Peloton has announced that it's making a change to how its services hook in to Apple Watch data, although it's not one that will necessarily alarm everyone.
Starting 27 February, it will move Apple Watch users over from GymKit to its own Peloton One-Tap tracking.
Gymkit was effectively Apple's first serious tilt at gym metrics, letting its Apple Watch models exchange data in real time with equipment, so it's no surprise that a connected service like Peloton was on board with it.
But by ditching it, Peloton is likely saving a bunch of money that it would have to pay Apple. It has also been passing on at least some of that price to customers in the last few years - GymKit integration has meant an additional monthly fee.
This presumably means the end of that monthly payment, although this doesn't mean everyone's left happy – particularly those who own or are paying off a Peloton Bike+, which for a while was sold with GymKit as a particular USP.
A Reddit thread on the situation is pretty much full of annoyed and disillusioned Peloton users who feel this hasn't been handled very cleanly or transparently.
Peloton launched a new Apple Watch integration in 2022, something that had been long-awaited by many users, and hasn't actually been directing people toward GymKit for some time.
This integration lets your Apple Watch detect the start of a workout on your Peloton equipment and prompt you to tap to start tracking, so in theory it should work great for most people.
Still, there are some complains of glitchy tracking using Peloton's app, and an experience that falls below the bar set by the GymKit integration, which is able to lean on Apple's own tracking systems rather than a simpler heart rate system.
In theory though, you should get all the same metrics and tracking using either system, so no one will be short-changed in terms of data. However, it might be a little harder to find all of that data, since some of it will now reside in the Peloton app rather than being automatically shared to Health.
