Apple

I still like my nike sportband the most. It does it's job well and when it breaks down a new replacement can be had for $20-$30 if you are not picky about the color. They do tend to stop working after two or so years, maybe 3000 miles of running for me. I think I'm on #4 now... I like it even more than the micoach smart run (2012 $500 android based smart watch with music player, training program, datalogger, and GPS) I have a HRM attachment for it (the sportband), even.

No GPS is a glaring ommission from apple's offering, since I was told that their watch can't even use a nike+ipod sensor, how on earth will it work for running with no gps or footpod sensor???

I'll probably get one once the early adoption fever dies down, because it looks like a fun and cool toy . I only ever take my (work-supplied) iphone to work and leave it at home for everything else. Unless it is working hours I keep DND on. These behaviors are for my sanity and I'm not about to change them. I do like the idea of the watch replacing my keys and wallet, but the notifications and etc, are lost to me

Anecdotes about the watch helping to wean people off of their (larger-screen devices) in the press from the reviews are flabbergasting to me. Really? You're how old, yet you need a glorified game boy to function normally??

How can you possibly be active without your iPhone? How will people see that you're hip and with-it? Srsly, they want to use the M7 "activity processor" that's only in your phone so far, right? I'm sure they'll cram an M7 into a watch case a few versions down the road.

There was one watch with it's own cell modem that I heard about, but most of these are just second screens/microphones for your cell/mobile phone. Hearing pundits talk about how these things save people from the horrors of having to fish their phones out of their pockets leaves me scratching my head, but I'm also un-hip enough to keep trying to use a belt case. Then again, getting a 6" phone in and out of your front pockets in jeans must be a non-trivial exercise - especially when seated...

I was not thrilled when I learned that, in the shift to BLE/BT4.0, Apple had abandoned all the prior activity telemetry. (I went from iPhone 4 -> 6) Not surprised, no - this is Apple after all. But the last time I tried to sync the iPod nano I think I got a "yeah, piss off" WRT the old Nike+iPod stuff. I still have assorted old iPods, the Nike bits, and a Polar WearLink heartrate monitor, and sortof wish I could get that data from my hikes into Healthkit. But not enough to put much effort into it - just enough to gripe...

Iphone 4? Man, that's rough. No BLE. I still have the BLE dongle you were supposed to use with the Nike+ sport sensor in case you have an original iphone up to iphone 4. For my senior project at school I did something similar about a year before the nike+ sport kit (a.k.a. TR1) but, because BLE wasn't around (my project all ran with the g2 ipod touch) I used ANT (thisisant.com) with 30-pin dongles. ANT is a proprietary protocol, but very simple and easy to use. I now work in automotive, and see that ANT is strikingly similar to CAN It's relatively unencumbered for people who want to play with it, but because BLE is so pervasive nowadays you would be foolish to use anything else unless the project is strictly for personal or educational use. Anyways, for newer devices you are supposed to throw away all your old Nike+ kit and use the GPS.

I think the 4S is the watershed point for iphones. I still use my 4S for pillow app (instead of a regular alarm clock) but there is no SIM, I turn off wifi and BT, and keep it in airplane mode. The app is supposed to work under your pillow so I would like to avoid as much irradiation as possible With the new continuity features if I forget to shut it down sometimes it will ring even without a SIM I agree, it would be nice if health app would sync data across devices. I haven't figured out a way to do it, yet.

I use my sportband when I run sometimes with and sometimes without the HRM. If I want music I have an ancient ipod nano that refuses to die no matter how hard I try to kill it, and cheap-o headphones (with a wire ). I do use the nike+ app (GPS) on my phone (5S) occasionally, maybe once a week or so, but last November I updated it (improvements to support healthkit), that broke so many things including the ability to play music while running (!) I quickly uninstalled the new version and went back to the old one (4.5.6 circa 2013).

The smart run is cool but I would avoid anything that says micoach on it. Every single device (pacer, smart cell (for F50 of course!), smart run, zone) I've bought I have had to return, sometimes 2 or 3 times, to get one that works. I like to extoll the quality of german products normally but whoever actually designed and is making that crap for adidas has big issues.

If apple made a sort of iphone nano or iphone sport (about the same size as ipod nano, but with maybe the same feature set as a 5 or 5s, cost maybe $400-500, and waterproof or at least IP66), I'd buy it in a heartbeat.

smj wrote: How can you possibly be active without your iPhone? How will people see that you're hip and with-it? Srsly, they want to use the M7 "activity processor" that's only in your phone so far, right? I'm sure they'll cram an M7 into a watch case a few versions down the road.

People can see that I'm hip-and-with-it at a race or on a track with nothing more than a stopwatch No iPhone necessary.

smj wrote: I was not thrilled when I learned that, in the shift to BLE/BT4.0, Apple had abandoned all the prior activity telemetry. (I went from iPhone 4 -> 6) Not surprised, no - this is Apple after all. But the last time I tried to sync the iPod nano I think I got a "yeah, piss off" WRT the old Nike+iPod stuff. I still have assorted old iPods, the Nike bits, and a Polar WearLink heartrate monitor, and sortof wish I could get that data from my hikes into Healthkit. But not enough to put much effort into it - just enough to gripe...

I haven't tried this because I am still using the aforementioned old version of nike+, but it may be possible to sync all of your ipod/sportband data from nike+ to healthkit. If I run with my sportband, the nike app will pull down the data. With the new healthkit version of the app (which, I don't use, but nothing to stop you from trying...), it may stuff it all in there.

Nike+ has a great api and developer interface. You can do whatever you want with that data This would be too much effort for me, but you could even write a healthkit app to sync with Nike+. All of the bits are there. Beyond that, there is manual entry, or use something other than healthkit. There is e.g. sporttracks and I would use it if I really cared that much; but all I really care to see is miles e.g. weekly and last 30 days, so ST is totally overkill. Not to mention Excel is great for this sort of stuff too, and chances are you already own it (or, openoffice, iwork, etc, etc)... The beautiful thing is there is really not that much data there, so it is easy to play with.

P.S. Nike needs to bring back the mini-me avatars!

Similar feelings, but after having a Microsoft Band since November, at first I wasn't sold on it, but having the notifications for email, SMS, phone calls etc. is extremely useful. I couldn't imagine not having it at this point. Step counter, calorie counting, sleep tracking and Cortana integration are just icing on the cake.

It'll be interesting in the next year where the wearables market goes.

While I don't care about the smartwatch aspect of it (I try hard not to be "notification driven") I like the complications thing. I thought the Health & Fitness functionality would work without the iPhone - I don't want to lug around a phone and I would have to buy one in the first place (my 3GS is not compatible ). And since I like only link bracelets the 42mm Stainless Steel Case with Link Bracelet version would cost me $999. I could justify spending like $250, but with $999 I'm going to wear my oldschool Casio DB-520A for the next few years - the smartwatch of the 90s:

Adrenaline wrote: It'll be interesting in the next year where the wearables market goes.

total surveillance of course. for corporations as well as intelligence services that stuff is golden and people even dig it. couldn't get much better for them

foetz wrote:

Adrenaline wrote: It'll be interesting in the next year where the wearables market goes.

total surveillance of course. for corporations as well as intelligence services that stuff is golden and people even dig it. couldn't get much better for them

It has come up at work as a possible way of tracking along with the gps tracking that's already going on and then doing some trending analysis on heart rate, sleep patterns and then mapping it to work output. The only reason it hasn't come to fruition in this latest development cycle I'm wrapping up now is the lack of standardization in that market. The Mono framework makes it a bit more enjoyable to work in with C#, but it's not perfect.

http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/08/technol ... -tracking/

If you wish to participate in a program like this, but don't want to have to, you know, actually move... send me your device. I will wear it while running at least 30+miles per week, for a 'small fee' which could be guaranteed to be less than your insurance savings If I can get enough subscribers to my service I may even develop significant upper body strength from wearing a couple dozen or more tracking machine

Adrenaline wrote: Similar feelings, but after having a Microsoft Band since November, at first I wasn't sold on it, but having the notifications for email, SMS, phone calls etc. is extremely useful. I couldn't imagine not having it at this point. Step counter, calorie counting, sleep tracking and Cortana integration are just icing on the cake.

It'll be interesting in the next year where the wearables market goes.

The MS band looks much sleeker than applewatch, IMO. Hmmm...

Don't get me wrong, it's not perfect. It took far too long for the SDK to become available (missed the window I dedicated to it, now I'm diving into Mobile VR). I'd like if there were statistics sync'd to the Microsoft Health app (available on all 3 platforms along with a neat web dashboard) would start generating trends and put them in a nice format to look at. Now that I can have access to the sensors via the SDK maybe I'll write an app for it to do what I want. Tough call where to focus nights/weekends at this point between VR, IoT, Cloud Architecture and Wearables (along with keeping current my web dev and mobile dev knowledge).