As Apple continues to build up hype for the upcoming Watch launch on April 24th, the company has given ABC News an exclusive look at the health and fitness lab used for developing the activity features for the new wearable. Jeff Williams, who introduced ResearchKit on stage earlier this month, is featured in the video interview discussing the Apple Watch’s potential impact on health, while Jay Blahnik, formerly of Nike, leads a tour inside Apple’s fitness test facility.
Williams says that Apple employees including engineers and managers have volunteered to perform a wide range of workout activities including “rowing, running, yoga” and more at the high-tech lab in order to testing the fitness functionalities of the Apple Watch. Employees volunteering to be a part of the fitness data collection activities were not briefed on the Apple Watch device specifics ahead of last September’s reveal, Williams adds.
“[The employees] knew they were testing something, but they didn’t know it was for the Apple Watch,” said Jeff Williams, Apple’s senior vice president of operations. “We hooked them up with all the masks and so forth, but we would put on an Apple Watch covered up.”
In the video, Jay Blahnik walks through a brief tour of the advanced fitness facility, which he says includes climate chambers. The lab can simulate various environments that Apple Watch wearers might be in during workout activities, although Blahnik adds that the Watch was tested in locations ranging from Alaska to Dubai as well.
You can see the Apple Watch fitness development lab below, and ABC News says the full story will be featured on Nightline tonight at 12:35 AM EST:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsgOmiStJ04]
(Update: ABC News removed the video from YouTube, but you can catch the video here in the United States for now.)
In terms of fitness features, each model of the Apple Watch including the Sport and Edition collections features a custom heart rate sensor for measuring intensity of workouts and an accelerometer for collecting movement data while using WiFi+GPS from the iPhone for capturing speed and distance during activities.
The Apple Watch pre-order kicks off April 10th when the new device will be able to preview in Apple Stores. Two weeks later, the Apple Watch will begin shipping in 9 countries on April 24th with prices ranging from $349 to $17,000.
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Yeah, I’m sure they had no idea their wrist-worn sensor package would turn into the watch which Apple was rumoured to be creating since 2011, after accessory makers popularised wearing the Nano on one’s wrist.
That rumour alone is why Samsung entered the market… no reason at all for Apple employees to suspect a thing!
Not one black person in that room. Not one. Interesting.
No midgets either! WTF
Oh Nooooo!!! They must be racist!!! Dear god. Who’s racist though? ABC for keeping black people out of the shots, or do you think Apple really had no black people there? Maybe Apple didn’t have any black people working on that team because there just weren’t any??? Congrats on panicking about everything. The stupidity of humans is profound.
I was talking about the recent reports that the heart rate monitor may not work on people with darker skin *children*. Keep your assumptions to yourself.
The point is that if they haven’t tested the Apple watch on anyone but white folks, there MAY be a problem down the line. You don’t test a new dog food on one breed of dog.
Although … there should actually be a far greater mix than there is. It’s the USA so there should be like HALF Hispanics almost right? And may 10-20% black people? (Obviously I’m not totally up on your racial mix down there)
These tests were far greater than a heartrate sensor on your wrist. I doubt they even tested that their, seeing as how they specifically said that none of the testers knew what they were working on, product-wise. You strap a heartrate monitor to someone’s wrist, and they’ve read the ‘iwatch’ rumors, it’s pretty obvious what you’re trstibg then…
There*
…are you kidding? You don’t think Apple and their R&D group didn’t test this on different skin tones. For one thing; there were rumors that Kobe Bryant was meeting with Apple to help test this out. Some of the greatest athletes in the world are African American; why would they ever exclude them from testing.
This whole thread just made me laugh. Everyone tries to make something out of nothing. …and for the record the midget comment really cracked me up as a “smart a$$” response.
Enjoy the product everyone.
Except that there was. There was a heavy-set black woman working out in there, if only captured for a moment.
They may be in disguise, Top Secret ya know
its silicon valley, theyre not so easy to find up here, lol
Not sure though that you can swim with this iWatch, am I correct?
“Apple Watch is splash and water resistant but not waterproof. You can, for example, wear and use Apple Watch during exercise, in the rain, and while washing your hands, but submerging Apple Watch is not recommended. Apple Watch has a water resistance rating of IPX7 under IEC standard 60529.”
I find it concerning that Apple has yet to discuss the heart rate monitor in any real detail. Given its lack of GPS, the only feature that really makes this a great fitness device is the optical heart rate monitor. Such heart rate monitors have shown very spotty performance to date, especially at high intensity. Further, the heart rate monitor is the most prevalent sensor not he Apple Watch and as much as Apple loves to spout out general proclamations of faster, thinner, better, the lack of any claims related to the heart rate monitor’s performance and accuracy is a bit strange.
Yep. I have the same concerns. I have a Polar H7, which I use with my iPhone. I love it and I don’t mind to keep using it, but I’d rather not to have to worry about remembering another accessory to take with me to the gym.
“It just works.”
Samsung has a much larger and more impressive secret health testing lab.