Apple rarely gives tours of its facilities, but it showed ABC News the inner workings of its top secret health lab for the purpose of hyping the upcoming Apple Watch.
Located in an unassuming lot near its Cupertino headquarters on 1 Infinite Loop, Apple employees have been working out for years in secret to collect valuable health and fitness data.
ABC’s Rebecca Jarvis was the first non-Apple employee to see inside the facility, which she called “one of the most advanced fitness labs in the world.”
She spoke with Apple CFO Jeff Williams, who just announced ResearchKit onstage at Apple’s last media event.
ABC’s footage shows employees running on treadmills and doing yoga while wearing hi-tech gear worth “millions of dollars.”
Williams told Jarvis that Apple didn’t tell its employees why they were working out for nearly two years.
The masks are kind of creepy, right? Williams joked that it was like “a sci-fi episode of Breaking Bad.”
Jarvis also talked with Jay Blahnik, Apple’s director of fitness for health technology, who previously worked at Nike.
The Apple Watch has been tested in places like Alaska and Dubai, but Apple used climate chambers to simulate working out in all kinds of different conditions.
Williams believes Apple has already amassed one of the largest pieces of fitness data in the world, and they’re “just beginning”
You can watch the full video here.
Alex Heath is a journalist who works for Tech Insider. He’s the former co-host of The CultCast. He has been quoted by the likes of the BBC, KRON 4 News, and books like “ICONIC: A Photographic Tribute to Apple Innovation.” He lives in Lexington, Kentucky. If you want to pitch a story, share a tip, or just get in touch, additional contact information is available on his personal site. Follow him on Twitter.
