The most highly anticipated device coming out in the next year is clearly the Apple Watch. One of the greatest criticisms and tests of its success will be whether or not people are actually interested in going back to wearing a wristwatch. With the adoption of the mobile device in today’s society, to which a lot of credit is owed to Apple, people have given up watches and are instead relying on the accuracy of the clocks on their phones. Anticipating this resistance, Apple took great care in curating a number of features that would make sense in the previously unoccupied real estate below your palm. One of such features, Health Kit, could change the way you work out forever.
By now you’ve heard of the new iOS features added with the latest update, iOS 8, that allows you to track health goals and progress, as well as connect to other wearable devices. The first main health feature of note in this new operating system is the Apple Watch’s activity map.
The home base for fitness functionality, the activity map is a series of three rings that measures the amount of time you’ve spent moving, exercising, and standing in a day. Using the watch’s built-in heart rate sensor and accelerometer; the Move ring tells you how many calories you’ve burned; the Exercise ring tells you how many minutes of brisk activity you’ve done; and the Stand ring shows you how often you’ve stood up to take a break from sitting.
The goal is to complete the rings each day by sitting less, moving more, and doing some exercise, all of which are easily tracked via your synced iPad or iPhone. The Move ring sets a calorie goal for you daily, but allows you the ability to adjust it to your own pace. You’re able to close the Exercise ring by meeting the globally recommended 30 minutes of exercise a day; and the Stand ring sends you a reminder to get you standing for at least one minute in at least 12 different hours in the day.
If that wasn’t enough helpful fitness monitoring, Apple allows you to get more in depth with your workouts by providing a dedicated exercise app right on your wrist. No other device allows for the same accessibility to your workouts as well as other functions the way Apple Watch will aim to do.
That said, the Apple Watch will allow you to set goals, keep your best times, and most recent intervals readily available; it will remind you that you’re halfway toward your goal or almost there and then reward you with achievement badges once you meet your goal. These are precisely the things you’re paying someone to yell at you for, in a pretty, quiet and (depending on your trainer) non-distracting package, nestled closely on your wrist.
Although it may be a while before we get a realistic via of a widely adopted version of Google glass, the Apple Watch has the potential to make a huge leap into the market of dynamic wearables, capitalizing on the interests of a health conscious generation. The market of wearables has been doing a decent job on its own; but this level of detail, quality of design, and diversity in functionality are what sets Apple apart; and what is hopefully going to inevitably change the face of workout tech from now into the foreseeable future.