Your iPhone May Become Your Personal Trainer
August 9, 2010
In the latest of a series of fitness-related patent filings, Apple aims to turn your iPhone into a personal fitness coach. While the patent filing is mainly just a collection of concepts, some of those concepts are quite impressive.
Many years ago, Apple worked with athletic clothing company Nike to create Nike+. Nike+ turned the iPod into a tool to help joggers and runners log and maintain their exercise routines. Since that time, app developers have created a number of new exercise apps that take advantage of the iPhone's accelerometer and GPS. Based on recent patent filings, it appears that Apple wants to expand the iPod touch and iPhone's usefulness as an exercise tool even further.
Apple's latest filing has two main functions; one is a workout reminder. While any alarm or calendar app can simply remind you to workout, this app tracks your workout progress, habits and daily activity to create those reminders. It also does not simply remind you to workout, but reminds you about what kind of activities you need to do and does so at what it determines to be the most opportune time.
The second and most interesting function is a that of an exercise recommendation tool. When you set up the app, you give it information about your goals which the app combines with your workout habits. It then suggests what you need to do, much like a personal trainer would. Here is how PatentlyApple.com explains it:
"The iPhone may determine what a user needs to accomplish or achieve their goal and then suggest a custom workout that will put the user on track to achieve their goal in the remaining time."While the app will likely never take the place of a professionally-designed exercise plan, the suggestions created by this program should help people identify what they need to do to achieve their goals. Combined with the smart reminder tool, this type of virtual personal trainer should be a great help to people with their fitness goals, in all stages of life. While we don't know when, or if, we will ever see this kind of functionality come to Apple devices, we can clearly see that there is a genuine interest in turning those devices into a key element of a healthy lifestyle. What do you think? Do you want to see Apple's engineers focus their talents on trying to create healthier users? Let us know in the comments box below.