At the most essential level, a running app should provide a reliable way to log your workouts: when, where, how fast and how far you run. Fancy features are all very well and good, but let’s be honest — if an app doesn’t get the basics right, it sucks.

Nike has been busy adding new bells and whistles to its Nike+ Run Club app recently. Which is great if you want stuff like photo sharing and news feeds. But all I want is to log my runs, and thanks to my Apple Watch Nike+, that critical function has become pretty unreliable.

If your New Year’s resolution is to get in shape in 2017, but you spend all your waking hours in front of your MacBook, we’ve got the answer: our new CultFit Home Workout.

All you need is your iPhone, plus your Apple Watch if you have one, and some everyday objects you’ll find around your home or office. No gym membership required. It’s a great way to get started on your fitness journey, and it only takes 10 minutes a day.

If you got started on your 2017 New Year’s resolution last week with our CultFit Home Workout, we’re here to help you keep up the good work with Week 2. (If you missed it, it’s still not to late to start with Week 1).

All you need is your iPhone, plus your Apple Watch if you have one, and some everyday objects you’ll find around your home or office. No gym membership required. It’s a great way to get started with your fitness journey, and it only takes 10 minutes a day.

With New Year’s Eve a distant memory, your resolutions for 2017 should now be well underway. To help keep up your good work, here’s Week 3 of our CultFit Home Workout. (If you missed it, it’s still not to late to start with Week 1).

All you need is your iPhone, plus your Apple Watch if you have one, and some everyday objects you’ll find around your home or office. No gym membership is required. It’s a great way to get started with your fitness journey — and it only takes 10 minutes a day.

It’s the fourth and final week of our CultFit Home Workout. Congratulations if you have made it this far. (If you missed it, it’s still not to late to start with Week 1).

For this easy home workout, all you need is your iPhone and some everyday objects you’ll find around your home or office (plus your Apple Watch if you have one). No gym membership is required. It’s a great way to get started with your fitness journey — and it only takes 10 minutes a day.

2016 has been a tough year for fitness trackers, with scientists questioning their effectiveness and headlines boldly proclaiming that “fitness trackers don’t work.”

And yet, sales of fitness trackers are healthier than ever, while struggling smartwatch makers are desperately trying to reposition their gadgets to muscle into the fitness market. So what is going on? If fitness trackers really don’t work, why are consumers still buying them?

The writing has been on the wall for smartwatches ever since Cupertino chose to focus on sports and fitness features for Apple Watch Series 2. Smartwatch sales are plummeting, and fitness seems to be the only profitable area remaining in the wearables sector.

More evidence of this trend emerged this week, with smartwatch trailblazer Pebble reportedly being acquired by fitness wearables specialist Fitbit. We might very well be witnessing the demise of the smartwatch as we know it.

So how did we get here? Is Apple Watch really only fit for fitness, or could it still one day fulfill its destiny and become a true wrist-based computing platform?

With the launch of a GPS watch, and a renewed Nike partnership, Apple is getting serious about targeting runners. So is Apple Watch Series 2 the perfect running partner that Cupertino promises?

As an avid runner myself, I was keen to find out. Over the past couple of months, I’ve been training for the TCS New York City Marathon, and I took my Apple Watch Series 2 with me every step of the way — right up to the finish line in Central Park last week. Here’s how it measured up.

I work on an iPhone app called Reps & Sets as a hobby project in my spare time. This week, my partner and I came to the conclusion that there is no future for our app as a paid download, so we have reluctantly decided to make it free.

This was an incredibly tough call, because we have invested literally thousands of hours in developing our app over the years. Giving all that hard work away for free is heartbreaking. But we didn’t feel we had much choice.

The Workout app in Apple Watch Series 2 includes two new swimming options to show off its waterproofing. This is a key differentiator over the cheaper Series 1 model, and yet very few reviewers actually took their test units for a swim. One even claimed that all the pools and beaches in New York were closed, so they couldn’t test this feature.

So I decided to take the plunge with Series 2 and find out for myself if it sinks or swims.

Over the past two weeks, I’ve tested my Apple Watch in a variety of swimming conditions, including various public pools — and even the Mediterranean sea.