The Apple Watch, which was released on April 24, 2015, wasn’t the first fitness tracker or even the first smartwatch. (Depending on how you define those categories, they had been around for as much as half a century already.) But it did set a new industry standard and shape fitness trackers as we know them today.
When Tim Cook unveiled it, he said the goal was to make the best watch in the world. While “best” is a subjective term, Apple Watch has objectively become the most popular timepiece on the planet, by both present-day market share and all-time number of units sold. But I’m not sure even Cook imagined the impact Apple Watch would make on fitness, where it has become the de facto wearable for anyone looking to measure and maximize their health, fitness, and general well-being.
“When we look all the way back to how it started, we would have never anticipated that the watch would be doing as many things as it’s doing to impact people’s health,” says Jay Blahnik, Apple’s vice president of fitness technologies, who leads the team responsible for developing fitness features across Apple hardware, software, and services.
But you don’t have to take it from an Apple employee. Take it from me, a veteran fitness editor who has worn an Apple Watch for the better part of its decade-long existence. With core features rooted in behavioral psychology and functionality tempered by the realities of human nature, the Apple Watch is, to me, still the best fitness tracker that money can buy.
Many fitness trackers tout advanced metrics and accuracy but neglect to take into account the user’s general well-being. Fitness can only be built on a foundation of good health, and to ignore this fact is to invite inconsistency, frustration, and even injury.
“The science was indicating, even 10 years ago, that while quantity [of activity] is important, intensity and frequency is also important; just moving around is not enough,” says Blahnik. In fact, it was right around the time of the Apple Watch’s 2014 reveal that a landmark study revealed that extensive sitting can counteract the benefits of exercise.
“We really did focus on this idea of how we could help people sit less, move more, and get some exercise. That was sort of our mantra from the very beginning,” says Blahnik. “It inspired the Activity app, and it inspired the notion of the three rings.”
The rings, which track standing, movement, and exercise, serve as the core of Apple Watch’s Activity app. They’ve been baked in from day one, and have become a defining feature of the product, complete with progress notifications throughout the day to keep you on track and celebratory animations to acknowledge wins.
As the old saying goes, the best workout is the one you stick with. More than the specifics or intensity of your workouts, consistency is the true key to effectively and safely building fitness over time. And it’s a central pillar of Apple Watch’s user experience.
While most fitness trackers lay out your training data in a way that invites comparison between workouts, regardless of how far apart those sessions occurred, Apple Watch’s user interface prioritizes consistency. “Behavior change does not necessarily mean constantly getting better,” says Blahnik. “It could be about becoming super consistent.”
The accompanying Fitness app lays out all your sweat sessions in a traditional calendar format. While simple, this is actually one of the most effective ways to keep your workout motivation alive, according to a peer-reviewed meta-analysis published in the journal BMC Public Health.
Apple Watch takes the star chart approach a step further, rewarding those who check the box, but even more so those who smash it. “One of the most profound ways to encourage behavior change is, don’t just let me know when I’ve completed my goal, give me a super-big high five when I’ve exceeded it, so I can take that energy into the next day,” says Blahnik.
Simple, habit-forming features that reduce time spent sitting and improve workout consistency are great, but they’re not exactly the kinds of things that draw serious athletes to a fitness tracker. But a decade’s worth of updates and improvements have endowed Apple Watch with a dizzying array of metrics to satisfy even the most data-driven athletes.
“For every person who loves the sparkly rings, someone else might say, ‘I’d really love to know my ground contact time and my vertical oscillation when I run.’ And so our teams work really hard to release features that are great for the person just starting out, but also for that elite athlete that wants to dig deeper,” says Blahnik.
Apple Watch Ultra 2 can automatically detect if your outdoor run is taking place on a track and then measure your performance based on the specific lane you’re in. Triathletes will see the watch’s interface display sport-specific metrics in real time as they move from swim to bike to run. Hikers can set waypoints and retrace their steps if they get lost. Gym goers can monitor their training load to maximize recovery and avoid overtraining. And this is barely scratching the sapphire crystal surface.
Crucially, though, the watch never feels cluttered with features, data, or charts, as many others do. “We always say that, even when we’re developing those more experienced consumer features, they shouldn’t overwhelm someone who is more of a beginner,” says Blahnik. They should be easy to find and easy to use if you love them, but they shouldn’t burden people who don’t want to use them.”
Apple Watch offers Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, dual-frequency GPS, and even cellular connectivity. That right there is already more than can be said for any other fitness tracker, but what I’m talking about is how it connects us to other people.
With activity sharing, Apple Watch eschews the social network model favored by many competitors to focus instead on connecting you directly with the people you actually care about. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been swayed to hit the gym because of a notification saying that one of my close friends just completed a workout. And the option to set up a weeklong head-to-head challenge is great fun. I especially love how these kinds of interactions require virtually no extra effort.
“It’s built in such a simple way. If you invite someone, and you both say, ‘Yes, let’s share activity,’ it works with you, and you don’t have to do much,” says Blahnik. “When you do a workout, I get notified. I can send you a message. When I get a badge, you get notified. You can send me a message. It’s designed to be really lightweight, but really connected.”
And then there are the myriad ways outside of activity sharing that Apple Watch makes connection easier—like its ability to reply to a text, take a call, or send a voice note right from your wrist during a workout. And this is to say nothing of what this product can do beyond fitness, which is, of course, a lot. “It’s really lovely that the same watch you can use to pay for your coffee and do your first marathon can also take an ECG,” says Blahnik. “Whatever you might enjoy using it for, it can still be there as a guardian for your health.”