iPhone and Apple Watch new software feature to help fitness apps provide more personalised experience
Siri Shortcuts will allow health app developers to add greater functionality into their products, which will enable workout detection, music streaming and personalised hints for improving your workout
Fitness fanatics look like the biggest winners from Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in San Jose, California, where the announcements focused on new software-related innovations this year, and not hardware.
For developers – especially those of fitness apps – the new iPhone and Apple Watch software, announced at this month’s WWDC, is going to bring about many exciting changes.
“Siri Shortcuts is going to be a game-changer,” says Kayla Itsines, a celebrity personal trainer whose smartphone app, “Sweat with Kayla”, was the highest grossing fitness app in 2016, according to analytics firm App Annie, pulling in US$17 million.
The 27-year-old Australian is referring to the new feature to be launched with iOS 12 this autumn that uses a combination of hardware and software tools to predict what a user wants, or needs, to do. For example, Siri Shortcuts can use machine learning to understand a user’s daily routine, deduce that its owner likes to go for an evening jog, and begin reminding the user to do just that.
The new software feature also allows users to schedule a chain of iPhone or Apple Watch commands with a custom phrase. A user could, in theory, schedule their iPhone to load the newest episode of their favourite podcast, and prepare their morning Starbucks order for pickup, by saying, “start my morning routine”.
Another fitness app developer, Hongkonger Keith Rumjahn, 34, also singled out this feature for praise.