Tim Cook has hinted that the Apple Watch will get even greater at monitoring your health and fitness. Speaking at Startup Fest Europe in Amsterdam today, the Apple CEO said the company’s wearable may one day tell you when it’s time for a checkup.
You no longer have to rely on third-party apps to track your fitness on a Pebble watch. Pebble is today rolling out a new update that adds Pebble Health, a new fitness and sleep tracking feature that wants to help you become fitter and healthier.
If you want to lose weight, your Apple Watch can help you sustain healthy habits, but it can’t actually monitor your progress. For that you need to step onto scales.
Any scale will measure your weight, but that is only part of the story. Whether you are dieting or bulking up, it is just as important to keep track of your body fat. The trouble is, this is notoriously hard to measure accurately. As I discovered when I bought a new Withings Smart Body Analyzer, if you think you already know your body fat percentage, you are probably way off.
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.
You can watch part of their interview below:
IBM has announced a new alliance with Apple (among other companies) to utilize its acclaimed Watson artificial intelligence system to provide personalized insights regarding health data.
For those who don’t remember, Watson was the IBM A.I. which famously defeated two former winners on the gameshow Jeopardy! in 2011 to receive the first place prize of $1 million.
By linking up with Watson, Apple not only solidifies its existing relationship with IBM, but also gains a very powerful ally in its quest to revolutionize the way we think about mobile health with the Apple Watch and iOS 8 Health app.
One of the big selling points of wearable devices is that they will be able to help us keep track of various fitness metrics.
However, a new report claims smartphones are just as good (if not slightly better) at tracking physical activity as the most popular wearables on the market.
LAS VEGAS — Football in America is under attack after the revelation that concussions cause serious brain damage rocked the NFL. Youth participation has plummeted in the last two years but the folks at Linx have a new solution that will help parents keep track of when their kids are getting pounded too hard on the field.
The Linx IAS sports monitor is a tiny Bluetooth sensor athletes can wear in a skull cap or headband to keep track of every impact on the field, no matter if they’re playing football, lacrosse, soccer, hockey or pretty much any other contact sport.
Apple’s HealthKit app for iOS 8 is great at capturing and storing personal health data from tons of sources, but according to a Reuters report, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission wants to know what it plans to do with all of it.
The FTC has reportedly met with from, seeking assurances that sensitive health data scooped up by the Apple Watch and other apps won’t be used without users’ permissions.
Like a person with a new gym membership, Apple’s been on a health kick all year.
First we had the announcement of HealthKit at WWDC, then a fitness-oriented iPhone 5s ad in June, followed by Apple’s entry into the fitness-tracking market with the Apple Watch unveiling, and now the App Store’s been updated with a new “Apps for Health” section.
This section continues Apple’s trend for using human curation in the App Store by highlighting 14 apps which take advantage of iOS 8’s Health app by bringing health and fitness data into one centralized apps for access by users.
In the business world, Apple entering your product category is a little bit like a tsunami crashing into a home aquarium. What had previously seemed like a nice, small and self-contained ecosystem suddenly runs the risk of being obliterated by a giant wave-maker.
When Tim Cook announced the Apple Watch at Apple’s recent media event, the crowd went wild. But exciting as it was for consumers, it represents a seismic shift for the currently $330 million wearable tech industry.
Devices that can serve up smartphone notifications, track fitness goals and even advise us on health matters have the potential to be huge — but they’re not yet. That’s about to change, according to Juniper Research, which forecasts that wearable devices like smartwatches could hit sales of $19 billion by 2018.
What happens to Apple’s marketplace rivals as this sea change takes place? Cult of Mac did some digging to find out how companies like Jawbone and Fitbit plan to survive Apple’s smartwatch revolution.
With both iOS 8 and the iPhone 6 family of devices finally out, developer Brian Mueller has released an upgrade for his excellent CARROT Fit app, adding “a shiny new update to go with your shiny new operating system.”
For those who don’t know, CARROT Fit is an hilarious take on the fitness app: a little bit like 2001: A Space Odyssey‘s H.A.L. meets Full Metal Jacket‘s memorable drill sergeant Gunnery Sergeant Hartman. Welcoming you with a message of “Greetings, tubby human,” CARROT Fit is a snappily sadistic AI that will threaten, inspire, ridicule and bribe you into getting in shape over the course of a 7-minute workout.
It’s a surprising amount of fun, and today’s update adds news punishment in the form of ads and “random squirrel attacks.” There’s also iPhone 6 optimization, iPad support, and Dropbox data sync thanks to Apple’s new privacy requirements.
A bug in HealthKit caused Apple to pull several fitness apps from its App Store Wednesday morning, just as the company was rolling out its long-awaited iOS 8 update.
Apple said the problem could keep apps compatible with HealthKit, a key component of iOS 8 that facilitates sharing of data among health and fitness apps and hardware, out of the store for weeks. “We’re working quickly to have the bug fixed in a software update and have HealthKit apps available by the end of the month,” Apple said in a statement to Cult of Mac.
Brian Mueller, developer of Carrot Fit, said Apple called and emailed him to say his fitness app had been removed from the App Store due to a last-minute problem with HealthKit. His app, and several others including My Fitness Pal and WebMD for iPhone, are currently unavailable for download.
“The rep couldn’t clarify what was wrong,” Mueller told Cult of Mac in an email, “though users of the app who had already downloaded the update were able to use the HealthKit features without any issue.”
Months of rumors suggested Apple’s wearable device would be a health-centric powerhouse capable of predicting heart attacks, analyzing sweat and other miraculous feats. But in reality, the Apple Watch seems more like a sexy, supercharged fitness tracker than a full-fledged medical device.
Still, this is an ambitious first-generation device — a crucial step forward for wearables that points the way toward the comprehensive health and fitness device the Apple Watch could become.
The Minnesota-based Mayo Clinic is set to be at Apple’s special media event this morning to help demonstrate the benefit of Apple’s Health app to medical professionals, according to the Star Tribune.
Mayo Clinic is one of the best-known names in U.S. healthcare and partnering with Apple will benefit both organizations: Apple with legitimacy for its new mobile health push, and Mayo Clinic in terms of using technology to better provide health and fitness tracking for patients.
As per the Star Tribune, Mayo Clinic’s role at Apple’s event will involve demonstrating how data can flow into the more sophisticated management system of a major health center.
Apple is nearly ready to become the go-to place for healthcare providers to get all your personal fitness data, and along with meeting with hospitals to talk about the benefits of HealthKit, Apple has been talking to the countries biggest health insurance providers about partnering with its health initiatives.
According to new reports, Apple has been meeting with major health providers to discuss its new HealthKit service, set to debut with iOS 8.
Apple has supposedly meet with healthcare officials at Mount Sinai, the Cleveland Clinic and Johns Hopkins, alongside Allscripts, which is a competitor to major electronic health records provider Epic Systems.
The talks concern how Apple wants to make the health data it plans to help collect (including blood pressure, pulse rate, weight, etc.) available to both consumers and health providers.
Apple hopes that physicians will be able to use this data (provided permission is granted) to monitor patients in between hospital visits, in order to make better decisions concerning diagnostics and treatment.
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.
But how much do we actually know about it?
With the announcement of its Health app (and associated API) for iOS 8, Apple is making no secret of its plans to enter the health and fitness-tracking market. Capitalizing on this hype, WebMD has just updated its flagship iOS app to target health and fitness enthusiasts in a new program called Healthy Target.
A brand new section of the popular healthcare app, Healthy Target helps you to keep in top form, and on top of your various health-related goals, by setting specific targets and then tracking your progress as you work toward them. To do this, the app lets users connect their favorite activity tracker, wireless scale, or glucometer to automatically track sleep, weight, and blood sugar levels.
With the release of iOS 8 just months away, there is plenty for users to look forward to. While fitness fanatics have had to rely on third-party apps, the upcoming version of iOS introduces a dedicated Health app. Today’s video brings an inside look at the new app and how you can anticipate using it later this year.
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Apple will be working closely with the Food and Drug Administration on future products related to the health industry, according to new information provided by the government.
Back in January, The New York Times reported that Apple had met with the FDA to discuss “mobile medical applications.” The talk was believed to center on the company’s rumored plans for health-tracking software in iOS 8 and maybe even the iWatch. HealthKit and the new Health app were announced at WWDC last week, and an iWatch announcement is expected in October.
Now more of the details from Apple’s meeting with the FDA have been disclosed. Apple said it may have a “moral obligation” to do more with health-related sensors on mobile devices.
In a blatant attempt to steal Apple’s thunder, Samsung has announced a conference to take place on May 28 — promising to kick start “a new conversation around health.”
Why is this stepping on Apple’s toes?
Because the very next week is Apple’s eagerly-anticipated Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) — where Apple is expected to introduce the first stages of its new health-tracking family of innovations, beginning with the Healthbook feature for iOS 8, and likely to later expand to include the iWatch.
Wahoo’s first heart-rate sensor was of the pedestrian ANT+ variety, and connected to the iPhone through a 30-pin ANT+ dongle. Around a year later, the Atlanta-based outfit introduced the first heart-rate sensor that connected to a smartphone through Bluetooth; specifically and only to the iPhone 4s, since that was the only phone at the time with Bluetooth 4.0 under the hood.
Wahoo upped the ante again in January at CES, when they revealed a radical departure from traditional heart-rate based fitness tracking: Their new highly sophisticated, three-model TICKR sensor squad, combined with an all-new app that turns conventional fitness-tracking on its head. Now the first of the TICKR trio, the TICKR Run, is hitting the street.
Whenever you find a better way to do things…shouldn’t you take it?
Well, The SimpleFitness Gadget Bundle is a health tracking solution designed to collect your weight, activity level and sleep information automatically. And Cult of Mac Deals has it for 35% off the regular price: only $129.99.
It’s time to take your diet from digital to delightfully simple.
ReFleX NutriCrystal is a Bluetooh enabled, glass-top kitchen scale to help you track calorie intake and reach your healthy eating goals. And Cult of Mac Deals has it right now during this limited time offer for 27% off – just $79.99.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2014 – For those with cardiovascular issues, keeping tabs on your blood pressure and heart-rate means spending extra time and money going to the doctor’s office for frequent check-ups. To cut down on the trips to the doctor, Qardio is releasing the QardioArm – a wearable blood pressure band that is completely integrated with iOS.
