A $100 scale isn't really that captive, especially if continuing to use it costs that much per year. There's no shortage of scales for tracking weight loss and the Apple health integration in my Withings is pretty useless from experience.

Yes, it's not as captivating as a $1,200 iPhone or $4,000 MacBook Pro. But we're talking about habits, and gradual changes and engagements.

However, once you're within a system, and used to interacting with it on a daily basis, you would lean towards their slight nudges and pushes, and over time subscribe to a $2/month service, or their "new solutions" etc.

Not to forget their continued advertisements in the app, and constant pushes. You're no longer a customer that purchases a product, but instead a captive audience that is constantly being engaged and steered towards one thing or another.

I'm a cheapskate so I'd probably make a shortcut so I can say "siri, log my weight at 165 lbs" and have that put my weight into apple health or a spreadsheet. It's a bit more friction, but if the data is useful that's what I'd do. If I find that I'm not using the shortcut, then the data probably isn't useful.

I have a $100 Garmin scale as well as a watch [1] and some similar devices and it seems like a good value to me but many people I know say "gee, that's expensive!"

I am really impressed with my Apple hardware but the services strike me as uniformly shoddy and dare I say a lifestyle brand that seduces people into treating garbage as if was gold. Ok, I like what they did with Foundation, I really do, but I think Apple Health, Apple Home and all of those things are for suckers and Withings probably thinks so too. For all I know Apple is charging them an arm and a leg to participate. On the other hand, Garmin Connect takes my active lifestyle seriously.

[1] with 100% satisfaction after discovering third party charging cables!