Apple Fitness+ Launches
They did a good job with this. It’s not a deeply technical proposition but sometimes simple ideas and good execution are all you need. Fitness+ is high quality and well produced workout videos overlaid with live metrics readouts from a connected Watch. Straightforward, technologically trivial, but effective.
I’m not sure if I would pay a dedicated $9.99 per month subscription plan for it. I have never subscribed to any other online fitness scheme stuff. However, Fitness+ is incorporated into my Apple One Premier plan and it is undisputedly a solid value add that makes me less likely to cancel.
One of the few issues with this 1.0 release is that Fitness+ workouts do not work with AirPlay. When you select a fourth- or fifth-generation Apple TV from the outputs list in the Fitness app video player on iPhone or iPad, it seamlessly launches the tvOS Fitness app on the big screen and navigates to the same place. It’s like a deep link shortcut. This is fine if you are an Apple TV household, but owners of other AirPlay compatible devices — like the plethora of smart TVs that now integrate AirPlay 2 natively — are left out in the cold. When you try to connect to one of these outputs, Fitness+ sends the audio stream but the video signal is simply black.
Some have speculated this limitation is in place is because of DRM and piracy concerns. I don’t think that is the reason. First released in 2010, AirPlay was designed with Apple’s content licensing requirements in mind from the beginning. That’s why you can freely AirPlay content from the iTunes Store like your purchased movies or stream from Apple TV+, Netflix and countless other services. AirPlay is a DRM friendly technology. I think the reason Fitness+ currently does not support it is because of how the metric overlays are implemented. My understanding is these are not being encoded into the realtime video stream, but superimposed by the GPU as separate layers and rendered as iOS views. Therefore, Apple needs to do a bit more work to get the transmitted AirPlay stream to include these elements.
In terms of the future of Fitness+, there are obvious routes for Apple to follow. To better compete with the likes of Peloton, Apple needs to embrace the social gamification aspects of online fitness with things like friends leaderboards and broadcast live workout sessions, which would allow the hosts to shoutout participating members. And as beautifully dressed as the Fitness+ studio is, I would welcome a change of setting every now and again; perhaps film trainers running around a park or visiting famous sites like Olympic stadiums. These are the kind of avenues that Apple should explore if it wants to give Fitness+ longevity beyond the COVID-induced fad of at-home fitness.