Some of the largest players in the fitness tracker market such as Garmin, Suunto, Samsung, and Coros are hardly "Silicon Valley" companies. Sure it's possible to train without a smart watch, but having one makes it much easier to follow a structured training program, measure your progress, and share data with coaches and friends.
Didn't people travel before the advent of the "wheel"?
I actually have the opposite complaint. I would like my doctor to have access to info from my Apple Watch. Certainly I trained before a smart watch but I didn't necessarily know how fast I was going, if my metrics (like v02 max) were improving, how its affecting my heart, etc. Why would I care if Tim Cook could theoretically look up my resting bpm?
> Why would I care if Tim Cook could theoretically look up my resting bpm?
Because a company can tie the timestamp of your BPM reading to your activity on your phone/desktop/what have you and judge your emotional response to whatever you're doing at the time. Psychotic as this may sound, it opens the door for a lot of particularly Orwellian mass surveillance under the guise of targeted ads. They wouldn't be knowing just what you do or buy, they'd know how you feel about it too.
Didn't people travel before the advent of the "wheel"?