Outrunning the Apple Watch

When the Apple Watch was first released, no one really knew what it was. Was it a computer for your wrist? A fashion piece? A fitness tracker? Or something else? To be fair, the smartwatch market was—and still is—in its infancy, so it’s understandable that there would be some growing pains. But in the time since they first announced the Watch, Apple has been forced to refine their approach and decide what exactly the device is for and who it should be marketed to. One of those key demographics: athletes.

I wouldn’t consider myself athletic by any means. I played football for one season in junior high school and absolutely hated it; that was the extent of my sports career. But after I graduated from college, I took up running as a way of staying active and quickly found that I love it. The feeling of the wind against me, the soreness in my muscles after a good workout, and the sense of achievement I gain from constantly pushing myself to improve are just a few of the things I enjoy most about running. Not to mention that I simply look and feel better when I’m saying active.

When I first bought my Apple Watch, I didn’t take its fitness tracking features too seriously. Sure, it was cool that I could get a snapshot of my heart rate and an estimate of the number of calories I burned each run, but it seemed more like a gimmick than anything else. But as the Watch became more and more a part of my everyday life and I heard message after message from Apple about what a great fitness tracker the device was supposed to be, I started to pay more attention, and I wasn’t entirely impressed with what I found. Comparing the data provided by my Watch with other sources (especially workout machines and my own experience while running) led to me to a startling conclusion: Even though I’m not a particularly good runner, I’m pushing the Apple Watch to (and sometimes even past) its limit when it comes to fitness tracking.

I’ve found the Watch to be limited in its fitness tracking capabilities in two key areas: distance and heart rate. The first is more forgivable. I tend to run on a treadmill rather than on the street, which means the Watch has to depend on its accelerometer rather than GPS to measure how far I run. Basically, the Watch acts as a pedometer, estimating my distance by the back-and-forth movements made by my arms as I run. Maybe the Watch just doesn’t like my stride or pace, but it consistently measures my running distance well below the measurement I get from the treadmill, which I assume to be more accurate. This is frustrating because I use the Health app to keep a record of my exercise, and this limitation leaves me with underestimated statistics.

But even more frustrating is the heart rate problem. Independent research has concluded that the Apple Watch has the most accurate heart rate monitor of all wearable technologies on the consumer market, and the sensor has proven able to detect health issues in people wearing the Watch long before other symptoms arise. At least on paper, the heart rate monitor in the Apple Watch seems pretty incredible.

Why is it, then, that every time I go for a run, the heart monitor freaks out intermittently and simply stops working? I keep the Watch attached tightly to my wrist throughout my exercise routine, sometimes even adjusting it to fit more snugly if it starts to slip due to sweat. And yet, it seems that every time I work out, the heart rate indicator on the little screen goes dark for at least a few minutes, and I have no idea how this is affecting the results that the Watch reports at the end of each run.

I can’t be sure, but it is my suspicion that the Watch's heart rate monitor can only measure up to a certain level before it gets overwhelmed and starts losing count. It seems that if I go past 170 BPM (heartbeats per minute), the Watch just sort of gives up and stops counting until the rate comes back down. This seems like a pretty low bar, considering the fact that athletes can push themselves well past 170 BPM during training, so if Apple is serious about making the Watch the go-to wearable for athletes, they should probably upgrade the heart sensor's capabilities.

Apple seems to be aware of these issues and is working to rectify them. At this year’s Worldwide Developer Conference, CEO Tim Cook announced a new set of software tools called GymKit that will allow workout machine makers to make their machines sync with Apple Watches via near-field communications to ensure that each device is measuring and sharing the data it is best suited for. But it is unclear if these features will be available on existing machines or will roll out slowly as gyms buy new models. I’m keeping my fingers crossed. GymKit is certainly a step in the right direction, and it indicates Apple’s commitment to making the Watch the perfect wearable for athletes, but it remains to be seen if these changes will be enough.

I don’t mean to be hyper-critical. The Apple Watch is a great device, and it is certainly the best wearable on the market right now. For most people and most use cases, its activity tracking capabilities are more than adequate. But Apple wants the Watch to be for athletes, and they are the power users of wearable technology, the ones who push their devices to the limit. The Watch is going to have to step it up in order to keep up with runners like me.

Does Prayer "Work"?

It’s one of the oldest questions in the book. Besides the theodicy question (which we’ll leave for another blog post), it’s probably the most common question asked by and of people of faith in the 21st century. We Christians spend a lot of time talking to God: thanking him, praising him, making requests of him, and the like. And yet, it often feels like God isn’t talking back to us, at least not in ways that we can hear. So why is it that we spend so much time and energy on prayer? Does prayer actually do anything?

I think it’s impossible to escape this question. I know that I’ve wrestled with it myself. Even people with deep, sincere faith commitments go through times that force them to wonder if God’s out there listening or if they’re simply talking to themselves when they pray. It’s an inevitable part of the life of faith, and we shouldn’t feel ashamed for it. After all, if you find yourself asking yourself this question, you’re in good company among biblical authors, theologians, and great leaders from Christian history.

In order to answer this question, I think we have to be open to new understandings of what it means for prayer to “work.” If your definition of a successful prayer is one that is answered exactly the way you hoped it would be, then no, prayer doesn’t work. At least, not the way you’d like for it to. Rather, prayer works in other ways that are deeper, less easily recognized, and sometimes more mysterious than we often imagine. I’m not claiming to have this whole issue figured out or even to be an expert on prayer, but I would like to offer a few ways in which I think prayer does in fact work.

Prayer works as an act of obedience.

One of the most basic reasons that we pray is because God tells us to. Even when we don’t want to, even when we feel like there’s no point, even when we’ve said all that we can say and run out of words, we still pray out of obedience to our God. One of the most amazing truths about God is that he wants to be in relationship with us, and relationship requires communication. So even if we don’t think that we’re doing anything more through our prayers than simply carrying out God’s desire for us to reach out to him, we’re still accomplishing something by doing so because obeying God is ultimately what’s best for us, and he blesses those who do his will.

Prayer works as a means of formation.

A line I often hear in reference to prayer is the cliche, “Prayer doesn’t change things; prayer changes us.” While I fundamentally disagree with the first half of that statement, I understand where it’s coming from, and I agree with the idea that prayer does have an effect on the one who prays. When we pray, we’re communing with God, and we can’t help but walk away from that kind of encounter changed in some way. Even the act of starting a prayer is an act of trust that helps us to express and grow our faith. And ultimately, the more time we spend with God, the more we know him and become like him. Prayer changes us by forming us more and more into the people who God created us to be, and if that isn’t prayer “working,” I don’t know what is.

Prayer works by changing things.

And finally, prayer works by actually changing the way things are in the world. This is ultimately the reason that we pray, right? Because we believe that by bringing our concerns to God, we can somehow influence the situations and issues that we face in our lives. And amazingly, God made it so that our prayers do exactly that. I don’t pretend to understand all of the mechanics behind it, but my reading of scripture, my study of theology, and my experience in my own faith journey have all taught me that the prayers of the faithful somehow influence God in such a way that the world is different as a result of those prayers.

Diseases are healed through the power of prayer. Relationships are mended through the power of prayer. Droughts end, jobs are attained, and lost pets come home as a direct result of the prayers of God’s people. I can’t say I completely understand it, but I believe it because I’ve seen it and because God’s word tells me that it is true.

It’s important to note that not everything we ask for in prayer is granted to us. Although prayer is powerful, there are other forces at play as well—especially the will of God—that may not always line up with what we want, and we have to be graceful enough to accept when this happens without giving up on prayer. Like any good parent, God sometimes tells his children no, and that can feel devastating. But we believe that God, in his infinite love and wisdom, is ultimately in control and working all things together for good for those who love and pursue him.

And so we pray. Even when things seem bleak, we pray. We pray out of obedience to our heavenly father. We pray in order to become the sort of people the Lord is calling us to be. And we pray with hope that our prayers will influence God and ultimately change the situations that we find ourselves in. Prayer is a powerful thing, and when we properly understand what prayer is for, we can say with conviction that prayer truly does work. Praise God that it does.

Stunted Characters On-Screen (and Off)

There’s a reason we like coming-of-age stories. Something inside of us just loves watching the process of a character growing up before our eyes. Even more than our culture’s obsession with youth, I think this is the reason why the protagonists of so many films these days are teenagers. I must admit that I’m a sucker for these films as well. Some of my all-time favorite movies (The Perks of Being a Wallflower, It’s Kind of a Funny Story, even Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) fall into this category.

Another popular coming-of-age story: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. This one’s a little bit different because the main character is middle-aged, but the movie makes very clear from its first few moments that he has a lot of growing up to do. Walter has great ambitions and a vivid imagination, but he’s so afraid of the world around him that he avoids any sort of risk at all, to the point that it significantly inhibits his ability to live his life. I disliked the movie upon first watching it because I found the character of Walter to be so emotionally stunted that I just couldn’t relate to him.

But the more I paid attention to character development in both movies and TV shows, the more I noticed that almost every story’s protagonist is portrayed as significantly stunted in one way or another. Even characters who seem well-rounded and likeable at first turn out to be incredibly immature in a single area or trait, as if that part of their psyche suddenly stopped developing one day during childhood while the rest continued to grow normally. It’s easy to miss because we’ve grown so accustomed to it, but all you have to do is consider your favorite movie or TV show. How does the main character grow throughout the story? How far behind is he or she in those areas at the beginning of the story? If my experience with on-screen storytelling is any indication, the character probably starts well behind what would be considered normal for someone of his or her age.

But one has to wonder how realistic these portrayals really are. After all, we root for these characters because we relate to them. Nobody’s perfect, and we each have areas of our personalities and approaches to the world that we need to work on. It might even be accurate to say that we are each stunted in certain ways by negative experiences we endure growing up.

But do you know anyone who’s really as afraid of tasking risks as Walter Mitty, who at the beginning of the story is too scared to even fill out an online dating profile for fear of being rejected? Onscreen, it may seem endearing and even relatable, but in real life, someone with that level of fear would probably be considered mentally ill. In order to make Walter’s traits clear, the creators of the film have used exaggeration in his portrayal.

This exaggeration stems from a basic rule of storytelling: Show, don’t tell. If the narrator of the film simply told us that Walter was afraid of the world around him, we may not understand the depths of his struggle, and we certainly wouldn’t be as interested in his story. This exaggeration very clearly states what his problem is, making it all the more clear and satisfying as we watch him overcome these issues throughout the film.

Exaggeration is a necessary part of storytelling, but it’s a double-edged sword. Storytellers can rely on the tool too much and become lazy. Instead of showing us the story of a flawed person becoming extraordinary, they show us the story of an abnormally stunted person becoming normal, hoping that we’ll be impressed despite the low bar that they have set for their character. It’s not their fault, really. It’s become an accepted part of telling stories these days. But I think that this kind of storytelling can become dangerous when viewers are exposed to it over and over uncritically.

And this becomes even more of an issue with television shows. I’ve recently been binge-watching the Ryan Murphy dramedy Glee, which ran on Fox a few years back. The show centers on a high school show choir and the so-called educators who influence them. I can’t really call them “teachers” because it often feels like the adults on the show are less mature than the students, using the kids to fulfill their own lost dreams and to manipulate one another, often to the detriment of the students’ educations. They’re actually quite abhorrent people.

Until the season finale, of course, when everyone learns their lesson and emerges from their struggles having become a better person for them. This is typical of the storytelling style I’ve outlined above. But the problem with TV shows (and, to a lesser degree, with movie sequels) is that if a story resonates with a lot of people, the storytellers are expected to use the same characters to tell a similarly compelling story again. This means that the same characters the audience has watched grow over the past season must now start over in a new area of growth (or potentially fall back into the same old, bad habits from when the audience first meets them) and start the process all over again.

This cycle of going from stuntedness to growth back to stuntedness over and over might have the effect of further normalizing immaturity and selfishness beyond even the storytelling trope of exaggeration, and this could be a huge problem. We are affected, informed, and even formed by the media we consume. We aspire to be like our favorite TV and movie characters, and if we spend years watching them act in ways that are completely unacceptable and abnormal, we may eventually accept this sort of stuntedness as a normal aspect of life, which leads us dangerously close to simply accepting any stuntedness, immaturity, or selfishness we may recognize in ourselves.

Maybe I’m being overly dramatic. Maybe I’m thinking way too much about this, and it really isn’t as much of an issue as I fear. But as a massive consumer of media myself, I know that I’ve personally felt the effects of this phenomenon, and I don’t need any extra forces in my life pushing me towards complacency. Ultimately, the stories we tell and the stories we listen to form the people that we become, and I want to seek out stories that enrich my life and encourage me to be all that I can be, or at least learn to cut through the misused exaggeration and interpret stories in that way. I’d encourage you to do the same if you, like me, are concerned about the way that storytelling’s power is being used in media today.

What I'm Watching This Summer

If you’ve been following me on social media or reading this blog for very long, you know that I love consuming media and talking about content that makes me smile. And I watch a lot of stuff. After getting excited for fall premieres and watching regular TV through the spring, I’m usually eager for summer, when I can get a break from the constant barrage of new episodes and slow down for a bit. This summer is no different. But even though most of my TV shows are off the air for now, summer blockbuster season is just getting started, and there are still a few shows releasing new stuff in the summer months. So here’s a selection of the shows and movies I’m watching this summer and why I’m excited to see each of them.

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movies

Baby Driver

This is the first movie that I’ll be going into blind for a very long time. I haven’t seen a trailer for Baby Driver or even really any posters. What little I know about it has come from word-of-mouth, and it’s got me very excited. The film is directed by Edgar Wright, who previously directed Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and spent years developing Ant-Man before leaving the project during production. I’m really excited to see something new from him, and he’s put together an epic cast as well. I guess the movie is about a stunt driver or something? I don’t know. But I trust Wright and look forward to seeing the cast he’s assembled on-screen soon.

Spider-Man: Homecoming

Hands-down, Spider-Man is my favorite superhero. I grew up watching Tobey McGuire play Peter Parker, and I related to his story so much. I even stuck through the Andrew Garfield days, when Spider-Man was a skateboarding punk. And now, after years of patience, Spidey fans are finally getting the film adaptation we deserve. We got a taste of Tom Holland’s version of the hero in last year’s Captain America: Civil War, and that preview combined with early reviews of Homecoming indicate that this is going to be the best Spider-Man film to date. I’m really happy that the character is finally under the creative control of Marvel Studios, giving him the ability to interact with the world of the Avengers and his mentor, Tony Stark, who features prominently in the film. Spider-Man: Homecoming releases on July 7, but I’ll already have seen it by then because I’ll definitely be attending a Thursday night premiere.

Despicable Me 3

Summer movies aren’t just for grown-ups. The kids have to get some love, too. And since my nephew is a huge Minions fan, I have an excuse to go see the newest Despicable Me sequel in theaters. The first film was a huge hit, and I thought the follow-up and spin-off were equally entertaining, if not quite as endearing. The threequel is set to feature a look into Gru’s backstory and family dynamics after he finds out about his long-lost twin brother, who happens to be a villain. Will Gru choose to return to his former life of evil, undermining the growth we’ve seen in him over the past two films? Or will he choose to stay true to his newfound family and the sense of fulfillment they give him? Either way, we’re going to see Minions running a prison gang, which on its own makes this movie worth seeing when it comes out this weekend.

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TV

Planet of the Apps

This show is Apple’s first attempt at creating original television content, and it’s only available to Apple Music subscribers. I was already a subscriber to the service for its music streaming services, so I decided to give the show a shot. It’s got a Shark Tank vibe, but with Apple’s own techy spin. I think they’re still trying to nail down exactly what the format will be, but I’m enjoying the show a few episodes in. Some of the featured apps are really compelling, and it’s fun to see the advisors teach app developers how to pitch their products to investors. Plus, the failed pitches can be pretty funny, too. It’s unclear how many episodes Apple plans on releasing this summer, but for now, I’m enjoying my weekly dose of Planet of the Apps on Apple Music.

Suits

Props to USA Network for taking a premise that sounds like it should only last a season or two and making it work year after year. Suits is a drama about a young man who decides to impersonate an attorney at an upscale New York law firm and the complacent, overachieving senior partner who decides to give him a shot. Over the years, Suits has focused a lot more on the relationships between the characters than on the show’s premise, but that central conflict has always weaved its way in and out of the story in creative ways. Season seven premieres July 12, and I’m happy that I don’t have a lot of shows to keep up with this summer so that I can really pay attention to the intricacies of one. It offers enough depth and complexity to keep me occupied all summer long.

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bonus

summer binge: Glee

This show first came out as I was graduating high school, so it has a special place in my heart. I spent my first summer post-high school binging season one and listening to the soundtrack in my car. Even though I didn’t stick with Glee through its initial run, I’ve always meant to go back and experience it start-to-finish, if for no other reason than to see what happened to my favorite characters. I’m almost through season one, and I’ve had a lot of fun re-experiencing the show all these years later. Plus, the music makes for great motivation at the gym. I don’t know that I’ll power through all six seasons this summer, but I’m committed to binging Glee until I finish it this time around.

podcasts

One other medium I’ve recently gotten really into is podcasts. I find the format to be much more intimate than movies or TV shows, and it’s a lot easier to fit into my schedule since I can listen while I’m driving or performing certain tasks at work. I listen to podcasts non-stop, and I’ll continue to do so over the summer. I’m subscribed to so many that, even though a few of my favorites are taking a summer break, I’ll still have plenty to listen to. I’m particularly excited to keep listening to Red Couch from Relevant Magazine and to check out the upcoming collaboration between Microsoft and Gimlet, .future. If you haen’t given podcasts a try, why not do it now, while you’re not totally distracted by new TV shows? Those two podcasts would be a great place to start.

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So that’s what I’m watching (and listening to) this summer. Now I want to hear from you. What’s on your list of things you’re looking forward to seeing this summer? Have any suggestions for podcasts I’m missing out on? I’d love to hear from you. Thanks for reading, friends, and I’ll see you next week!

My Thoughts on WWDC 2017

As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, Apple held its annual Worldwide Developer Conference a couple of weeks ago and made some huge announcements about the future of their software and hardware (though, predictably, not the iPhone). I won’t go into all of the announcements here. If you’d like a roundup of those, check out my other site, Prosumable, where I summarized all of them. However, more important than the individual announcements themselves is what Apple’s changes as a whole indicate about the direction the company is moving in. And that’s what I want to get into today.

WWDC is a chance not only to get a preview of what’s to come for all of our favorite devices but also an opportunity to peer behind the veil into the mind of Apple: their process for iteratively adding value to each of their devices, their priorities in creating new devices, and their vision for what the future of technology should look like. This year was particularly insightful, I think, because it represents the culmination of a few moves that Apple’s been working on for a while but kept under wraps. Here are my big-picture takeaways from this year’s keynote and what I think they mean for Apple’s future:

The iPad can actually be your computer now. With iOS 11, Apple is giving the iPad a proper file management system, significantly more powerful multitasking and window management, and a platform-wide drag-and-drop feature that couldn’t be more intuitive. All of this results in a user experience that is truly desktop-class. Apple’s been trying to market the iPad as a laptop replacement for a long time by highlighting what you can do with the powerful apps that developers have created for the platform, but now those apps are supplemented by a full-fledged operating system that pushes the iPad to new limits and makes it a true laptop alternative. Since I started using iOS 11 on my new iPad Pro, my MacBook Pro has been sitting unused on my desk, and I don’t miss it. For casual users, the iPad has been a viable option for an everyday computer for years; now, it’s an option for everyone.

The iMac can actually be your pro computer now. Over the past year or so, there has been an increasing amount of outcry against Apple for allegedly ignoring its professional users. Scandalous tell-alls written by pros who’ve ditched the Mac for Windows have gone viral and been used as evidence that the company has given up on power users. Apple recently invited select members of the press to an event on their campus where executives fessed up to making major blunders with the Mac Pro and promised that Macs for professionals were on the way, but this didn’t convince everyone. Now, with the announcement of more powerful iMacs and the all-new iMac Pro, the company is putting to rest any doubt that pros may have had that they are still a priority in the eyes of Apple. As I’ve argued before, Apple cares deeply for their professional users; pros are Apple’s past and future. And they made that very clear with their Mac hardware announcements at WWDC.

Privacy is more important than convenience, but innovation is possible. In a world where Google and Facebook are hungrier than ever for user data, Apple has emerged as the technology company that prioritizes the privacy of its users, going so far as to protect consumers‘ data even from the company itself. This has earned the trust of the public, but it has also created some serious hurdles in software design and innovation. It turns out that sacrificing users’ privacy makes way for shortcuts in the development of new technologies and applications (especially when it comes to artificial intelligence), so it often looks like Apple is falling behind the competition in these areas. At several points during the WWDC keynote, Apple executives discussed their commitment to protecting user data and how they’re staying innovative and competitive despite the limitations that come along with that commitment. Developing a more powerful, proactive Siri assistant that recognizes a user across his or her various devices without violating that user’s privacy is no simple feat, but they’ve accomplished it. Privacy and innovation can go hand-in-hand. In fact, Apple argues that their way ultimately results in better technology, and I would have to agree with them.

Augmented reality is all fun and games for now, but its future is much bigger. Tim Cook has been hinting at Apple’s augmented reality ambitions for years, but we’ve never seen anything come of it until this year’s WWDC. At the event, the company displayed a very basic application of its new ARKit, a set of development tools that will make augmented reality accessible to anyone who makes apps for iOS devices. For now, the technology is being used to create games that can be virtually placed and played on surfaces in the real world, which is cool but not all that practical or mind-blowing. But with ARKit, Apple has suddenly made every iOS device an AR portal and made every iOS developer an AR developer. It’s only a matter of time before the collective genius of the iOS developer community creates applications for augmented reality that completely change the way we interact with our devices and go about our day-to-day lives. I have no idea what the applications will be, but I’m excited to see what the future holds for AR.

Apple is listening. Throughout its history, there has always been this narrative that Apple doesn’t ask consumers what they want and then give it to them; rather, Apple creates something and then tells consumers, “This is what you want.” The company is known for always being on the cutting-edge of where technology is going and how people want to use it. This story rang true for a very long time, I’d say for as long as Steve Jobs led the company. But Steve’s final Apple project, the company’s new Apple Park campus, is complete, and they have a new leader in Tim Cook. He has a different approach to leading Apple, and that showed more than ever at this year’s WWDC. Announcements like a file system on the iPad and the new iMac Pro may seem sudden to consumers, but these are things that have taken Apple years to develop and implement, all while consumers have been requesting them and lamenting that “Apple doesn’t listen to us” when they aren’t delivered. The truth is that Apple is listening to their customers and taking their concerns very seriously, and we are beginning to see the amazing things that the company is creating to fulfill their customers’ wants and needs.

These are just a few of my key takeaways from watching the event and reflecting on it over the past couple of weeks. While the announcements themselves are exiting, and I’m really enjoying trying several of them out myself, I’m even more excited about what these announcements say about Apple’s mindset and where the company is going. There will always be haters and skeptics out there, but I think that if there’s WWDC is any indication, the future of Apple is bright. And with the announcement of the tenth-anniversary iPhone right around the corner, I for one can’t wait to see what they come up with next.

Thanks for checking out my thoughts on this year’s WWDC. Have an opinion about the event or my analysis of it that you’d like to share? I’d love to discuss it with you! Let’s talk on Twitter, via email, or in the comments section of this post. I’m always happy to talk tech. Thanks for reading, friends. I hope you have a great week!