Wireless Muse: Reiter's Wireless Internet Weblog

My cellular medical monitoring article -- more prescient than I thought? Apple's fitness patents

Earlier this month I wrote my weekly CMP “Internet Evolution” column about the development of medical monitoring products and services for cellular.  Perhaps I was a bit more prescient than I thought because Apple might be developing something a bit similar.

According to AppleInsider, Apple is developing a variety of products for fitness/health uses, including medical monitoring.  The publication has posted about 20 photocopies of potential features, with multiple screen shots (see below). 

The article says, “A series of patent filings discovered by AppleInsider this week provides an overview of four distinct components that will comprise the system, including an iTunes-like software application, hardware-based heart rate and physiological sensors, a rewards tracker, and a component to facilitate synchronous group activities.

“Akin to a more advanced version of the company's Nike + iPod sport kit, the companion system would utilize a new software application for Macs and Windows PCs that would serve to ‘interview’ the user via a series of dialogs.”

Nokia’s efforts

Nokia is arguably the most innovative cellular phone manufacturers and conducts a tremendous amount of research.  It has debuted a beta version of a health application, Sports Tracker, for keeping records of workouts (see below).

Sports Tracker works with GPS devices to plot the location of jogging and walking.  The software is compatible with many Nokia Nseries and Eseries handsets as well as other models, such as the new N82, which I discussed in my camera phone weblog.

(As I was researching the Sports Tracker, I came across an interesting post from Jenifer Hanen, a Web designer and blogger who takes lots of photos with Nokia phones, including the N82 and N95.  She writes how the Sport Tracker could be used as a camera phone photo application with GPS tracking.)

Apple iPhone needs new package for typing, mobile computing

Now that Apple has proclaimed its intention to get its iPhone into the enterprise (see above), the company needs to offer a hardware/software package that provides a much better typing and document management experience.

Despite the fulsome crowing of Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs and other Apple executives about the wonderfulness of the iPhone’s virtual keyboard, it’s not that good, even with the predictive text. 

Instead of trying to compare the keyboard in a more favorable light to Research in Motion’s BlackBerry keyboard (see below) — which is a joke if you’ve ever used the superior BlackBerry physical keyboard — Apple ought to transform the iPhone into a significantly better portable computing device for enterprise users.

Based on the state of technology, the iPhone’s virtual keyboard will remain inferior to good physical keyboards on cellular phones.  Also, the iPhone’s current lack of good business software, especially office suite software, is a big problem.

Creating a great MID

I believe the iPhone can be one of the best so-called “Mobile Internet Devices” (MIDs) without a great deal of effort.  Today’s MIDs are computing devices — either without keyboards or with keyboards that are small, cramped and difficult to type on. 

Here’s what Apple needs in order to blow these MIDs out of the water:

1.  End the iPhone’s crippled Bluetooth profiles (and people complained about Verizon Wireless crippling Bluetooth functionality in its phones!) so they support, among other things, external keyboards.

2.  Offer a great office suite for the iPhone — at least Apple’s iWork ‘08 and, preferably, Microsoft’s Office 2008 for Mac.

3.  Take advantage of Apple’s brilliant industrial design capabilities to develop the best Bluetooth portable folding keyboard.

4.  Again taking advantage of its design expertise — create a beautiful and functional carrying case for the iPhone + keyboard, including the ability to prop up the iPhone.

5.  Then, sell this hardware/software combination as a brilliant mobile computing solution:  Prop up the iPhone in its carrying case, unfold and pair the keyboard to the iPhone, launch the office suite and you’ve got a great lightweight (under two pounds) package for typing long documents, creating spreadsheets, entering long e-mail messages, etc.

One more thing….

And while Apple is enabling the iPhone’s Bluetooth profile for external keyboards, it should also enable it for tethering as a modem.  I assume AT&T would demand users pay an extra fee for the modem function.

Many business users would love to use the iPhone as a modem with their laptop computers, especially once the pokey EDGE phone is replaced later this year with a 3G (HSDPA) version. 

I sometimes use BlackBerry EDGE phones on T-Mobile, connected to my laptop via a cable.  EDGE is okay for downloading most e-mail and browsing most Web pages.  It’s far inferior to 3G or WiFi, but good enough when they — or an Ethernet connection — aren’t available.

I prefer to use either a regular 3G data modem, preferably Sprint or Verizon CDMA Rev. A because it’s much faster and more reliable than AT&T’s current HSDPA implementation.  Or, I’ll connect a phone as a modem with a cable rather than using Bluetooth because it’s typically easier, faster and more reliable.