New Apple Products--as Imagined by the Elite Gadget Press
Posted 11/19/2009 at 5:19pm
| by Jon Phillips
exerPod
The maven of mobility wants his exercise data completely bespoke.

Mark McClusky
Products Editor, WIRED
Bona Fides: As the senior editor in charge of products at Wired, McClusky is the magazine’s gear and gadget gatekeeper, leading the charge in covering technology that’s actually shipping today. He was also an editor on Mobile (a former sister magazine of Mac|Life), where he honed his expertise in handheld technology.

There once was a day when just a single iPod ruled the portable audio universe. It had everything we needed in a music player--or so we thought. Now there are four iPods, with each version offering a form factor, feature set, and price point skewed to specific consumer needs. Could this same type of fragmentation and specialization be applied to the iPhone line? After reading McClusky’s exerPod brief, we’re excited by the possibilities.

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The exerPod is an Apple handheld devoted wholly to physical fitness. As McClusky says, “It makes the act of tracking your exercise and health totally transparent--it’s a thing you throw in your pocket, and it just does it, if you’ll pardon the Nike reference.”

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Actually, we like the Nike reference, because with the exerPod, we see more companies teaming up with Apple to create highly integrated telemetry systems that marry real-world gear (shoes, bikes, home gyms, and so on) with custom apps--much like the existing Nike+ system. But let’s let McClusky explain how this works:
“It’s the ultimate tracking device for athletes, and other folks looking to monitor their health and performance. For example, using built-in accelerometers and GPS, it tracks speed and distance for runners. There’s also ANT+ wireless support to hook up to heart-rate monitors, bike-speed sensors and power meters, and gym equipment like treadmills. Any time you’re doing anything active, it’s tracking and capturing the associated data. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi let it beam information to your computer, as well as the ecosystem of sites that will spring up to let you slice and dice the data.”

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Some might scoff that the iPhone can already do much of what McClusky envisions. Well, it can but at a hefty price--and not nearly as well. The exerPod is an inexpensive device (we see it costing $99) for folks who don’t want an Apple cell phone and simply need a small, rugged gadget that includes a battery of special features dedicated to a fitness lifestyle.
The Fauxtotypes