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I had a dream. I’m running up a trail. It’s on a mountain. The trail is full of obstacles and many twists and turns. There are people passing me and laughing. They look at me condescendingly, but I can’t figure out why. And then unexpectedly, behind me a 70 year-old man – he rushes past me like I am on empty. He looks like Jackson Browne. My God, he is Jackson Browne – I really am running on empty. When I wake up I resolve to get better, get faster, get stronger. I know I can’t do it alone, so I start looking for technology solutions and some apps to help.
Up until its latest launch and since the death of Steve Jobs, Apple, for the most part, has been victim of high expectations with very little to show for it. The latest launch did help and was met with mixed reviews. For me, I was most interested in the Apple Watch and how it could impact people interested getting in shape.
So naturally I turned to our community (my company's users) of influential people in the sports world for answers. In fact 55 of them so far. These are triathletes, long distance runners, NFL and MLB players and several extreme sports professionals. I asked them if they intended to buy the Apple Watch and how they ranked it on a few factors. Here are the results so far:
Of those that said they were not going to buy it, 36% of them thought the functionality wasn’t enough for them while nearly 30% of them liked their current solution better.
As for the look, functionality and overall value of the Apple Watch, sports professionals liked the Design and functionality, but some didn’t feel the value for the money was worth it. The design and functionality was given a 3.38 out of 5 while the solution value for the money stands at 2.91 out of 5.
So overall, the Apple Watch looks to be a soft seller in the fitness and health space until either positive word of mouth buzz is generated or the price drops significantly.
Owaves Ambassadors of Health
Running on empty typically means an unhealthy lifestyle. And San Diego based Owaves wants to help people like me change that. Last week they released an updated iPad app which since inception has generated over 100,000 daily activities.
Owaves wanted to know what our sports community thought of their app, and thus far they've given it a 4.4 out of 5 which is a very high score for a fitness app.
I asked Owaves CEO, Royan Kamyar, why he created the app and he told me: “Owaves was inspired by my experience as a medical resident in New York City, downtown Manhattan. We were working 80+hrs per week, and living pretty unhealthy lifestyles. I found the experience to be quite ironic, considering we were training to be ambassadors of health, and decided upon starting business school the following year that I wanted to be successful - but I wasn't willing to sacrifice my health to get there.”
Kamyar goes on to tell me that that they are in the first phase of the app will track a user’s day while the next phase of the app will integrate wearable devices (perhaps the Apple Watch) to create full feedback loops. The goal he tells me is to both plan and track all of your daily fitness oriented activities. His ultimate vison for Owaves is to focus on a person’s circadian biology as the key underlying science for ongoing feedback and recommendations.
That way, guys like me will be able to figure out how to keep up with the 70 year-olds.
