Personally, I’m hoping that the new watch will focus on fitness, so I’ve created a mockup concept to show what I’d like to see in the next generation of Apple Watch. I call it the Apple Watch GPS, Nike edition.
With the watch now reinvented, a pair of avid runners believe it’s time to reinvent the watch band.
They have created a band that moves the face of a smartwatch to the spot on the hand just below where the thumb and forefinger meet. The result for runners, cyclists or anyone using the Apple Watch’s health tracking features is the face of the watch remains in the line of site.
Thanks to its arrival at major retailers like Target and Best Buy, the Apple Watch is going (more) mainstream — and Apple wants potential customers to know exactly what they’ll be able to do with their new wearable devices.
In six cool new ads, Apple shows off nifty Watch features like Apple Pay, Siri, Maps, voice messaging, fitness tracking, and more.
With Autumn rapidly approaching, marathon season is almost upon us. So if you’re planning on running a race, now’s the time to ramp up your training.
Whether you are doing a full marathon, a half-marathon or a 10K race, here are my top 10 tips for using your Apple Watch to achieve a new personal best.
If you compare the Apple Watch to dedicated fitness tracking devices, it comes up short, and the forthcoming watchOS 2 will do little to address these limitations. Instead, with this update Apple is focusing on helping improve third-party fitness apps.
That’s because Apple sees its wearable as the main component of a fitness platform, with the Activity app as hub. While the built-in Workout app is mostly for beginners, third-party apps will provide the missing features for hardcore users.
Jay Blahnik has been one of Apple’s key hires in getting the Apple Watch and now in one of his first extensive interviews since joining the company, Apple’s fitness guru has revealed how his teams of experts tried to differentiate the Apple Watch in the hugely competitive new wearables market.
When it came down to making Apple Watch, it wasn’t just about making something that looks good that also tracks your steps and calories. Blahnik tells Outside that Apple’s goal was to silence the noise by ignoring the fitness trends and focusing in on the three things that mattered the most.
Here are seven key things we learned from the interview:
As a fitness tracker, Apple Watch is currently little more than a fancy pedometer. It only tracks distance and calories — the quantity, not the quality, of your movement. That’s a problem because fitness is about more than burning calories.
However, an interesting patent from Apple — plus a new technology claimed to be “Siri for understanding human movement” — suggests that Apple Watch could soon be adding weightlifting to its repertoire. Which would be good news for gym-goers and CrossFitters everywhere.
Using a running app to log your workouts is a great way to track your progress and stay motivated. But have you considered who actually owns the workout data you are logging?
If you ever decide to switch apps, you might be in for a surprise. While some services, like Strava, make it easy to transfer your data, with others it can be difficult or even impossible.
The Activity app on your Apple Watch suggests new “Move goals” each week, based on how many calories you burned the previous week. To test how this works in practice, I accepted every new goal my Watch suggested during the past 10 weeks.
The Move goals became progressively more challenging as the test went on. They nearly doubled, from 950 to 1,840 calories, and I could no longer keep up. I realized that Apple is following the Peter Principle, and that’s why I was always destined to fail.
When you run with Apple Watch, swiping to the right in the Workout app reveals your heart rate. Does the device display this data just for curiosity value, or can Apple Watch heart rate information actually improve your running?
Apple continued its marketing blitz for the Apple Watch today with four new TV ads that highlight how useful the new wearable is for fitness freaks as well as travel junkies.
Two of the clever new ads titled ‘Beijing’ and ‘Berlin’ show two sets of friends using Apple Watch and its many apps to explore the city, talk to locals in a different language, and communicate on the fly. The other two ads feature number fitness and goal setting apps, as well as how the watch brings people closer together.
If you bought an Apple Watch hoping it would help you get fit, but you haven’t been on your first run yet, maybe you need of a little more encouragement. So here’s some advice from a reformed couch potato.
The first workout is the hardest. It gets progressively easier and more rewarding from there. You just need to know how to get started.
I saw my six pack for the first time at the age of 40. Prior to that, my abs had been hidden behind a thick layer of fat that I’d built up over years of living a sedentary geek lifestyle. The only exercise I got was racing to be first in line at the Apple Store for a product launch.
Then one day, a doctor told me I had cancer and my whole world changed. There’s nothing like a brush with death to make you take your health more seriously. Suddenly, I wanted to get fit, but true to my geek heritage, I would do it using my iPhone. Abs? There must be an app for that.
Apple Watch could become one of the most important devices you can shackle yourself to, so to amp up the Apple faithful into more heatlh-focused nerds, Apple has sent fitness guru Jay Blahnik on a special events tour in Australia, China and Japan.
Blahnik is touring the areas to talking to some of the biggest personal trainers about the intersection between fitness and technology. At the Apple Store in Sydney, Australian personal trainer Michelle Bridges sat down for an interview with Blahnik to talk about some of things she’s learned from filming the Australian version of The Biggest Loser.
After a brush with cancer prompted me to take my health more seriously, I began using run trackers to start my journey from dad bod to six pack.
At first, running was the only exercise I did. It helped me lose my love handles, but I ended up looking too skinny. I decided it was time to put on some muscle. While Apple Watch and other wearables are great for running, they’re not much help when it comes to bulking up. As I soon discovered, some of the best fitness gadgets don’t fit on your wrist.
I’ve started cheating on my Apple Watch. It’s not that I don’t love it. It’s amazingly beautiful. It does stuff I didn’t even know I’d like. But when it comes to running wild in the outdoors, I’ve found a smartwatch that satisfies me more than Jony Ive’s wearable does.
For the past week I’ve been testing the Garmin Fenix 3, a top-of-the-line smartwatch from a company that’s made a name for itself by providing runners and outdoorsmen with some of the best wrist-worn fitness tech. I hate wearing the Fenix 3. While Apple Watch gently caresses my wrist, the Fenix 3 feels like I’ve strapped a tank to it. Yet it boasts features Apple Watch doesn’t have that I’m starting to think I can’t live without on runs and hikes.
I don’t plan to completely break up with the Apple Watch anytime soon, but I’m ditching it during my four-day trek through the Grand Canyon this weekend because there are still a couple things it needs to learn before it can truly be the best all-around fitness tracker.
I used to live the classic geek lifestyle, forever hunched over a MacBook, munching on comfort food. Until one day cancer forced me to take my health more seriously.
Now I run marathons and lift weights for fun. But the geek is still strong in me. From GPS watches to bioelectrical impedance analyzers, I’ve used pretty much every kind of fitness gadget.
Here’s the story of how fitness gear helped me get in shape for the first time in my life and swap my middle-aged dad bod for a six pack.
Many people say they want to get fit, but what does this actually mean? Fit for what?
The websites of leading fitness trackers, like Apple Watch, Fitbit, Microsoft Band and Jawbone Up don’t shed much light on this question. They talk a lot about the things that their devices measure, and even suggest changes in how we go about our day, but they rarely explain why this matters or what the actual benefits are.
Apple’s approach to fitness is all about cardio and burning calories.
That’s great if you’re into running or cycling. But for other kinds of exercise, like bodybuilding or yoga, it’s not relevant at all. And if you want to lose weight, cutting the calories you eat is usually more important than burning calories through exercise.
So why does Apple Watch focus exclusively on cardio, and what does this means for people using one to get in shape?
Apple’s new Activity and Fitness apps for Apple Watch might signal the end of the company’s long partnership with Nike.
So what does this mean for the millions of us who were introduced to Nike+ by Apple in 2006 and have been logging our runs this way ever since? Are we about to get caught in a Kramer vs. Kramer-style tug of love?
With Apple Watch about to become a reality, recent reports have questioned the benefits of fitness trackers, highlighting their inaccuracy and even claiming they make you fat.
So can wearables like Apple Watch really help you get fit? From my experience, what’s in your heart is more important than what’s on your wrist — but gadgets still have a role to play.
Hitting the gym with my girlfriend is an embarrassing affair. Not because she lifts almost as much as me, but because she’s so much better at it, with the all the right form and stuff.
“Move your knees farther apart. No, no, no. Push on the balls of your feet.”
It gets tedious as she makes sure I use the proper technique every single time, but her gripes and coaching are about to get replaced by a new wearable called Gymwatch. It tracks all your movements in the gym to make sure you’re getting the most out of your lifting workouts.
LAS VEGAS — Tons of wearables at International CES promise to help you get better at everything from brushing your teeth to perfecting your golf swing, but the last place we expected someone to toss a sensor was into our socks.
Sensoria’s Fitness Socks are aimed at transforming you into a better, injury-free runner by embedding three sensor pads into the bottom of the sock that track your stride, cadence and speed while you’re running. Coupled with the Sensoria mobile app, runners can now get direct feedback on their running style to correct things like heel striking to help them dominate their next 10k.
LAS VEGAS — If shedding some body fat is one of your New Year’s resolutions, you’re probably like me and looking for all the high-tech help you can get.
Activity trackers are great at logging exercise, but if you want to measure the actual progress your muscles are making, check out the Skulpt Aim — an iPod-size device that measures your body fat percentage.
The Skulpt Aim uses electroanalysis to not only determine how much excess fat you’re carrying around, but also your muscle quality. Just spritz a little water on the muscle you want to test, press the device firmly against your muscle, and within a few seconds, Aim spits out your score.
Apple relies heavily on caffeine. A recent company job listing advertised a role for an iCup technician, with the important task of providing “a fresh brew coffee to all Apple employees within their department.”
Jony Ive’s design team is especially obsessed with the black stuff: For years they kept a $3,000-plus Italian Grimac espresso machine, despite the fact that it leaked all the time. For a while in the 1990s, the design team was even mockingly dubbed “Espresso” for their unabashed love of caffeine culture.
Apple’s not alone in its coffee snob behavior. The rise of coffee shops — with seemingly hundreds of variations on the old coffee standards — have infiltrated every city across the United States: Americans spend $18 billion per year on specialty coffee alone.