Close My Rings

I'm really enjoying my Apple Watch. It's early days, but there's a lot to love. Some of the best and most refined aspects of the watch are the fitness features.

I say this not as an advanced user of fitness devices, which I am, but for those looking to make better health a goal in their life. I'm training for the New York Marathon in November and I'll need to continue using my Garmin GPS for my advanced training.

That said, Apple has nailed the gamification of fitness with the three exercise rings. The internet is littered with stories from people who are now obsessed with closing the exercise rings on their watch. Many of these people have never given any real thought to fitness before.

There are three rings that comprise the Activity app on the watch. They are Move, Exercise and Stand. Move is an active calorie goal you can adjust. Everything you do during the day helps chip away at this goal. Exercise wants you to elevate your heart rate for 30 minutes a day. Stand encourages you to move around for a minute every hour.

Among these three rings, only the Stand ring requires action regularly throughout the day. Because of this, the Move and Exercise rings can be closed near day's end by moving around. There are many funny stories about people walking repeatedly around the block in the dark at night. I've walked on the treadmill for 10 minutes before brushing my teeth and going to bed to fill the Move ring.

Apple missed an opportunity to make this ring closing task easier so I mocked up my idea.

There should be a "Close My Rings" option in the Workout app on the watch. It will show the remaining move calories and exercise minutes required to close your rings.

image.jpg

Selecting this workout option leads to your selecting a workout option and then the following screen when the workout is started.

image.jpg

During the workout, you see the status of your rings. As a ring is closed, it drops off the screen.

image.jpg
image.jpg

When your Move and Exercise rings are closed, a congratulatory message is displayed. You can still continue your activity until the workout is stopped.

image.jpg

I think having a quick way to close unclosed rings would be a workout option used by a lot of people. With the advancements coming with watchOS 2, Siri can even help by starting a "Close my rings" workout without ever touching the watch.

The screen mockups were created for the 42mm watch and are available for download here. Just unzip the file, add the images to your synced Apple Watch photo gallery and you can see them on your watch.

One More Thing...

I say today marks the return of "One More Thing...". Enough time has passed since we all lost Steve. To trot this out earlier and without a suitably new product would have been weak copying. Everything Apple has done leading up to today says things are different this time.

Today, a resurrection could be a fitting tribute to Steve and everyone at Apple. If it happens, it'll bring the roof down.

iPhone 6 Final Speculation

There has been a lot of speculation about the specifics of the soon to be announced iPhone 6 devices. There's too much smoke for there only to be one size of new device. It seems certain new iPhones will be announced with 4.7" and 5.5" screens in a couple weeks.

There have been extensive part leaks surrounding the 4.7" device and a launch, in volume, shortly after the announcement is expected. The 5.5" device has seen significantly fewer leaks and a delayed launch or a severely supply constrained launch seems likely.

Commentators have speculated in particular on possible differentiation between the two devices. Will Apple somehow justify a higher price for the larger screen device with a more attractive feature set? I think the answer in all cases except screen resolution is fairly obvious by looking backwards.

Last year saw the launch of the iPad mini with Retina Display and the iPad Air. Aside from a very slight processor clock speed reduction and difference in display color gamut, the two devices are identical. The larger iPad Air sells for a $100 premium over the smaller iPad mini with Retina Display. I expect that 99% of all buyers know nothing of the differences between these two models and accept a $100 premium for the larger device. Apple surprised almost everyone when they made the iPad mini with Retina Display so capable. I'll be shocked if they don't do exactly the same thing with two new phones.

The second reason for thinking this is more ephemeral. It just seems unlikely, and maybe wrong, for Apple to jump from it's long held position that smaller screens (in comparison to popular Android devices) are better, to a new position where the larger screen phone will be more capable. I'm not saying it's impossible, and Apple has belittled ideas right up until embracing them in the past, but I'll be surprised.

The screen resolution of the new devices is more interesting. John Gruber did a splendid job in a recent post of outlining all kinds of design considerations. If you haven't read it, please do so now and then come back. The post, in particular his speculation about the resolution of the 5.5" device, made me think about one thing, pixel count. Specifically the power required to power those pixels.

Frustratingly, Apple has repeatedly chosen to reduce phone thickness rather than increase battery life. It's a choice I disagree strongly with, but I expect the trend to continue.

I decided to build a Numbers spreadsheet with all previous iOS devices listed. I included screen resolution and battery information from all previous models and the best leak information available on the upcoming iPhone 6 models. I used this information to calculate a power/pixel value for each device.

A couple things jump out when looking at this data when graphed. The first is there were tremendous efficiency improvements after the iPhone 3GS and the iPad 2. The second is that recent devices, iPhone 5C and iPhone 5S, have power/pixel values of 0.00208 mAh/pixel and 0.00215 mAh/pixel respectively. In fact, since the iPhone 4, this value has been around 0.002 mAh/pixel.

John's speculated 4.7" iPhone 6 has a 0.00181 mAh/pixel value. This represents a 19% improvement over current models. This is a nice jump, but not unreasonable given previous improvements.

John's speculated 5.5" iPhone 6 has a 0.00106 mAh/pixel value however. This would be a 102% improvement and seems impossible. There simply isn't enough power to drive the pixels in this display without tanking battery life. Another display resolution mentioned by Mark Gurman breaks down to a 0.00178 mAh/pixel value for an improvement of 20%.

In conclusion, I expect the 4.7" and 5.5" iPhone 6 models to have a consistent feature set and for the 5.5" model to not get a 3x display. There isn't enough power to drive the display. Apple will be happy to sell the larger phone at a $100 premium based purely on size, just like they did with the iPad Air and iPad mini with Retina Display last year.

Google's Identity System

I haven't been able to get into Google+. It looks pretty and I know it gets some users very excited, but I already have a presence on Facebook (a service I don't love) and nobody I know is using Google+.

Is it possible Google isn't actually competing with Facebook? That's a theory put forth by Ben Thompson, once again on his stratēchery blog today in response to a piece by Harry McCracken.

I need to give this some more thought.

Google's Detour

Anybody who follows tech has to have wondered at some point during the last few years, exactly what Googles aim was with Android. They don't make any money licensing the OS and they earn more advertising revenue from their iOS users. I know I've wondered.

Ben Thompson has written a great post on the topic over on his stratēchery blog. I think his idea is really interesting and has a lot of merit. It will be interesting to see where the Android OS goes in the next few years.