After years of hype, the Apple Watch has finally arrived, and is now shipping to consumers.
This represents Apple’s first foray into the highly lucrative world of fitness trackers and fitness technology. To date, the sector has been largely dominated by the likes of Jawbone and Fitbit. The basic activity tracker band has become popular enough that these companies shifted over 3.3 million units during 2014. As the sector continues to hot up, so does demand, its likely that 2015 will see a veritable explosion in these devices.
The Apple device is a lot more than just a fitness band though, and represents more of a platform for your wrist. At Burntech, with our fitness tech focus, we’re only really interested in the device from a fit-tech perspective. So lets dive into the best fitness apps that are available on the device to date.
1) Hello Heart – Opening up the possibility of real-time heart rate monitoring without the need for a traditional heart rate monitor, this app has rich potential for fitness fans. Consisting of a blood pressure monitor with a companion heart health app, it allows you to record vital signs straight from your wrist. 100m Americans suffer from heart disease, so its application ranges beyond fit-tech.
2) WaterMinder – How many of us really drink enough water throughout the day? WaterMinder intends to help ensure we start doing by reminding us to drink up during the day. It’s a simple app, but does have some other features of interest, including a visualisation tool to help you understand your water intake and the effect it has on you.
3) Medication Alarm – This is perfect for any fitness fanatic who struggles to remember to take their supplements. Many of use multi-vits, protein shakes and other wonderful supplements, but struggle to remember to time them. Medication Arm reminds you to take any type of medication throughout the day. Furthermore, it tells you how many pills you have left, and reminds you when you need to order more.
4) Spring – Spring – for those who might be unaware – is a music streaming service specifically for exercise. The problem with this service to date for many of us is the need to cart your phone around with you. Maybe not a huge issue if you’re hitting the treadmill, but it is more of one if you’re hitting the road. However, introducing the app onto your Apple Watch allows you to leave your phone behind and still access your favourite tunes. The biggest downside is the need for wireless headphones, as the watch has not headphone jack. However this is a rare example of when the Apple actually adds value beyond the iPhone, in our opinion.
5) Map My Run – Map my Run is one of the most well-known and highly used running tracking services, and with good reason. Now it comes to your wrist. The comes loaded with a native running app – Nike+ – but that lacks the wider community that sits behind Map My Run. It’s this wider community that adds so much value for so many users. Add in the ability to log more than 600 different types of workouts, record GPS activities, sync and share activity on Apple Health and MyFitnessPal and socially share workouts with friends.
So there we have it, the five best fitness apps released on the Apple Watch so far. We’ll keep you posted of new releases in due course.