This week we find nearby friends with Yoke, count our steps with Pedometer++, add lights and shadows to our photos with Apollo, and enjoy Ulysses’ superior split view on the iPad.
Pedometer++, from developer Underscore David Smith, is everyone’s favorite step-counting iPhone app. It’s simple, it is accurate, and it just works. Now, in version 3.0, the four-year old app gets a neat new Today widget, and — brace yourself — Achievements.
Your iPhone isn’t slacking off when it sits in your pocket. No, it’s industriously counting your every step, ready to tell you the total so you can celebrate by buying cake if you hit your daily goal. The good news is that the iPhone pedometer comes built-in, and requires no third-party apps to do its stuff. The even better news is that there’s a free app — Pedometer++ — that makes it even better.
The Tao WellShell is probably unlike any iOS-connected fitness device you’ve ever encountered. It doesn’t simply track steps, or heart rate, or weight, or any of the other standard metrics tracked in dozens of other connected fitness devices. Instead, this little guy actually acts as the fitness device itself, rather than simply a tracker (though it does indeed also track heart rate, steps and sleep patterns).
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.
There have been many wearables and quantified-health applications over the past few years, but most have steered clear of proclaiming themselves medical devices. Some of the rumors about the iWatch (such as the fact that it will be able to listen to the sound blood makes as it flows through arteries, and use this to predict heart attacks) may sound a bit too good to be true. But the number of biosensor and biomedical engineers Apple has snapped up recently makes us think the iWatch could be a device that crosses over firmly into the "medical monitoring" category.
According to one recent report, a reason for the long delay before launch is that Apple is awaiting certification from the Food and Drug Administration to get the iWatch approved as medical equipment. Given Apple's recent announcement of the Health app for iOS 8 to collect and show data on calorie consumption, sleep activity, blood oxygen levels and more, plus the conspicuous absence of a health-tracking fitness band in Apple's last iPhone 5s ad, the idea that the iWatch will be geared toward health seems as close to a foregone conclusion as you get for a device that hasn't even been officially announced yet.
Apple dropped another heavy hint about its interest in the iWatch on Thursday, as it published a patent application relating to a smart watch-mounted pedometer.
The Wrist Pedometer Step Detection patent application is another example of Apple’s interest in health-tracking technology for future devices. The application describes a method for optimally detecting steps, which uses advanced algorithms to filter out much of the “noise” that might lead lead to it missing or inaccurately recording steps.
If you made a New Year’s Resolution to get in shape, it’s never too late to start, and this Cult of Mac Deals promotion offers a device that will definitely help ease you into a consistent exercise routine.
With a hi-res, color touchscreen and built-in apps, the Striiv Smart Pedometer is way more than a step counter. Striiv features a proprietary “activity motivation system”, designed by leading experts in game design and behavior change with one goal in mind: to get you to walk a lot more. And now you can get Striiv for the lowest price ever offered: just $59.99 courtesy of Cult of Mac Deals!
Want to check out the new M7 MoCoPro in your iPhone 5, but don’t have an app to do it? Then check out David Smith’s Pedometer++, a free app which grabs data from the low-power motion-tracking chip and shows it to you.
