Why We Love The Apple Watch

The Leisure DB team are big fans of the Apple Watch!  Here they are explaining which apps they love to use and why. 

Abi Taylor

“I discovered an easy-to-use fitness app called Seven which takes you through a seven minute workout. It has easy to follow images of how to perform each exercise and best of all it tracks your performance. I’m very competitive and it gives you regular challenges which I love! It’s simple to use on the watch meaning I don’t have to think about taking my phone to the gym”

Charlotte Quesnel

“Citymapper is by far one of the most useful apps I have on my Apple Watch. A must have for anyone living or working in London. Gets me from A to B without fail and now with the added benefit of live updates on the apple watch it makes it even easier to travel. No more missed stops with live notifications straight to your wrist!”

Chloe Davis

"The GoPro app is great, it allows me to preview the shot and capture photos and videos conveniently on my watch"

David Minton

“The Apple Watch enables me to keep track of calls and texts, use Apple Pay, order an Uber all without having to use my phone, but mostly I use the Apple Watch’s in-built health app; the data collection is transparent and I can view or share it instantly”

Jamie Buck

“Zopim on Apple Watch is my favourite business app by far. It gives me the freedom to respond quickly to potential new business enquiries via the online chat feature on our website. Without the watch app there’s no way I’d be able to react in time when messages arrive. The Apple Watch pings me wherever I am and then I hop onto the full Zopim app on my iPhone to quickly reply. Hopefully in a future update they’ll let me dictate an even quicker reply via Siri on the watch meaning I don’t even need my iPhone!”

Jennifer Schooling

“Apple Pay makes it a little too easy to spend my money! But I love the fact I can now leave the house without my purse”

Jon Huxtable

"I rely on the Apple Watch mostly for alerts (particularly Whatsapp) and as a link to the iPhone mapping functions. It makes for a more surreptitious, hands-free street guide when navigating around Central London. People might even mistake me for a real London checking the time, rather than someone peering at a map on a phone"

Natalie Gibson

“I love the activity tracker on the watch – it’s great for an outdoor bike ride as it tells me my average speed as well as mile splits, calories burnt, average heart rate, etc. It syncs to my phone so I can view it on that later but during the bike ride, I just have to move my wrist to view my current speed, distance, time, etc. Much easier than having to get my phone out! The tracker is also great for giving you regular updates on how close you’re getting to your daily goals to move, exercise and stand; it makes me stand up every hour and walk around for a minute!”

Technology in the swimming pool won't be an oxymoron for much longer!

We've all seen the impact of technology in the health & fitness sector - dozens of new products have hit the market in recent years, like young puppies marking their territory, all so eager to weave themselves into the fabric of our new fitness habits.

From Fitbit & Runtastic to Jawbone & MapMyFitness, some will surely disappear as quickly as they came, others will find their niche and thrive, but what about us happy splashers, still waiting for some of this new tech to hit our local swimming pool or lido?

In a word water. Water happened. Not an absolute barrier to the latest tech but definitely a hurdle/water jump that can erode magnetic chargers, scramble Bluetooth signals and has an unfortunate habit of leaking into the most thoughtfully designed and highly engineered miniaturised parts. It's not fair to say that the sport of swimming hasn't seen its fair share of innovation and by swimming I mean the kind of happy splashing you and I might do not Messrs Phelps or Thorpe.

The Poolmate took stroke tracking poolside and onto your wrist along with SwimTag who thought out of the box by leveraging technology combining with the physical environment of the pool. Splashpath app for iPhone got rid of those hard to read and out of date PDF swim timetables and then Speedo Fit app got in on the act with virtual swim goals and a growing global swim community. Zoggs used digital to get physical and had a crossover hit from the TV screen with their Peppa Pig kids goggles too!

Obviously this just a flavour of the new tech which has been rustling in the pool lockers up and down the country, but I'm still waiting for the next big thing to hit the pool. I've been swimming up and down at my local baths for 20 years and I'm ripe for disruption! There's some great hardware & software just landed or right around the corner from Speedo Aquabeat, Swimio, & Swimdotcom to Pebble, Instabeat & Bragi Dash, but the jury is still out who will be the game changer in aquatics. Don't forget swimming is the biggest mass participation sport in the UK though it's one of the last to see the latest tech. Is v1 of Apple Watch waterproof? Is it heck. Does Apple even list swimming as a fitness activity yet? Nope, not on their radar just yet.

Building hardware is a tough gig but somebody could win big in the water, digital is a global market that breaks through the old barriers, innovation is coming thick and fast and waits for nobody! Pebble has just put the finishing touches to some major hardware grunt work and launched the waterproof 'Pebble Time', breaking records and crowd sourcing $8m in 24 hours from their backers in the process. They're sharing the love and changing the game through their open source software platform to a new breed of hungry developers. Whether it's a buzz on my wrist to push me to go faster, a post swim stats dashboard, swimming flash mobs, underwater beats or lasers, I want it all, and I want it now!

Ok, fair enough... Hold the flash mobs and maybe the lasers, with all tech it's what I don't know about yet that excites me the most...

Jamie Buck - The Leisure Database Company