We Tried Apple Fitness+ Without an Apple Watch. It Went As Well as You’d Expect

The symmetrical tri-coloured rings that represent move, exercise, and stand is usually accompanied by stats of their accomplishments that day like hours spent exercising or calories burned. These are usually accompanied by a gym selfie and a #goals and other colourfully motivating hashtags like #fitgram, #getstrong, or #NoPainNoGain.

Using Apple Fitness+ without an Apple Watch

As a non Apple Watch haver, these omnipresent rings taunt me and shows me the life I could be having, I should be having. A life where I'm healthy, active, and achieving my goals.

Well, now with the launch of Apple Fitness+ on the iPhone with free 6 months subscription for people who purchased iPhone 11 and later, I can finally see what the hype is all about and close those damn rings.

Subscribing to the service is easy enough with a few taps and a Face ID approval. I won't be charged for the next few months and it will be RM19.90 once the free period ends.

The Fitness+ home screen has many Apple exclusive content with the latest being a Taylor Swift exclusive workout series. Three episodes dedicated to queen Tay Tay and her newly launched Midnights.

I promptly hit the HIIT workout since I don't do yoga and don't have a treadmill and got ready for my rings to close.

Since it's my first time with Apple Fitness+ I was impressed by the inclusion of ASL (American sign language) at the start of the video and was curious how the app would track my Move ring and my calories.

I did all this while I was in the car on my way to work instead of in the gym (for science) and found the Move ring moving on its own along with calroies burned calculated in the background.

Of course, that's to be expected. As much as I'd like to believe Apple is made of magic and their products divined from an almighty collective, there's simply no way for the Apple Fitness+ app to track my movements accurately without the Apple Watch.

But I suspect anyone who is serious about fitness and subscribes to Apple Fitness+ would want to get into it for the workouts and not only to close their rings. No point in cheating yourself for RM19.90 a month.

The Fitness+ Program (With Indirect Ads)

Think about Six Pack Shortcuts videos on YouTube, but add the production value of Hollywood and a heavy dose of artists and song mentions in your workout by your trainer and you basically have an idea of what a Fitness+ program is like.

The HIIT program under Taylor's Spotlight that we watched tried was indeed a significant workout but with these workout programs, you don't usually hear your trainer draw so much attention to a song. It was distracting to hear the trainers profess their love for Taylor Swift and call out the start of each song like a sweaty, huffing advertisement for Taylor being shouted at you while you're trying to get through a sweat sesh.

You can't turn on your own music and follow along either because each workout has been curated to Apple Music playlists. In this case, your mileage will vary depending on how much you love the Artist under Spotlight. Since these workouts are curated for fans, you may be completely fine following along on repeat sessions.

It feels like Apple Music had to make plenty of concessions just to get Taylor Swift in their playlist and the result is the constant advertisements interrupting your workout.

That said, this is a small slice of what the entire Fitness+ program is like. At the time of writing, HIIT workouts alone has 313 videos sorted by music, time of workouts, equipments, and trainers. There are 11 categories of activities to choose from including HIIT so this experience was only one of possibly thousands.

That, I will explore further in a proper review.

It's Bait

Like many of Apple's walled-garden products, they all function to draw you deeper into its ecosystem. If you've worked hard at the treadmill while using Fitness+ you'd want to see how many calories you've burned. But that's only available with the Apple Watch, no other fitness tracking devices may be used.

Say you want to view it on a bigger screen, you'll need an AirPlay compatible TV or Apple TV. If you have neither of these things, your only other option is the iPad or a compatible Mac.

Apple Fitness+ on your phone intices you to explore ways you can get a better experience with its products. So someone like me who only has the iPhone may suddenly think about first casting the workout on the big screen.

Then maybe I get serious about my workouts and want to track it and show it off on social, that's another purchase.

It's a strategy that works and I can see how giving people a free taste of their product is a good idea. I just wish there was more customisation, but since Apple Fitness+ was launched in December 2020, I don't have my hopes up.