Some say yes, some say maybe. The market is already full of innovative health tracking devices – but the Apple Watch promises a cooler way to use them.
It provides quick, easy-to-read notifications from your phone, allows you to make purchases on the go and tracks your daily activity. When the Apple Watch hits the shelves this month, it would be partly up to the customers to decide what the purpose of the latest wearable really is. Would it be just a swanky fashion accessory or a daily activity monitoring device or just another gadget to receive a text and call notifications and check email?
‘Apple Watch is the most personal device we have ever created’, said CEO Tim Cook and has pitched health as one of the key selling points for the upcoming wearable device, including its hourly alerts to owners to get moving and be more active.
Apple Watch promises to change the way you workout:
- Personalized Fitness Tracker
The Apple Watch provides a more comprehensive view of all your daily activities. Its Activity app utilizes an accelerometer to check total body movement, a custom sensor to track heart rate and measure the intensity of your workouts and GPS which tracks the entire distance you’ve covered during the day. - Accurate Data
Whether you are a marathon enthusiast or a regular gym-goer, Apple Watch provides you detailed feedback based on the intensity of your training sessions. Be it running or weights, users can set goals based on the number of calories to be burned, distance to be achieved and the length of the workout to be logged. After every activity or workout, you can view a summary and track your progress. - Your Go-to Personal Trainer
The best feature about the Apple Watch is it gets to know you over time just like a good personal trainer would. This implies that it would shoot daily reminders to keep you on track with the device’s Move, Exercise and Stand ring graphics and suggests customized goals based on your workout patterns it has been following over the due course of time.
List of Top 15 Apple Watch Fitness Apps for Your Healthy Self
- 7 Minute Workout – No Gym. No Time. No Problem
7 minute workout helps you lose weight, strengthen your abdominal muscles, and get a flat tummy. It consists of 12 exercises, each for 30 seconds with a regular 10 seconds break. It also keeps a log of the calories you burned during the workout.Price: Free
App Link for iOS - Activity- Move, Exercise, and Stand
From counting your steps to tracking your calories count, this app lets you keep track of your day-to-day activities including historical progress towards achieving the targeted goals. You can also see other important metrics from your workout such as average pace, distance, and average heart rate.Price: Free
App Link for iOS - Runtastic – Your Health and Fitness Community
Start your running and fitness activities with one of the most popular apps. Runtastic covers everything from sprinting to walking and has deep integration with Apple Health. It keeps a log of your active minutes, steps taken, and calories burned.Price: Free
App Link for iOS - Carrot Fit – Your Judgemental Fitness Overlord
If you are not dedicated to your fitness, Carrot Fit can be your ideal, ruder partner. It will do whatever it takes to transform your flabby body into a Grade A carcass. From threating to bribing you, Carrot Fit have various ways to keep you serious towards your workout.Price: $3.99
App Link for iOS - Lifesum – Healthy living. Simplified.
If you are confused between low card or high protein diet then Lifesum can help you find the best diet plan as per your body type and preferences. It also provides you an intuitive food diary, effective tips, and reminders to help you stay on track.Price: Free
App Link for iOS - Strava – Run, Ride, Swim
Use your iPhone’s built-in co-processor to track the bike rides and run with Strava. You can get customizable training and workout plans as per your training. It also provides you an option to set your own segment goals and meet millions of other athletes.Price: Free
App Link for iOS - Streaks Workout – For All Fitness Levels
This app lets you stick to your routine and work out anywhere you want. You have an option to choose from 25+ equipment-free workouts, just get your Apple watch and you are ready to start.Price: $4.15
App Link for iOS - Gymatic – Bring Science to Your Workout
Gymatic automatically identifies your exercises, count repetitions, and log your workouts. It also collects some advanced stats like heart rate, rest and work time, range and speed consistency, and velocity.Price: Free
App Link for iOS - My Diet Coach- Be Healthier and Stay on Track
This app is specially designed for women. From motivational photos to visual weight tracker, My Diet Coach offers a complete set of tools to help women stay fit, resist food cravings, stay on track, and avoid laziness.Price: Free
App Link for iOS - One Drop – Diabetes Doesn’t Have to Be Hard
One Drop is an efficient diabetes management platform that enables users to log their daily activities and see how the food, insulin, and other activities are working with glucose levels. The user can also learn how others are dealing with diabetes and managing it.Price: Free
App Link for iOS - Hello Heart – New Cures for Health Costs
Hello Heart tracks your heart and provides insights to help you learn about how your heart is working, understand risks, and manage it yourself anytime, anywhere. It provides real-time explanation of each blood pressure reading to letting you know how you’re doing.Price: Free
App Link for iOS - WaterMinder – Achieve Your Hydration Goals with a Simple Tap!
WaterMinder® is an easy-to-use, intuitive app to track how much your water intake is. It will remind you to drink water based on your body wieght. You can simply record your water intake from your Apple watch.Price: $4.99
App Link for iOS - HealthTap – Instant 24/7 Access to Doctors
With HealthTap, get instant help and free answers from more than 1,00,000 U.S. doctors from your phone. This app also enables you to get virtual consultations with a primary care through video or text chat and pay via phone or tablet.Price: Free
App Link for iOS - MyFitnessPal- Fitness Starts with What You Eat.
MyFitnessPal can help you with weight loss, get healthy, change your habits, and start a new diet. With more than 6 million food in its database including global cuisines, this app makes your tracking food easier and faster.Price: Free
App Link for iOS - Fjuul – Move for Meaning
Fjuul automatically keeps a track of your daily moves, highlights your healthy activities, and guide as well as encourage you to achieve your fitness goals. You can also learn which physical tasks have the most impact on your fitness.Price: Free
App Link for iOS
But will the Apple Watch make people fitter and healthier?
Apple Watch developers state that it is a device that helps anyone who wears it leads a healthier life by being much more active. It provides you an easy-to-read dashboard of your entire health and fitness data by tracking your sleep patterns, calorie intake, and bodily functions and is aimed at motivating users to get proactive on improving their health thus making the experience more fun.
However critics state that to wear the Apple Watch or any other wearable device, you need to keep doing something to constantly use it – wear it all the time, or recharge it (almost every day) – and reports state that there’s a drop in use after about 2 months.
For new users, the novelty wears off, excitement fades and they easily run back to their old habits, if they ever changed them to begin with. And the ones who religiously wear the device and use them over the longer term are fitness enthusiasts already and wearables are just another tool in their fitness regime.
The Apple Watch may track your health, but it’s difficult to gauge whether it would have an impact or would just make users aware of what is going within their bodies. The art of health tracking helps maintain your health no doubt and the Apple Watch takes health and fitness to the next level with accurate metrics and behavior analyzing algorithms, but in the end it comes down to personal habits and behavior change – and how well you can do that.
Know more about Apple watch development services here