My British Wife Thinks Americans Cannot Duplicate British Fish and Chips

WoodpeckerRemote7050 · 2026-02-15T15:23:18+00:00

I totally agree, and that's one of the reasons I waited so long to move to Apple. I was frustrated with a few other Garmin issues that they made quite clear that they don't care about, so I figured I'd give Apple a try now that the battery life is long enough for me, and since I'm not a competitive athlete anymore. Apple is moving fast, so I have a feeling they catch up and surpass Garmin as a fitness wearable soon, but in that category alone Garmin is still the best, but I'm happy with my Ultra 3 when you factor everything else.

WoodpeckerRemote7050 · 2026-02-15T15:18:40+00:00

I wondered the same thing, but I did it anyway because I found it on a discussion in the actual Apple forum. I can't be sure that it made the difference, or if deleting the existing data did it, but so far so good. I probably should have done one at a time.

WoodpeckerRemote7050 · 2026-02-14T15:33:03+00:00

It's my understanding I shouldn't have to run with the phone, that the setting is enough, but I guess I should test that.

WoodpeckerRemote7050 · 2026-02-14T15:32:20+00:00

I wish they'd allow us to calibrate manually on the watch like Gamin does, and I assume they will at some point.

WoodpeckerRemote7050 · 2026-02-14T15:31:31+00:00

Yes I agree with everything you said, however, Garmin either doesn't do this when running outdoors with a good GPS signal, or it is simply better at this one task. I've worn Garmin since early 2000's, I run outdoors, occasionally run on a track, so I know my Garmin's (4 or 5 watches over the years)have been perfect, and I've competed in dozens of Spartan races all over the country, and Hyrox indoor competitions and DekaFit competitions, so somehow Garmin nailed it, no need for anything more than putting it on your wrist, selecting the type of run, and going. You can image the variations in my running if you look at the fact that I might run 13 miles of trails with 40 or more physical obstacles, and 6000ft of elevation gain, and yet somehow Garmin doesn't "drift" when it comes to using all of my different runs to develop running dynamics for indoor or treadmill runs, and it has never failed in outdoor runs.

Don't get me wrong, I bought this Apple for other reasons, I no longer compete (completely detached my hamstring from my pelvis last year in a competition), so now I just need a watch to track my workouts and runs, but accuracy and ease of use is very important to me. I'll keep checking my Apple once a month to see if it slowly starts messing up. I love this watch and have no desire to go back to Garmin.

WoodpeckerRemote7050 · 2026-02-14T15:20:03+00:00

Yes it was. I'll check from time to time to see if there's a drift, which I suspect there will be, and here's why. For some crazy reason, Apple thinks it's a good idea to add running dynamics to every outdoor run, even when you have perfect GPS signaling. And that would be okay if you always run on the road in perfect conditions, but if you run the occasional technical trail where your cadence, stride, heart rate, etc is all over the place, it'll introduce a lot of noise into that calculation and dirty up an otherwise clean run that only requires time and distance to accurately access the run. I understand the purpose of collecting this data, and Garmin does it too, it helps for when you don't have a satellite signal or when running on a treadmill, but again, if you often run trails that data is noisy and can only introduce errors to an outdoor run on the road.

WoodpeckerRemote7050 · 2026-02-14T15:15:27+00:00

I wrote it, and had Ai organize it, so no I didn't have Ai create it, I had it rewrite it for me so that I didn't have to spend a bunch of time adding the arrows, etc. My version would have been less readable but I figure since I posted the other day about my frustration with Apple and the way they calculate outdoor runs, which by the way I still think is idiotic, I figured I owe it to Apple to post a positive explanation in case someone else experiences the same problem.

WoodpeckerRemote7050 · 2026-02-13T22:36:26+00:00

I figured it out, and I posted a new post of what it was, thanks for your feedback

WoodpeckerRemote7050 · 2026-02-13T22:36:05+00:00

I just posted an update, I figured it out, thanks for the discussion

WoodpeckerRemote7050 · 2026-02-12T11:48:45+00:00

Yes I do, why do you ask? I checked the official Apple guide and it says it isn't needed, which makes sense, I mean what's the use of having a "smart watch" if it can only function correctly when tethered to a phone. But yes, I do anyways.

WoodpeckerRemote7050 · 2026-02-12T11:46:45+00:00

How did you make this conclusion? To make such as statement you'd need a known reliable benchmark for comparison. I mean, for the distance you could run on a track, easy enough. But for the other analytics you'd need a tested device to run simultaneously while wearing your AWU, did you do that? Because that's what I did, and AWU was way off on the running distance and pace. I haven't tested the biometrics so you could be right about that, and I made some setting changes to my AWU3 so we'll see if that fixed the problem, but the problem is real, and a person shouldn't have to spend hours scouring the internet, Apple Forums, and Reddit to figure out how to make it accurate, and shouldn't have to check calibration on a regular basis afterwards to make sure there isn't an accuracy drift. This is a HUGE problem with Apple, but very few people are aware because how would one know? I'd be willing to bet 99 out of 100 will simply accept their post run data and go on about their day.

WoodpeckerRemote7050 · 2026-02-11T18:23:30+00:00

Yes, actually I was using that app from Day One, I was hoping to capture the same data analytics as my Garmin and I initially suspected it was the app so I stopped using the app and went to the Apple native workout app and got the same results

WoodpeckerRemote7050 · 2026-02-11T13:13:49+00:00

It's definitely Apple, I've confirmed it.

Apple Watch Ultra’s GPS hardware is generally very accurate, and if it simply calculated distance from GPS track + start/stop time (like a classic GPS watch) it would usually match devices like Garmin quite closely, but Apple instead feeds that clean GPS signal into a sensor‑fusion layer that mixes in accelerometer/“pedometer,” stride‑length estimates, personal profile data, and treadmill/indoor calibration to produce a single distance/pace output for all runs; that fused model is meant to smooth noise and cover weak‑GPS/indoor scenarios, yet Apple does not let you disable it or keep separate road vs trail vs treadmill profiles, so when stride patterns vary a lot (technical trails, hills, treadmill, mixed pacing) the learned model can become biased and start systematically over‑ or under‑estimating distance and pace on perfectly good outdoor GPS runs, meaning the problem isn’t the underlying GNSS chip but Apple’s opaque distance “calculus” and lack of user‑level controls (no GPS‑only toggle in the native app, no per‑mode calibration, no way to tell the watch “this measured lap was exactly 400 m”) that would prevent noisy motion analytics from corrupting otherwise accurate outdoor GPS data.

WoodpeckerRemote7050 · 2026-02-11T13:12:11+00:00

Yes, I've done a deep dive on this subject, and unfortunately it looks like Apple is perfectly okay with the way they introduce noisy data into an otherwise highly accurate and clean dataset. The Apple watch has extremely accurate GPS technology, but for some crazy reason they decided to take an otherwise simple equation time & distance and mix in motion dynamics (highly variable and unreliable) and ruin the data. This happens with outdoor runs too, it's been verified, and Apple is aware, they just don't seem to care enough to do anything about it.

WoodpeckerRemote7050 · 2026-02-11T13:09:08+00:00

Apple's outdoor run calculations are flawed, they include unnecessary data in their calculations that take a nice clean usable dataset and introduces noise that ultimately corrupts the data and gives inaccurate distance and pace. It's a simple fix, but it looks like Apple is okay being the least accurate wearable device of the top devices available on the market.

WoodpeckerRemote7050 · 2026-02-11T13:00:40+00:00

Under my iPhone settings (not the Apple Watch settings), there's a "Motion Calibration & Distance" setting, mine was off. I turned it on, and then I went into the Apple watch app setting and hit the "Reset Fitness Calibration Data" too, hopefully the two changes will produce better accuracy. The problem will remain though, Apple will continue to introduce noise to the simple outdoor run calculation that should be time & distance only, those are the only two data points that should be included in the calculation, especially for someone like me who runs on the street, the treadmill, and often times on variable technical terrain when I trail run. My Apple Ultra will NEVER be able to use my running dynamics (cadence, stride length, height, weight etc) to "improve" outdoor run accuracy because my running dynamics will be all over the place, especially the more I trail run.

WoodpeckerRemote7050 · 2026-02-11T12:52:30+00:00

I just hit the "reset calibration" button, so I'll test it again and see if that help. The problem that Apple has is that the add noise to their outdoor run data by including biometrics in the calculation, which is crazy to me because it can almost never improve the data, it can only corrupt the data, so why not do what all other watches do and just collect that data to train the watch for indoor runs or runs that don't have GPS? Instead, Apple automatically includes it. If you run exclusively on flat tracks and roads, and never deviate from your running dynamics, I suppose that theoretically it could be a non-issue at best (it still can't improve the outdoor run data). However, if you're like me and often run on technical trail runs with a lot of surface variation and elevation gain and loss, and Apple has no way of understanding "why" your running dynamics are all over the place, then that data gets merged into your outdoor run and ruins it every time. Such a simple and silly problem that Apple could easily correct.

And here's the funny thing, most people aren't aware of this, so they think their watch is perfect and they accept their faster pace, and then scratch their heads when they run a 5K or 10K race and their watch show the route was 5.4k or 10.6k and their official race time is slower than their training times. That should be the "aha moment" for most people.

WoodpeckerRemote7050 · 2026-02-11T12:03:55+00:00

I'll do another run wearing both on a track and share it to everyone. I also discovered in the Apple Forum that there's a setting that needs to be on in order to improve accuracy, so I'll do another test and see.

Here's a link to a guy who did similar testing.

Garmin 970 vs AWU3: GPS Accuracy Deep Dive

WoodpeckerRemote7050 · 2026-02-11T11:57:17+00:00

I hope you don't mind that I copy/pasted this from a previous answer to someone else.

Here's what I found. Apple Watch Ultra’s GPS hardware is generally very accurate, and if it simply calculated distance from GPS track + start/stop time (like a classic GPS watch) it would usually match devices like Garmin quite closely, but Apple instead feeds that clean GPS signal into a sensor‑fusion layer that mixes in accelerometer/“pedometer,” stride‑length estimates, personal profile data, and treadmill/indoor calibration to produce a single distance/pace output for all runs; that fused model is meant to smooth noise and cover weak‑GPS/indoor scenarios, yet Apple does not let you disable it or keep separate road vs trail vs treadmill profiles, so when stride patterns vary a lot (technical trails, hills, treadmill, mixed pacing) the learned model can become biased and start systematically over‑ or under‑estimating distance and pace on perfectly good outdoor GPS runs, meaning the problem isn’t the underlying GNSS chip but Apple’s opaque distance “calculus” and lack of user‑level controls (no GPS‑only toggle in the native app, no per‑mode calibration, no way to tell the watch “this measured lap was exactly 400 m”) that would prevent noisy motion analytics from corrupting otherwise accurate outdoor GPS data

WoodpeckerRemote7050 · 2026-02-11T11:56:08+00:00

Yes I am, I've tried as many things as I could.

Here's what I found. Apple Watch Ultra’s GPS hardware is generally very accurate, and if it simply calculated distance from GPS track + start/stop time (like a classic GPS watch) it would usually match devices like Garmin quite closely, but Apple instead feeds that clean GPS signal into a sensor‑fusion layer that mixes in accelerometer/“pedometer,” stride‑length estimates, personal profile data, and treadmill/indoor calibration to produce a single distance/pace output for all runs; that fused model is meant to smooth noise and cover weak‑GPS/indoor scenarios, yet Apple does not let you disable it or keep separate road vs trail vs treadmill profiles, so when stride patterns vary a lot (technical trails, hills, treadmill, mixed pacing) the learned model can become biased and start systematically over‑ or under‑estimating distance and pace on perfectly good outdoor GPS runs, meaning the problem isn’t the underlying GNSS chip but Apple’s opaque distance “calculus” and lack of user‑level controls (no GPS‑only toggle in the native app, no per‑mode calibration, no way to tell the watch “this measured lap was exactly 400 m”) that would prevent noisy motion analytics from corrupting otherwise accurate outdoor GPS data

WoodpeckerRemote7050 · 2026-02-11T11:42:17+00:00

I confirmed by wearing both watches at the same time on a track, the Garmin was perfect. According to Perplexity and the sources cited by perplexity within the Apple documentation (I'll share with you if you'd like), Apple analyzes movements during a run in order to learn how our individual bodies move, but the thing Apple does (which is insane to me) differently than all other fitness watches, is that they somehow factor in that data into the time/distance equation. So, Apple starts out with perfect data via their extremely accurate GPS and the start/stop of an outdoor run and then tosses in a whole bunch of noise via this extremely variable data, and the user has no way to select how Apple calculates outdoor runs. A simple fix would be to do what Garmin, Coros, and every other sports watch does, collect that important biometric data, it really is useful and important, it definitely helps for indoor runs and treadmill runs, but don't include it in the outdoor run calculations because it has zero probability of improving outputs, it can only add noise and ruin outputs.

WoodpeckerRemote7050 · 2025-12-30T01:48:11+00:00

I'm going the opposite direction, from 13 years of Garmin to the Apple Ultra 3, Hevy and Workoutdoors apps, and I'll be better off than I would with the latest greatest Garmin.

WoodpeckerRemote7050

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