This is Technology Bytes, episode 25 for August 27th, 2023.
Technology Bytes is a microcast where I share my brief insights on an interesting technology.
My name is Joel.
Enjoy, and here we go.
Today I want to talk about Apple and health, and much of that revolves around the Apple Watch, because that is the device that Apple has made that really helps us to track our health in a lot of different ways.
It starts out fairly simple with the ring concept that Apple has, where you have a movement ring.
It’s not really steps, it’s just a movement that you’re not sitting still, that you’re actually moving.
And then you have a stand goal where every hour you at least stand up for a couple minutes.
And then you have your exercise ring, which is when your heart rate is some percentage above what you’re resting is, and Apple sees that as exercise, that’s why your heart rate is up.
And maybe these are arbitrary in the fact that you can set them at whatever level you want, but it makes it good because even if you just work on closing those rings every day, you are working on your health.
From my standpoint, I think I’m at, I don’t know, close to 2,000 days in a row of doing, of closing my rings.
And it really has helped me in the sense of fitness.
And then beyond that, Apple has done a number of other things that I’ll talk about over the next few minutes.
One big thing that Apple did was add Apple Fitness to their services.
And it’s basically got a number of exercises that you can follow along on the Apple TV, your watch tracks, your exercise, and your heart rate, and those kind of things.
And there’s lifting with weights, there’s body weight stuff, there’s high-intensity interval training, there’s treadmill training, there’s bicycle training, there’s rowing.
You name it, there’s, well, there’s not everything because it is often limited to what might be your little home gym or workout area.
So there are limitations to what can be done, but it does help you to see progress in your health.
And so every day I do an Apple Fitness workout.
And so every day except Sunday.
And so then it helps me to maintain my health.
And there are a lot of good things in there.
I know all of this costs money, but maintaining our health costs money, but it is also very important for us to live good, productive lives.
The other thing that Apple does is they give you awards in the form of stickers or other things.
It’s kind of interesting because they just are basically sitting on your phone or your device.
But still, it’s something that you can share with other people and say, hey, look, this is what I did.
You know, I think on this particular day that I’m recording, it was like Earth Day or something like that.
Oh, it was the U.S.
Parks Day.
And so if you exercise for 20 minutes, then you get a sticker.
It’s kind of fun to get those.
And so Apple is trying to entice people to live healthy lives, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.
Some other things that Apple has built into their watch, they’ve added sleep tracking in the recent times.
And, you know, sleep is an important part of our health, so those are good things that you can see over time.
And they actually will tell you in history if something is changing with your sleep patterns.
They have heart rate monitoring.
My mother has AFib, and her watch knows that that’s true.
And so it monitors her heart regularly for her.
They have fall detection, which is way better than the help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up button, because it will actually reach out and call.
Just because you fell and didn’t answer your phone, it’ll call emergency services.
And so there are a lot of things that Apple is doing in the realm of health through the Apple Watch to help us to live a better life.
Because Apple Watch has been a successful product for Apple, then you also have third-party software developers joining in on the health revolution, if you want to call it that.
But they know that people are using the Apple Watch for health on a regular basis.
You know, a podcast I listened to did a survey recently, and health was one of the top two reasons that people got the Apple Watch.
And so there are things that third-party developers do, like calorie tracking, water tracking, weight tracking, and I do all of that.
And there’s apps that do that.
And so in my little world, there’s an app called Waterminder that I use.
My wife got a digital scale from joining Weight Watchers, and so I use that scale with the app that comes along with it to track my weight.
And then I use another app for my calorie tracking.
I think it’s called MyFitnessPal.
Not I think, I know it’s called that.
And so that helps me to track my calories.
It all is time-consuming, but not that much.
And it really helps to maintain a level of health and awareness of where we’re at, trying to live a healthy lifestyle.
Another part of Apple’s system that I don’t use is they have a system to track the medications that you take, and so they can keep you on track for that.
At the moment, thank goodness I don’t have regular medications that I have to take for any illnesses or anything, and I’m thankful for that.
But they have those that need medicine, so they help to track that as well and remind people that these are the medications that they have that they need to keep track of.
And then they also have their health app, which takes all of the information that I’ve been talking about, all the exercise that you do, all the heart rate monitoring that they do, all the sleep times, all the nutrition, all of those things are written into the health app that then you can share with your provider of health services, dentists, doctors, whatever it happens to be.
And then that data they can use to help you maintain the healthy lifestyle that you want and to help recognize trends and things that doctors are trained to look at in that health data.
And that all happens without you having to go to the doctor on a very regular basis so they can take all this data and build this profile on you because you can choose to share that from what your Apple Watch is tracking.
And it sounds a little, I don’t know, it might be scary, but it’s like, how much information does Apple know about you?
Well, about me, they probably know a whole lot.
But they also are concerned with privacy, so this information is just on your phone, it doesn’t go back to Apple, and it’s up to us to decide who gets to see it and how we share it.
So in the fitness aspect of what Apple’s trying to do is they actually have competitions you can have with other people that you know that have Apple Watches.
And so they do a lot of things around health, they being Apple the company, and then built into the Apple Watch and the third-party developers, that give us the ability to see, to track, to recognize, to be warned of health aspects of our life, of our body that we need to know to live healthy lives.
And there are multitudes of stories about Apple Watches saving people’s lives here and there, notifying them of events that they might not have felt or known about, and being able to get people to medical services fast enough to change their lives forever.
And I’m not saying that’s the case for everyone, but it does have those symptoms and those abilities.
And so when my daughter had an elevated heart rate, for we don’t know what reason, but the watch told her, and then the next time she went to see the doctor, she shared that information, and a couple tests here and there, everything seems to be normal.
Her heart rate just is a little bit higher than most.
So those are things that the Apple Watch does to help us live healthy lives with the time that we have here on Earth.
And it helps us to be more present, it helps us to be more active, and it helps us to be living the best life that we can for the time that we are given.
You have been listening to the Technology Bites microcast.
Until next time, continue enjoying your technology.
