Fitness app -- complexity vs versatility?

[BarracksSi]

Cool, thanks.

Now, to keep it in context -- would it be a good idea to roll all of FitnessBuilder into the stock Workout app? Or, again, is it just better to have it be separate, just like Strava or Pocket Yoga or all the other specialized apps?

 

[BlueMoon63]

Cool, thanks.

Now, to keep it in context -- would it be a good idea to roll all of FitnessBuilder into the stock Workout app? Or, again, is it just better to have it be separate, just like Strava or Pocket Yoga or all the other specialized apps?

Separate. I don't think Apple would want to get it individual apps like this as there isn't enough money. My guess though.

I'll whine about watch faces. Come on Apple, give us new watch faces and/or the ability to create watch face layouts like we can with the app layout. Charge me, take my money. Let me add my own watch faces with complications beyond what you got now. Millions of dollars in profits Apple could be taking in with custom watch faces. You can surely get past proprietary laws.

 

[BarracksSi]

You guys brought up social sharing --

I've finally got a family member, my sister, who received a Fitbit for Christmas. I reinstalled the Fitbit app and she invited me to do a "weekend warrior" challenge right away.

Wouldn't you know it, but we stayed home, and my phone stayed plugged into my laptop all day Saturday. Since Fitbit doesn't read data collected by the Watch, it thinks I walked zero steps all day.

It really was a lazy day, but I still got in a workout around lunchtime, and none of it was read by the Fitbit app.

I can't blame Apple for this. All the data is sitting there in Health and is accessible to other apps. It's just Fitbit who's choosing to ignore Apple Watch data, lest it give people a reason to stop buying their fitness bands. I can't really blame Fitbit, then, because they're looking out for their own interests, too.

Anyway, my foray into social fitness goading may or may not work. On one hand, it's kinda interesting how I can see if my sister is keeping up her pace. On the other hand, I don't want to be broadcasting my activity into the ether every single day. I'd rather default to private, "unsocial" fitness tracking.

Back to the versatility vs complexity question: If the Apple apps were to go social, how many different services will they need to tap into? Off the top of my head, I can think of Fitbit, MapMyFitness (with maybe four apps of its own), Strava, Wahoo, Garmin, and Nike+. There are more, too, aren't there? And each sharing service can move different types of data -- Strava and Garmin can give you course maps to follow, for example, while Fitbit just shares step counts.

I see the social side being more of a hassle than it's worth. I don't mind, then, that it's not part of the stock Activity app.

 

[zhenya]

Personally this speaks to how strong the incentive is right now to keep the fitness data open and transportable between services. Strava is king of the hill for more serious athletes because it can import data from virtually anywhere. Fitbit or Apple could end up being the same thing for more casual users, but they need to stop trying to quarantine their data in their systems. People move from one type of device to another, and the people they'd like to share data with and compete with are going to be using different devices. That's a fact of life. Any company that is insistent that their data remain quarantined is never going to gain traction beyond a narrow niche.

I think that the Fitness app is on the right track right now. As they are doing, it should cast a wide net to cover virtually any kind of activity and tracking, but strive for simplicity in the interface. It should be good enough to get someone started in a new activity, but simple enough that when they get serious about it they move to a 3rd party app that is more specialized. Apple just needs to make the tools available to keep that data in sync as people make that transition.

 

[BarracksSi]

What Strava "sells" is their software and online platform. They want to be everywhere.

Apple, Fitbit, Garmin, Mio, Suinto, and all the other gadget makers are selling gadgets, and don't want to lose gadget sales. If Fitbit allows data from other sources to be used in their "killer feature" -- social sharing -- they can lose sales.

 

[bulldoze]

The problem I have with all of these fitness apps or devices is that they are more often than not inaccurate and just add to the noise of information that we bombard ourselves with every day.

I can see uses for people who are at the coach to 5k stage as it's a little reminder to get off their butt but for the majority of runners and gym goers I would suggest they at best, increase complexity and at worst lead you astray.

One example:

In the military we used to help slower guys out to pass their 2.4k run by taking them out for runs and giving advice where necessary. One colleague eschewed all this help and relied on his new GPS/HRM device, couldn't stop talking about how it was helping his training and how he was faster than he had been for years. Well he failed the test as his GPS was about 5% out which translated to him being about 130 yards and 30 secs slower than what he thought.

I am firmly of the belief that the best measuring tools you can use for fitness is the stopwatch, the tape, the mirror and the scales, that is more than enough information for anyone to be getting on with.

 

[exxxviii]

Apple, Fitbit, Garmin, Mio, Suinto, and all the other gadget makers are selling gadgets, and don't want to lose gadget sales. If Fitbit allows data from other sources to be used in their "killer feature" -- social sharing -- they can lose sales.

Fitbit lets people freely use phones as step counters to freely access their software platform already. Theoretically, they are losing sales of their Zip product because of this. FB has a different strategy from the others.

 

[zhenya]

What Strava "sells" is their software and online platform. They want to be everywhere.

Apple, Fitbit, Garmin, Mio, Suinto, and all the other gadget makers are selling gadgets, and don't want to lose gadget sales. If Fitbit allows data from other sources to be used in their "killer feature" -- social sharing -- they can lose sales.

But if those device sellers are too jealous of their data, they will ultimately lose hardware sales too. In the past few years I have used a Nike watch, a Garmin, and now an Apple watch. They all have their own platforms for managing and sharing that data, but they are each limited to their specific product. Well guess what, I don't want to be tied in the long term to one manufacturer and if I want to share my data with other people I can't be limited to a sharing platform that is hardware-specific.

Despite some of the earlier comments here, outside of Fitbit's more expensive watches, I don't see the far more common Fitbit step trackers as competing with the AW at all. A $79 device is an impulse purchase. A $400 watch with a steep learning curve is not. Without a Fitbit app on the AW, Fitbit risks losing a customer who has used a Fitbit for years but gets an AW or other brand smart watch. Wouldn't they rather keep them in their ecosystem by continuing to allow them to update their Fitbit data and hopefully sell them additional software services or eventually another Fitbit device? Keeping your customers penned in with restrictive data policies works on a device like a phone or computer because those are complex devices. A fitness tracker or even a smart watch is not. They are accessories. People are going to move from brand to brand. But they don't want to lose historical data every time they do.

Garmin recognizes this and makes it easy to export their data to Strava already. But as I said, Strava is a different platform. It's for serious athletes. What's needed is a Strava-like clearinghouse for all the rest of your health data. And if Apple and Fitbit keep their health platforms closed, they will never take the marketshare that is required to become the dominant player.

 

[BarracksSi]

Fitbit lets people freely use phones as step counters to freely access their software platform already. Theoretically, they are losing sales of their Zip product because of this. FB has a different strategy from the others.

I suppose, but none of the steps I accrued on the AW counted on the FB app, either. This gave me a nearly 3,000-step difference on Sunday between the FB and Activity apps. If I wanted to fully take part in Fitbit's Challenges, I'd need to buy one of their devices, or carry my phone with me everywhere I go.

I could go for a run without the phone, and I'd need either the AW or a Fitbit to register the run. FB would much prefer me to use a Fitbit, of course.

 

[BarracksSi]

(see what I mean about the social sharing being unnecessarily complicated? I started this thread just talking about Apple's Workout and Activity apps, and the more difficult discussion has been about sharing the data.)

 

[zhenya]

The sharing isn't complicated unless you are trying to use a system that is trying to lock you in. With Nike+ the only person I ever knew on it was my wife. With Garmin, I know tons of other Garmin users, but none of them actually use the social aspect of that platform because it's closed to Garmin hardware only. However everyone is on Strava because they take data from anywhere. There is no barrier. You put your data there and it starts to suggest friends for you.

Social networks only work when they operate on a huge scale. Vendor lock-in run directly counter to that goal.

 

[BarracksSi]

Social networks only work when they operate on a huge scale. Vendor lock-in run directly counter to that goal.

Right, and that's why Strava is reaching as wide as it can. Their product is their social network; that's how they make their money.

Edit: Now that I've said the above -- why doesn't Strava read Workout data from Health? Other apps do -- is it a file format thing?

 

[exxxviii]

Fitbits user base is bigger than everyone else combined. (This is totally a guess, but I bet it's true.)

 

[Night Spring]

Edit: Oh yeah, allow me to use Siri to start my Workout when I an NOT carrying my phone. This would be very nice for the cold mornings when I sometimes wear double gloves at the start of my run. Hey Siri should be able to do stuff that is local to the Watch!

Speech recognition requires a complex database, and lots of processing power, which I don't think will fit on a watch any time soon. The only way Hey Siri is coming to the watch is if the watch gets its own cellular connection.

 

[zhenya]

Going through the Health app more thoroughly today and realized that my Garmin has been reporting mileage/steps directly to the Health app all along (although with a serious bug where many times the data is sent multiple times per day). If it were working more reliably that's exactly the behavior that I want. All of my data from any of my sources can go to whatever service I want. I'll have to go for a run with just my Garmin and see if it updates the activity rings on the AW for the rest of the day...

 

[nicho]

Speech recognition requires a complex database, and lots of processing power, which I don't think will fit on a watch any time soon. The only way Hey Siri is coming to the watch is if the watch gets its own cellular connection.

iphone os 3 managed voice control (without data). even with more complex instruction sets, surely siri could be trained and only the relevant instructions stored on the watch locally. the apple watch has plenty of storage.

 

[zhenya]

iphone os 3 managed voice control (without data). even with more complex instruction sets, surely siri could be trained and only the relevant instructions stored on the watch locally. the apple watch has plenty of storage.

The problem with that is that you'd then have one way of interacting with Siri when the watch was online, and a different way of interacting with her offline. And it's not always crystal clear to the average user which state the watch is at any given moment. Apple would never go for something so confusing.

 

[nicho]

The problem with that is that you'd then have one way of interacting with Siri when the watch was online, and a different way of interacting with her offline. And it's not always crystal clear to the average user which state the watch is at any given moment. Apple would never go for something so confusing.

not really. i wouldn't change how i ask siri to start a workout etc day to day so how would it be different?

perhaps instead of doing the equivalent of beachballing and finally saying neither the apple watch nor iphone can connect to siri, a screen could show saying "apple watch cannot connect to siri, but you can still use certain commands" or something more succinct. and then siri is used in offline mode until she connects to the internet again.

 

[Night Spring]

not really. i wouldn't change how i ask siri to start a workout etc day to day so how would it be different?

But the way you normally start a workout could be different from the command stored on the watch. That would force you to say things differently when the watch is offline.

That is, it's not like Siri would remember your normal commands and save them to the watch. The watch would come with a set of commands that someone at Apple picks put ahead of time/

 

[nicho]

But the way you normally start a workout could be different from the command stored on the watch. That would force you to say things differently when the watch is offline.

That is, it's not like Siri would remember your normal commands and save them to the watch. The watch would come with a set of commands that someone at Apple picks put ahead of time/

why couldn't siri learn your normal commands and have them saved to the watch, in addition to those picked out in advance?

you don't choose your stride length, to calibrate the watch you go for a run with iphone and it works it out. why couldn't you use siri to do something, it process the command and save it for future use?

 

[Night Spring]

why couldn't siri learn your normal commands and have them saved to the watch, in addition to those picked out in advance?

you don't choose your stride length, to calibrate the watch you go for a run with iphone and it works it out. why couldn't you use siri to do something, it process the command and save it for future use?

Good question. I wish Apple would do that, but they just haven't written Siri that way, I'm not sure why.

For instance, I find it difficult to say "Hey Siri," and wish I could change it to something else, but it doesn't let me. It'd be fine if it would just learn to recognize how I say it (comes out more like hey Cindy), but it doesn't.

 

[nicho]

Good question. I wish Apple would do that, but they just haven't written Siri that way, I'm not sure why.

For instance, I find it difficult to say "Hey Siri," and wish I could change it to something else, but it doesn't let me. It'd be fine if it would just learn to recognize how I say it (comes out more like hey Cindy), but it doesn't.

it does exactly that with iphone 6S and the always on siri, doesn't it?

 

[zhenya]

why couldn't siri learn your normal commands and have them saved to the watch, in addition to those picked out in advance?

you don't choose your stride length, to calibrate the watch you go for a run with iphone and it works it out. why couldn't you use siri to do something, it process the command and save it for future use?

Siri is intended to understand natural conversational language. Having to use specific commands is counter to that purpose.

 

[Night Spring]

it does exactly that with iphone 6S and the always on siri, doesn't it?

Nope. I tried to setup the alway on Siri, and I couldn't, because it makes me say Hey Siri, and then it says, Sorry I didn't get that, and I've tried saying Hey Siri until my throat was hoarse and it never worked.

 

[zhenya]

Going through the Health app more thoroughly today and realized that my Garmin has been reporting mileage/steps directly to the Health app all along (although with a serious bug where many times the data is sent multiple times per day). If it were working more reliably that's exactly the behavior that I want. All of my data from any of my sources can go to whatever service I want. I'll have to go for a run with just my Garmin and see if it updates the activity rings on the AW for the rest of the day...

Ran with my Garmin today. Data syncs immediately with the Health app but the activity does not get represented in the Activity rings which is a bit of a bummer but appears to be by design. Running with the Garmin again it was apparent how much better a device that is for dedicated running than the AW. The AW is perfect for casual running or for the runner who always runs with their phone anyhow and wants easier access to it on the go.