; Strava is (at best) a game. and one beset by cheaters and bugs. One is a need, the other is blatantly not.

However, I'll let y'all keep playing domestique for Strava. Carry that water.

bbbean 

Yes it is.

Yes I did.

Sy Reene

Just try and forget smartphones for a moment. I apologize if I brought us to this unimportant tangent. I do use Strava but really never open up it on my phone.

As I mentioned, I don't even use my phone for really anything related to cycling, for any app. Except maybe Epic Ride (Darksky weather mixed with a RWGPS route)..and I guess the Garmin app shoots off my ride details after I hit save on my head unit. I also don't give a hoot for any of the leaderboard, KOM stuff. I think I've already said I use it for my own ride and health analysis, and I use the segment stuff for comparing myself to myself.

I'm not a Strava domestique, but will say that of the 3 apps I do run (on my PC) - Garmin Connect, RWGPS, and Strava, I do like it best for metrics presentation and performance tracking. FWIW, I also pay for Ride wGPS, for the map generation and because my club relies on it. As others have asked in this thread, what else is out there that offers similar functionality and reporting and doesn't cost more or now costs less?

AdkMtnMonster

I like Strava. I follow one of my brothers and one of my sisters, and they follow me. That’s it. I don’t care about other riders that I don’t know, as far as connecting or following them. I just like to track my rides and segments, and I like the data I get. It’s useful to me and pretty darned easy to pull. Worth my money. I don’t get why people are so upset about it. Free market, you can use other software if you don’t like Strava, right? Man, I thought *I* was serious about my training, but the vitriol and rage in this thread has shown me that I clearly need to up my passive-aggressive efforts.

Seattle Forrest

Connect.

Honestly it's like a better version of Strava if you don't care about competing with strangers.

Unfortunately you have to use the desktop version for the power curve.

2cam16

Non-paying nor will I ever pay. I'd rather have ads and keep it like it was.

caloso

I mostly use Strava for the social benefits. I've been paying for Training Peaks for years for actual data analysis, and I guess I'd rather not pay for two things which will be substantially similar. On the other hand, I'm halfway through a local socially-distant TT series that depends on Strava. I will probably sign up for the free trial and then drop it.

cthenn

It's almost the end of the day, May 19th, and none of these changes have happened yet. Hurry TF up with the changes already, Strava, I wanna see how awful the free version is so I can delete my account already...

Seattle Forrest

​​​​​​Anybody who disagrees with me is an ogre that eats babies.

See? That wasn't so hard.

tomato coupe

Have the changes already gone into effect? I don't notice any difference.

noisebeam

There is an 150.0.1 update to the app in que, but I have not taken it as I wonder if it will make this effective at least for just the app.

mstateglfr 

That is an absurd question and you should be laughed at for even deciding to type it.
You clearly don't understand what the term 'freeloader' means. Strava allows for free accounts, so it isnt freeloading if someone uses the service for free.

Do better.

NoWhammies

I echo your comments about Golden Cheetah. I have the application sitting on my computer desktop and I have yet to figure out a way to look at my results. The few times I have loaded and reviewed my rides, I'm left more confused than ever. Garmin Connect does what I need and I'm content. I'll stick with it.

2cam16

I heard on the GCN Show it drops in two weeks .

diphthong

seems pretty simple...either it's worth it to you or it isn't. however you decide to interface with it-or don't, the tech goalposts are always moving away from you...
choose/utilize/maximize another app/provider that supplies what you need/want and hope/pray it's cheaper and endures.

ZHVelo

That is actually pretty helpful, thanks. I will dig into it more this weekend, I have a long one coming up.

bbbean 

that’s an absurd reply. Do better.

drewguy

They would, but also with reason.

Google drew in a lot of users to gmail with "free". So those users built their workflow around this free service (recognizing what it "costs" you in data, etc.). If they'd known years ago that Google would start charging for gmail they might have made a different choice. But now, because they've got tons of emails archived/organized/given out their gmail address they're locked into gmail and it's hard (though not impossible) to switch to an alternative.

Same thing with Strava - if you've saved all your activities there you're locked into them - it's possible, but not easy, to extract your ride data and move it elsewhere. If you care about keeping those records it's not easy to move to a different service to keep track of all your riding.

So, while on the one hand I understand the need for Strava to make money, there's also a whiff of exploiting locked in users.

mstateglfr 

Bless your heart for this being the best you could come up with.
A simple- 'well yeah, now that I understand the definition, I guess free users aren't freeloaders' would have sufficed.

merlinextraligh

we're all kind of speculating until we see this actually roll out. I'm betting however that most people won't pay, and they could end up shooting themselves in the foot.


Anybody remember Photobucket.com? Photobucket was a free third party photo hosting site. At one point most of the photos on this site were hosted by Photobucket. They then imposed some really high fees, and everyone on here quit using them, and found other free or cheaper ways to manage digital images. Photobucket isn't publicly traded so its hard to see how they've fared financially, but it appears that they are a much smaller company as a result of changing to a subscription model.

To a lesser degree, I think Strava runs a similar risk.

Kabuki12

I guess I am a "freeloader". I have used it for free for a long time. I am actually thinking about the paid version so I can have "Beacon" for my wife's peace of mind. Joe

merlinextraligh

doesn't garmin incident detection accomplish the same thing without paying for Strava?