sergeants or cult leaders. That’s good,
but it’s not enough. There are lots of
services offering workout videos, and
they don’t even require you to own
an Apple Watch.
Factor in the limited availability
(you can only watch videos on your
iPhone, iPad or Apple TV – not on
smart TVs, Macs or in a web browser)
and it’s hard to see what Apple really
brings to the table other than nice
production values.
A little overlay in the corner of your
workout shows key data from your
Apple Watch – Apple talks about this
feature like it’s truly revolutionary,
but it’s little more than a curiosity. It’s
nice to have, and frankly an expected
benefit of a service built in Apple’s
tight ecosystem, but it doesn’t solve
the biggest problems with working out.
Any fitness guru will tell you that
the most important thing is to make
vigorous workouts a part of your
lifestyle. Working out once a month
doesn’t benefit you very much, but
working up a good sweat several days
a week, every week, has enormous
health benefits.
Apple’s dropping the ball here. All
that on-device machine learning, and
tight ecosystem communication, and
my Apple Watch can’t even nudge me
to work out. It reminds me to stand
up a dozen times a day, but it can’t
say “you’ve only worked out once
this week, want me to schedule a
Fitness+ workout?”
There are dozens of badges and
awards for doing fitness stuff with
your Apple Watch and, of course,
you can satisfy those requirements
with Fitness+ workouts just like any
other workout, but why can’t Fitness+
subscribers earn badges and rewards
exclusive to the service?
Apple’s tight ecosystem enables
about a million creative ways to help
encourage users to get off the couch
and fire up the service, and it’s doing
none of them.TIME TO WALK IS
THE WAY FORWARD
I was all set to write off Fitness+ as a
mediocre service that squanders all of
Apple’s many ecosystem advantages,
but then the company released
Time to Walk. It’s sort of a walking-
centric podcast with inspiring stories
told by a variety of celebrities who
recorded them while walking outdoors.
Listen to one with your Apple Watch
and Bluetooth headphones, and it
automatically starts an appropriate
walking workout.
This is exactly the sort of thing
Apple should be doing to make