Apple Fitness+ Expanded

Apple has just further expanded Fitness+ with the introduction of, effectively, restrictive celebrity podcasts to play as you walk. A couple of days ago I had the pleasure of listening to Dolly Parton talking about certain aspects of her life as I went for a run whilst pretending it was a walk.

Why?

How it works

You need a subscription to Fitness+ but most of us with relatively new Apple Watch 6 models got 3 months of that free with the watch, so all was good there.

On the iOS Fitness app, you can choose to upload any of the 4, existing Time to Walk ‘podcasts’ to your watch and they’re each about half an hour long. Alternatively, you can pull them up to the watch from on the watch itself.

The rest is as you would expect. Is plays the audio, records the walk and you can leave your iPhone at home.

As you can see from the screenshot, above, the Fitness+app gives you a pictorial reminder that your completed ‘workout’ was with Dolly, just as it also says my rowing workout was with Josh. (Thanks Josh).

It’s a nice experience, although the ‘podcasts’ seem dreary boring to me and I struggled to get the volume high enough with my paired Jabra Elite 85t earbuds which sound awesome, you can only twizzle the crown so far.

Take Out

Clearly, a walk IS ‘fitness’ for many people. I get that, we all have different goals. If you’re just doing walking then Apple needs to up their game with the content VERY significantly.

These ‘podcasts’ demonstrate that Apple intends to add much richer content to FITNESS+ over time.

Apple has also expanded the number of other Fitness workouts every week. However, to me, they almost always seem to be releasing short ones – 30 minutes max. My initial patience has worn out, they need to introduce MANY more of varying durations and abilities. And I love how Josh keeps telling us what the stroke rate is on his gym equipment, which is great for him but ours gym equipment data doesn’t show on either the Apple Watch or the TV/iPhone.

C’mon Apple. Up your game. You have the money, just do it.