Do you know Apple GymKit? Promising technology is held back not only by Apple, but also by accessory manufacturers

It was in 2017 when Apple introduced a certain GymKit. This is intended to allow Apple Watch users to connect their smartwatches to gym equipment for better measurement metrics on both sides – the machine and your wrist. But have you heard from him since then? 

"For the first time, we enable two-way real-time data exchange with exercise equipment," said during WWDC 2017, Kevin Lynch, vice president of technology at Apple. GymKit still exists, but has been completely forgotten about. Pairing with exercise bikes or treadmills should have been simple and based on NFC technology, so there was no problem there. The latter was such that separate applications outgrew this option. 

Firstly, relatively few brands have adopted it (Peloton, Life Fitness, Cybex, Matrix, Technogymv, Schwinn, Star Trac, StairMaster, Nautilus/Octane Fitness), and secondly, these solutions are quite expensive. But with regard to the Peloton brand, there was potential here, because you could buy its exercise bike at home and pedal nicely away from the eyes of others. But last year, Peloton canceled GymKit support, except for a few cycling courses.

The future is Fitness+ 

Instead of integrating GymKit into their products, gym equipment manufacturers use their own apps that essentially offer the same functionality, or even better and more up-to-date. Even those can send you relevant information directly to your wrist, just like GymKit does, so there's really no real reason to integrate it. It can only sound like another attempt by Apple to get its label on more and more products that are practically unrelated to it. 

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Apple Watch fitness FB

Source: Unsplash

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So GymKit is a good idea that kind of missed the mark. But the biggest mistake is not expensive products and small extensions, like the fact that Apple does not mention it at all. We hear about Fitness+ all the time, but we all forgot about GymKit. Fitness+ is likely to be the future of exercise, so it's more than likely that this is the last (and possibly the first) article you read about GymKit.