motioncoprocessor
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Life Analytics fails to provide life analysis
Life Analytics seems to want to do what Moves tried to do: provide you with a record of everywhere you've been but with some graphs to show you how you divide your time among the places you inhabit or visit. However, unlike Moves, which was purchased by Facebook and subsequently seems to have been forgotten and no longer seems to work (at least, not in iOS 8 on any phone I've tried), it provides no map view and any information it provides is confusing and the UI is, for want of a better word, ugly. On first run, the app encourages you to define home and work by using a map and a slider to choose a radius (to geo-fence what is and is not "home" or "work", handy if you live or work in a place where the GPS signal is more variable than setting a specific point would allow). That initial process was clunky and the on-screen directions tell you to tap one button to finish the process while the actual button has a different name. That done, I left the app alone for a few days and went about my life so I could build up some location data and then get some analysis of my life. After a few days, I looked at the app again and what I saw was less than helpful. Now, to be completely fair, I work from home, so I get that this would confuse the app as to when I am at work and when I am at home, so I do not hold it against the app that it shows me at both in equal measure as opposed to, say, being at work for 8-9 hours and then home for the rest. Even taking that into account, the analysis is wonky at best. For example, every single movement I make around my home is listed as some form of transport (again, to be fair, it may be getting very confused by my work and home being the same place). Sometimes, that transport is listed as walking, sometimes as bicycle (I must move around my house faster than I realized!) The charts themselves are poorly drawn with labels overlapping or oddly cropped on the sides of the screen despite the fact that there's plenty of pixels left to provide more of the words themselves. The summary charts showing multiple days are not very useful as the legend defining the colors is off the far left requiring you to scroll back and forth to see what is what. If you make changes (as I did in trying to define work as another location just to see if the transport issues got fixed) they only apply to anything from now forward, not to anything in the past. The large, prominent ad on screen at all times certainly didn't help either. All in all, I found little to like about Life Analytics. If you are interested in tracking your movements and seeing how and where you spend your time, I suggest you look elsewhere. So much of what the iPhone represents is elegance in design and the love of working with something well crafted and with a nice UI. Life Analytics is anything but. Life Analytics is at least free and, while it claims compatibility with a wide variety of devices, the app description says that the motion co-processor is required meaning it should only be compatible with iPhone 5s and up.
Nike+ Move app now available in the iOS App Store
Last month, Nike announced its new Fuelband SE fitness tracker and an M7-enabled app for the iPhone 5s. You'll have to wait a few days to get your hands on the Fuelband SE as it is slated to start shipping on November 6, but you can download the Nike+ Move app now. The Nike+ Move app is designed for the iPhone 5s and its M7 motion coprocessor. The app uses your daily motion and translates it into NikeFuel. The app takes a few minutes to setup -- just download, authorize access to the motion data and setup a Nike+ account. Once those three steps are done you are ready to start tracking your steps. As noted in the app's description, features in the app include: Win the day by beating your NikeFuel average and watch your goal ring change from Red to Green. See when you are most active throughout the day and how you're doing compared to yesterday. Move more often and win as many hours as you can throughout the day. See how you moved through the day with a breakdown of running, walking, and other movement. See where you're moving and where you move the most each day. Check out how you compare against your Game Center friends or other Nike+ Move users near you. The Nike+ Move app is available for free from the iOS App Store.
iPhone 5s packs M7 motion-sensing chip, CoreMotion API for more accurate tracking
Apple's new flagship iPhone 5s is about to have much more detailed information about how much its users are moving, thanks to a new M7 "Motion co-processor." Unveiled during today's live event, it works along with the new 64-bit A7 CPU to measure motion data continuously from the accelerometer, gyroscope and compass without draining the battery as heavily. It looks like the iPhone 5s will be ready to take over for hardware extras like the FitBit or Nike Fuel wristband, but with a new CoreMotion API, devs for those companies and others can pull the information into their apps. The CoreMotion API specifically works to identify user movement, and offers "optimizations based on contextual awareness." Overall, it's very similar to what we'd heard would be in the Moto X, although we haven't seen all of these extra sensors used for activity tracking quite in this way. Nike was on hand with a new Nike+ Move app that used the M7 and GPS to track users' activities, and we wouldn't be surprised if others follow closely behind. Nike called the Move app an "introductory experience" to Nike Fuel in a tweet, so maybe it's planning to upsell customers on (potentially?) more detailed tracking with its hardware add-ons afterward. Check out all the coverage at our iPhone 'Special Event' 2013 event hub!
