Microsoft recently announced their own fitness tracker and lifestyle wearable, the Microsoft Band. In the wake of the splash Apple made after announcing their own wearable, the Apple Watch, it seems like everyone and their mother is attempting to capitalize on the market of fitness trackers.
The Microsoft Band and Apple Watch are both late entries into the market of fitness trackers, which has long been dominated by the GPS watches of Garmin and its competitors. However, the past generation of fitness trackers was more focused on individual activities–people who walked for exercise would not buy a GPS watch, but rather a simple pedometer to track their steps. Runners, however, would buy GPS watches as they were able to more accurately record data points such as running speed, distance, elevation, among others. The new generation of fitness trackers and wearables have become more focused on becoming an all-inclusive option for people to wear every day.
This new generation of fitness trackers is inspired in part by the concept of the ”quantifiable self”.
The quantifiable self indicates that there are concrete data points that a person has access to about themselves at any given moment about their day and the status of their body’s activity; “this is how many steps I’ve taken today”, “this is my heart rate right now”, or “this is how well I slept last night” are all examples of data points tracked by the new generation of wearables. They also attempt to track how many calories you’ve burned in the day, as well as details of running activity. The aim of this new generation is to encompass and track all the activity of your day and night and present it to you as easy to understand points of data: steps, calories, heart rate average, and quality of sleep. Fitbit is one of the biggest names in this area of trackers, and aims to hit every target group of active users as well as covering the same basic goal of tracking sleep, steps, and distance covered. Jawbone’s UP and UP24 attempt a similar objective, though they have a smaller line of products and may not as effectively target as much of a range of customers as Fitbit’s range does.
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But the question remains: Just how badly do you need to quantify every aspect of your waking and non-waking life?
We already have to worry about whether our own government and cell phone manufacturers are tracking our every move –do we really need yet another point of data for them to track and sell to marketers? In tracking every miniscule activity of your life, are you losing some of the magic in living your life? Just how enjoyable is that morning walk when you’re constantly thinking about how many steps it will be, and how many more you’ll have to do to hit your daily goal of 10,000?
In short, it sounds like an interesting concept, but if it isn’t directly improving your quality of life, what’s the point of draining your resources and bank account on yet another gadget, on yet another toy that will gather dust, unused within a month?
Last week, Maciej Cegłowski, Creator of Pinboard, tweeted: “Jesus Christ people, just go for a half-hour walk once in a while.”
His point is crude, but it isn’t far from the reality of whether we honestly need all these trackers for everything we do or don’t do. Life is simple. If you eat more and do less, you will gain weight. If you eat less and do more, you will lose weight. It’s not rocket science.
“Fitness Tracker Moov Raises $3 Million For Its Wearable A.I. Coach” Jesus Christ people, just go for a half-hour walk once in a while
— Pinboard (@Pinboard) October 23, 2014