A Look Inside Apple's 23,000 Square-Foot Fitness+ Studio

[darkpaw]

I've been using Fitness+ in the UK since launch. I bought a new treadmill in December to replace my 11 year old one. The new one has automatic incline, which is handy, as a lot of the Treadmill workouts have differing inclines throughout.

I see some saying everything is being done in California because that's where all the fit people are from. Not all the instructors are from California, or even American. Jamie Ray is from London in the UK, Sam is from Miami, Scott is from somewhere in the Deep South, etc.

Even though all my running workouts since December have been via a Fitness+ workout, some of them have been changed into "Open Goal" runs, so the info on the Burn Bar and which workout it was has been lost. This is something Apple has done, not me. I've given them feedback, as deleting relevant info without my permission is a bit lame. If that workout is no longer available, just make it so you can't start that one again; don't delete it.

 

[iBug2]

This is the best service offered by Apple so far. I love Fitness+.

 

[diamond3]

I don't know how much longer they are going to be cheaper in Utah than California. The whole Silicon Slopes thing is pushing home prices what up there and along with that costs for a lot of other items. A quick search showed home prices rising 16%/year in Slope areas. This is faster than the increase in many areas of California. I work with a company in the SLC area and am every time I go there I am shocked to see how fast the home prices are rising.

The same is becoming true with Austin, TX. Prices are increasing at approximately 19%/year there. A home on Lake Austin just sold for $39M.

Any place where large tech and media enterprises exist becomes expensive quickly.

Oh for sure. Prices keep going up in expanding markets like crazy. I saw a stat that the average sale price in Logan went from 188k in 2015 to $326k in 2020. It’s pretty crazy for a market that job compensation hasn’t followed that trend. I was looking at a job there so I started diving into it a bit.

The downside to California would be studio fees and union workers. COL is still cheaper outside of California and this was one example of it being possible to not rely on big cities to produce this stuff.

 

[Nicole1980]

It never ceases to amaze me how much time and money is spent to get us humans off our asses

It’s cool but I can’t help feel apple is wasting money here

 

[WaxedJacket]

Still waiting on Jazzercise with Tim.

 

[bradman83]

Agreed, I feel like I should be doing a series of workouts or perhaps I could favorite some and come back to them later for a repeat. It feels very chaotic right now.

You do have the ability to favorite workouts, there’s a “+Add” button that will add a workout to your My Workouts section at the very bottom. Problem is there’s little in the way of sorting so that section gets cluttered very quickly.

 

[RogueWarrior65]

Ugh. What MBA flunky proposed this? Clearly, Apple has gotten away from its nerd/geek roots.

 

[philosopherdog]

I think this one looks ripe for anti trust. They are using their own platform to promote and tightly tie in watch hardware etc and their price point is hurting a lot of other providers esp as it is free for now. Not a fan of Apple becoming so big that they are hurting many smaller businesses. This is also happening on the app front. They continue to build out apps that make it increasingly difficult for other businesses. Not a fan of this. I think American tech needs to be limited in size and influence to avoid the M$ phenomenon that stifled innovation for decades.

 

[jerryk]

Why the masks? Are they all sick?

Nope. And the masks help ensure they do not become sick, or worse make someone else sick.

 

[clcnyc]

Why the masks? Are they all sick?

Oh, not sure if you heard, but we’re still in a pandemic. They’re indoors. Around other people.

 

[macsareveryinteresting]

Once you see the Studio in Naked Eye, you will realize how big this studio is.

 

[0982786]

It’s cool but I can’t help feel apple is wasting money here

I know the point to these forums is to bitch and moan like Amacfa, but I really like Fitness+. It's replaced my gym membership.

 

[0982786]

Fine. But what the heck are the instructors wearing? Isn’t there a line of Apple Fitness+ workout clothing yet?

And why is it that when I’m typing “apple fitness” my iOS AI offers a capitalized “Apple” but doesn’t offer a capitalized “fitness” and add a “+” for me?

They're all wearing Nike. Tim's seat on the Nike board likely has something to do with that.

 

[jerryk]

Ugh. What MBA flunky proposed this? Clearly, Apple has gotten away from its nerd/geek roots.

It is a company that needs to make money for its shareholder. That means moving one from its roots of computers to areas like phones and tablets. And then from hardware to software and then to services, like Fitness. Other companies have had great success with growing beyond their roots. Look at Amazon. Most of their profits are from selling computer services and compute time via Amazon Web Services (AWS). Not selling and shipping products.

 

[canonical]

Really - if you have fat to work off, just find an old lady with a garden and help her out. Such a pointless waste of energy.

 

[ELman]

Peloton are not global yet. U.S., UK, Canada & Germany only, so I couldn’t care less about them. Fitness+ has only been out for a few months, so will overtake peloton in subscriptions by the end of the year IMO.

I remember when Spotify was not global. If Peloton goes global I expect the same results.

 

[ShortyMcStompy]

I’ve been using Fitness+ since launch day and I’m loving it! I only have a mat and a set of dumbbells and I can do loads of different workouts. This mornings 45 minutes yoga class was epic 🥰

 

[jerryk]

Oh for sure. Prices keep going up in expanding markets like crazy. I saw a stat that the average sale price in Logan went from 188k in 2015 to $326k in 2020. It’s pretty crazy for a market that job compensation hasn’t followed that trend. I was looking at a job there so I started diving into it a bit.

The downside to California would be studio fees and union workers. COL is still cheaper outside of California and this was one example of it being possible to not rely on big cities to produce this stuff.

Agreed. But the optimum part is "still cheaper". California used to be really cheap to live in also. Then it got popular like Utah and especially Silicon Slopes is now.

And California is relatively cheap to own a home once you can buy one. The killer cost, property taxes are largely fixed at 1.125% of the purchase price, not the current "market value", with only very small increments allowed. No annual reassessment based on the market. So that $188K home tax bill would still be close to the $2K it was in 2015 in 2020 or 2021, .... Hopefully, they can do something like this in Utah also, so people don't end up having to sell their homes because of rising property taxes. It can, and has, lead to people paying almost as much in property taxes as payments.

 

[Christian 5G]

I was expecting it to be filmed with iPhones for some reason 😂

 

[DekuBleep]

That’s very cool IMHO.

 

[DeepIn2U]

I would rather put that $10 toward an actual fitness facility. Not some half-ass do it at home fitness subscription app.

then pick a fitness facility - I did and it’s been closed since October last year where I live. ALL gyms are due to lock down.

curious if gyms are open where you live, I’m guessing not since you’re in this thread though right?

 

[amartinez1660]

I really like the Apple Watch integration, and the Apple Watch in general is a really, really compelling bit of tech that I rely heavily on (though I really wish it had longer battery life...). It, and my treadmill bought last year have been a solid investment of anything I've purchased the last decade. Fitness+ I tried for a month, and... gave up using it unfortunately. With time, I may go back, but there's just seemed to be too little content for me to offer a bit of variety with type of exercise I want, and without some of what I personally think are awful music tracks. Given many of the instructors mention the song about to play, an option to integrate a subset of genres I want from Apple Music likely won't happen any day soon. Until then, Get Up playlist of the treadmill for 5K a day.... just gotta try and push myself with 30 second or minute timings going all out.

5K+ a day crowd here 🙋‍♂️
With an Apple Watch SE recently gifted I also feel compelled by this piece of tech: exercising, unlocking/password-driven Mac things, card paying, sleep tracking, timers, heck even the media player controls while the phone stays in the pocket...
Issue is now closing the damn rings has become a sometimes stressful (but with a positive outcome) routine, but -15C outside and snow won’t stop me now. The blue one is the worst though, getting up at the last 5mins and it won’t count it sometimes.

 

[Gatto37]

Maybe yes, maybe no. It's a business venture, like any other. The proof won't be in the short run, since Apple doesn't do things for the short run.

But let's look at it this way. For those who decide to buy an Apple Watch because of this feature, every one of those Watch sales is a decent chunk of change for Apple. Add to that the monthly subscription revenue... I'm sure Apple's number-crunchers were able to make a compelling argument to invest in the studio and staffing costs.

But yes, even with a compelling series of Keynote presentations and financial analyses, they can be wrong. But for a product and service that is sold to a worldwide clientele, even a relatively "small" population of users can be big enough to float this particular boat. Within the overall universe of Apple products and services, this doesn't seem likely to be a major contributor to the Annual Report, but as long as it does add something positive to the bottom line it's likely to survive.

I mostly agree, but this is definetly not a worldwide service (yet anyway). It serves only a handfull of countries.

 

[sdz]

Something must be wired differently in their brains to exercise that much over a life long period in time.

 

[sdz]

5K+ a day crowd here 🙋‍♂️
With an Apple Watch SE recently gifted I also feel compelled by this piece of tech: exercising, unlocking/password-driven Mac things, card paying, sleep tracking, timers, heck even the media player controls while the phone stays in the pocket...
Issue is now closing the damn rings has become a sometimes stressful (but with a positive outcome) routine, but -15C outside and snow won’t stop me now. The blue one is the worst though, getting up at the last 5mins and it won’t count it sometimes.

5k Calories a day? Or 5k Steps? the later indicates pure laziness