Nike's competition from the wide variety of Garmin GPS watches is changing sports technology a bit, but they still seem to have a few common complaints:
- I (and many others) don't want a watch twice as wide as my wrist. Wearing that beast anywhere but running is impractical and you might as well have "Nerd" tattooed on your forehead.
- If you're a trail runner, I've heard that signal acquisition from satellites is a bit of a chore. I've seen many runners standing zombie-like with their arm straight out, waiting for the signal to lock.
- The GPS watches all seem to shortchange a runner's distance, when compared against a known distance. (rounds too many corners, maybe?)
Personally, I don't like Nike's running shoes, so I use the Nike+ sensor in a small velcro pouch on top of the laces of my running shoes-of-choice. My sensor is paired to my 2G iPod Touch, which I carry in a velcro sleeve on my arm. The visibility on the touchscreen is great, but I find myself hitting the "home" button to just hear my distance, time and pace while I continue to dodge tree roots.
My only performance complaint is that occasionally it will simply stop tracking my distance about a mile into my run… I've learned to check it periodically so that I'm not cursing it when I realize I just finished 8 miles and have no stats to show for it. If you run both roads and trails, it's best to calibrate to a pace / stride somewhere in-between the two. (My trail runs tend to be a bit generous with the distance.)
My biggest gripe with Nike+ is that with the iPhone and iPod touch, there is NO reason that I should have to sync my run back to my computer before it is uploaded to the Nike+ web site. I'd love to instantly upload my run when I finish, check and see how long my next training run should be, and compare my distance, pace, etc.
So why not? FLASH! The Nike+ site is totally constructed in Adobe Flash, which Apple now claims is "buggy" and unstable. With all of the hype that Apple has placed upon Nike+ and the iPod product line, the big hangup is that Apple has chosen not to support the web platform on these devices that Nike chose to develop the Nike+ application! In simple terms, this means that I can't view my runs, distance, or anything else in Nike+ on my iPod Touch, iPhone or now even an iPad! Surely there are other runners out there that now have an iPod for running, and want to be able to review these runs on their iPad!?!
There should be no need for the complexity of a computer in the midst of a simple task like uploading and viewing my run, given the advanced capabilities of these devices. Who will blink first, Apple or Nike? Or will Apple simply decide that the stakes in the Flash game are too great, and just ditch Nike+ support altogether?
Outside of a stalemate, there seem to be two options...
1. Apple caves on Flash (unlikely). This would allow the Nike+ app to presumably run as-is on the iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad devices.
2. Nike redevelops Nike+ using HTML5, ditching Flash (a little more likely). Apple seems to love HTML5 (as alluded to by Jobs in his iPad launch). This would probably greatly improve the performance of the Nike+ site, which is consistently slower than my Sunday morning runs.
I'm hoping for the latter… I believe that Nike will recognize the need for this investment to maintain Apple's and it's customers' interest in Nike sports technology.
