As a self-employed individual, you often have to find ways to stay in shape without the luxury of a gym when you’re just starting out. I have managed to run into this problem myself, so I decided to stay proactive by getting on an exercise program that I can run out of my own house. Of course, I wanted to track my progress and ensure that I was actually making gains!
One of the first problems I ran into was having trouble tracking my running or cycling – at the gym, the machines that I use would clearly display your distance, your speed, calories burned, etc and I missed that when just cycling or running around my neighbourhood. Knowing that my iPhone has a huge arsenal of apps available to it that would probably do just that, I asked around and received three great answers: RunKeeper, iMapMyRide, and MotionX GPS.
Here is the quick and dirty run down of the pros and cons of using each:
Pros
- Simple and easy to use interface
- Tracks everything beautifully
- Gives you all the details clearly and neatly
- Great integration with RunKeeper.com
Cons
- No music control (Not really an issue)
- No sharing in-app
Pros
- Works quite well
- Accurate
- Web integration
Cons
- Not very intuitive user interface
- Website is just cluttered and ugly
- Registered as metric, still measured as imperial (Didn’t auto update in settings)
Pros
- Works well and accurately
- Detailed information
- Email sharing works very well
Cons
- Ugly user interface, very cluttered and not intuitive
- Email sharing works but is riddled with advertising
—
Overall, all three of the apps were accurate and worked as desired, but iMapMyRide and MotionX GPS were both so clunky and did not have intuitive user interfaces that I decided that they just weren’t for me.
At the end of the day, I decided to go with RunKeeper for its well designed user interface and fantastic integration with runkeeper.com, a beautifully designed website that shows all of the information you could ever ask for and much more. I know this is a really quick and brief post without many details but it really comes down to preference – all three apps I have listed have Lite versions (They’re what I used!) and you should make the judgment call for yourself.
Happy exercising!
Posted on April 21st, 2010 by Jon Lim
Filed under: Life, Mobile
Leave a Reply