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Physical fitness

Three 'Physical fitness' stories March 2014 - May 2015
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Update to Apple Watch OS 1.0.1 leading to less frequent heart rate monitoring

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy May 22 2015 - 5:18 am PT
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heartrate

Apple’s update to Watch OS 1.0.1 was intended to improve the performance of several fitness-related functions, but also appears to have introduced a bug. Instead of the Apple Watch recording your heart rate every ten minutes, many users – including myself – are seeing large gaps in the data.

My readings for yesterday afternoon and evening, shown above, contain four gaps of more than an hour. Two of these gaps span times when I was cycling, when the data would have been most relevant. Users in an Apple Support Communities thread (via EverythingCafe) are reporting the same thing … 
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Report corroborates Apple planning to announce new wearable product in October

Avatar for Benjamin Mayo Jun 6 2014 - 10:11 am PT
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One of many iWatch concepts.

One of many iWatch concepts.

Re/code’s John Paczkowski is reporting that Apple is set to announce its new wearable product in October, according to sources familiar with Apple’s plans. The site says that the watch will take full advantage of HealthKit and Health, Apple’s fitness and health management app introduced in iOS 8.


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iWatch likely contains pedometer; Jawbone designer imagines ‘wearable kit of sensors’

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Mar 13 2014 - 8:17 am PT
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pedometer

With Apple’s iWatch looking set to have a major health and fitness angle, and likely to be bristling with sensors, it seems likely that a pedometer will be one of them. Patently Apple reports on an Apple patent designed to allow steps to be accurately tracked using a wrist-mounted device. Or, in patentspeak:

In some implementations, optimizations for detecting steps when a pedometer is worn at a user’s wrist are described. In some implementations, a threshold crossing step detection method can be enhanced for wrist locations by counting the number of positive peaks between comparison threshold crossings, adjusting a minimum peak-to-peak threshold for qualifying threshold crossings, and inferring a second step based on the amount of time between threshold crossings. In some implementations, the pedometer can automatically determine that the pedometer is being worn on a user’s wrist.

Jawbone’s design lead Yves Béhar, meantime, has been imagining how “a wearable kit of sensors” could enable us to effectively take our doctor with us wherever we go in a piece written for TIME …
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