I wanted to post my experience with the fitness portion of the Apple Watch, as there have been many questions, complaints, and comments about this, and I am hoping that I can help a little bit by sharing my quest for Apple Watch nirvana. I am in no way saying that this will work for everyone, or that this is everyone’s experience, this only applies to me.
So I have had the watch for 24 days. I have talked to 4 senior advisors, 3 apple geniuses, and have combed through dozens of discussions boards for help, or a definitive answer on my issues with the watch. The watch, in the beginning, was not giving me full credit for exercise, in either the workout app, or the activity app. I originally thought it was only giving me credit when I hit 75% of my max heart rate, which is 134, but this was not consistent. I calibrated, unpaired and paired, unpaired and paired and setup as a new watch, and then recalibrated, I have no tattoos, my heart rate recorded properly to the health app, I have normal blood flow to my arm, my watch was on correctly with skin contact. The last straw was on this past Thursday, where I walked as hard as I could for 36 minutes. I didn’t stop, and my heart rate was in the 140s to 150s for 33 minutes of my 36 minute walk, with an average pace of 3.2 MPH, which according to the ACSM is a brisk walk. GPS tracked me accurately as well. It gave me 0 minutes, and I mean 0 minutes of that walk. I actually ended up with heat exhaustion because it was almost 90 degrees and I walked to fast and hard. 0 minutes given my friends.
Fast forward to two weekends ago, and the 3rd Apple Genius ran a diagnostic on my phone. My phone was completely screwed up in terms of memory placement, including all the fitness apps. So we restored my phone, and then restored the backup. It has fixed half of the problem. If I just use the activity app, without the workout app on the phone, the Activity app counts all of my minutes. The Workout App still gives me 1 or 2 minutes when it is use. And yes, I have used other, and it gives me all the minutes, but it feels like I am cheating. So, my conclusion is that there is something glitch with the Workout app itself that I am hoping will be resolved with the WatchOS 2 release.
It took two more weeks after that (last Friday) where yet another senior OS chat person came back with that "I am not moving fast enough to meet Apple's exercise threshold". Really? 3.2MPH and 145 bmp isn't enough for you people? I am not satisfied with that answer in the least, plus I don't think it's true. 3.2MPH is clearly a brisk walk. And if I don't have the workout app recording the walk, all of my minutes count. I am still trying to decide if I should put up a fight and exchange it for a new watch, and attribute it to hardware rather than software. I still might if the iOS9 and WatchOS 2 doesn't fix anything.
The other thing is that the resting calories are sooooo high. I am a short fat 42 year old lady, Calculations have my BMR at 1844 and my RMR at 1641. Apple has my resting calories at 3363! If I could burn that many calories just resting, I would look like Kristen Chenoweth. I have read that they will be fixing that too. And yes, I have submitted feedback to Apple, and yes, I know they don’t read the boards.
I don’t know if anyone cares, but thought I would share. Thank you!