Apple Fitness Director Jay Blahnik Talks Apple Watch and Fitness
Since joining the company, Apple Fitness Director Jay Blahnik has been relatively quite. However, in an interview with Outside reporter Scott Rosenfiled, Blahnik opens up about Apple Watch and what sets it apart.
Other activity trackers focus on just one thing: steps or calories. That offers a certain level of simplicity, which is very attractive, but it’s also misleading. Tell me that you’ve burned more calories during the day, and I’m going to immediately ask, “How and when did you burn them?” The Watch tracks three things: movement, standing time, and minutes of exercise. It’s about more than quantity. As I like to say, it gives you three ways to win. And it does so in a visual way.
Blahnik makes a great point. While the Watch doesn’t necessarily bring anything new, it does present that information in a way that’s far more digestible and understanding than other fitness trackers out there. Blahnik says that Apple has captured more than 33,000 hours of fitness data from volunteers in order to allow Apple to create its own algorithms for the Workout app, which helps the app be more accurate.
When asked about what’s next for the Apple Watch, Blahnik says that that third-party apps are going to be the big game changer:
Native apps and experiences. Early on, we realized that we needed to have two apps: one for all-day tracking and something to measure those dedicated exercise moments. That led to Activity and Workout. The next step, and one of the things we’re most excited about going into the fall, is having native third-party apps and giving them access to the sensors. We’ll be keeping Activity as the centerpiece—workouts that happen in third-party apps will be aggregated and shown in the app—but we’re not expecting the hardcore cyclists to use our Workout app instead of Strava. If you’re really motivated by that app, the last thing we want to do is to tell you to leave. We feel strongly that if the activity rings can aggregate your day, we’re happy to have you use the apps you want to record the workouts you’re doing.
It’s clear that he and Apple feel that that third-party apps are going to change the entire experience of using the Apple Watch. Whether he’s right or not is hard to say, but we’re only a few months away from being able to see if he’s right.