Correction re Fitbit Air: Apple still alone in pricing wearable AI interpretation at zero

In an earlier Signal, I argued that Google joined Apple in pricing AI health interpretation at zero with the $99 Fitbit Air. I was wrong.

Apple's Health app genuinely prices interpretation at zero — no subscription required, ever. The Fitbit Air's AI interpretation layer, Google Health Coach, requires Google Health Premium at $9.99 a month. After the included three-month trial, the five-year cost of Fitbit Air plus AI interpretation is approximately $668 — not $99.

[Note: if you pay for Gemini, you get the health AI included. Trying to find out if that’s the $7.99 a month Gemini tier, which would be slightly cheaper than the $9.99 per month, but still way more than Apple.]

The corrected chart is below, with Apple a full 40% less for five years than the new "inexpensive" Fitbit Air.

Apple's model remains the outlier: a one-time hardware purchase that includes AI interpretation of your biometric data at no ongoing cost. Every other player in this space — Google, Oura, Whoop — charges a subscription for the interpretation layer. The monitoring is cheap; the meaning costs extra.

That distinction is exactly what the Interpretation Migration is about. Apple eliminated the recurring cost of interpretation. Google didn't.