Where’s my built in Nike + app?
I had an iPhone 5.
It was a pretty decent one-stop-shop slab of electronics that would help me fulfill and keep track of my daily activities. And of my runs.
My runs. Running had always been that awkward moment of necessary suffering that ultimately promised to make me feel better. Some people enjoy it, I don’t.
I don’t run to the music, and if you don’t provide me someone to chat or some spectacular scenery, it’s just pain added to an insult, and I get bored to death. I admit feeling good afterwards, that’s my sole [sic] motivation.
So when that small Nike + iPod dongle and gizmo you’d put in your shoe set to precisely track your runs came out in 2006, I was in for the buy. The dongle later integrated the iPhone 4 and that teeny little thing in my shoe became essential in helping me get out the door running.
Very sound piece of technology. Visionary of what the future of sports activity tracking could be. A tiny discrete autonomous sensor that tracks your lower extremity, sends its moves back to the phone to help better calculate your running performance. Elegant. Works even on a treadmill while watching a movie on your device, doesn’t even need GPS. A reliable and esthetic solution paving the glorious future of multi-sensor activity tracking.
One day Apple accidentally terminated my iPhone 5 (they had it in for a totally acceptable gyro glitch..), and my runs suddenly became a pain again. The iPhone was 64GB, and the only replacement they offered to hold my backup was a generalist consumer-oriented unnecessary big iPhone 6 slab. Yay.
But then I realized that the built in Nike Plus app isn’t there anymore. 6 and over: nope. Gone is the smart remote sensor that reliably got me out running for years. Back are those ackward flabby GPS and phone-sensor based apps.
Ok, Apple will now sell you a watch for that. Its got all those extra sensors, but still, they got rid of the cheap smart and effective little guy in my shoe just by removing the app.
Like many I don’t intend to buy a watch to run, I don’t need to carry Cape Canaveral’s control station to sweat. The shoes are annoying enough but my feet don’t care for the dead weight as much as my wrist does. The small sensor was the perfect working solution.
Apple could have innovated and improved it with a pulsemeter, thermometer, glucosemeter, or whatevermeter. In a way it is the future of sports activity tracking. For many of us it is where the Apple Watch should be. And it was the first successful step towards that all-in-one integrated multi-organ remote sensor-array, transparently linked to your cellular phone and to the Cloud. The thing that woud help you stay fit, live longer and better.
Maybe it was just to get rid of the Nike collaboration, or of that weird proprietary wireless protocol it worked on. Maybe it was meant to boost the Apple Watch sales, or maybe it was jut too expensive to maintain. But if Apple claims to be what it is, it should have at least proposed a replacement.
Think of them sole mates in Sports, Steel, and Edition yellow and rose! Would work. Should sell. But there’s only one way to know.
Just do it.
