Pillow and iOS 8: HealthKit | Hacker News Reader

Pillow and iOS 8: HealthKit

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21 pointsbaronetto9 comments

I'll talk to something that Pillow did for me that I couldn't easily find in other sleep tracking apps: audio recording. For the past couple of months in my new place, I couldn't figure out why that no matter how much sleep I got, I still woke up absolutely drained and tired. Other sleep tracking apps showed nothing out of the ordinary in my sleeping patterns and they even matched previous sleep cycles.

After the first night of using Pillow, I immediately found the problem. I learned that throughout almost the entire night I would go into these throat-scratching fits. The reason the other apps didn't show anything is because my movement didn't change, I would just lay there and scratch my throat. On a recording it sounds like a frog croaking. Except this would go on for 15-20 minute intervals nearly 8 times throughout the night. This was a clear sign of my allergies; whenever I'm awake and up and I knowingly make that sound, it's because something is irritating my allergies to such a degree that "throat-scratching" helps soothe it. Now I take a generic Zyrtec before bed, and I sleep like a baby again.

Now this wasn't a very scientific test (I didn't use Pillow or attempted audio-recording before I moved into the new place), but it showed me how easily this information could help me and my doctors. Now connecting this app, with other health apps I use on a whim (weight-tracking, food-tracking, etc). I could make correlations (but not causations) into what could be making me "sick".

To the poster who said "your body knows how to take care of itself", in relation to sleep, that really isn't true for me. From someone who suffers from multiple things that directly affect my sleep, I can tell you my body does not know how to take care of itself. Apps integerating with each other will help find more data relevant to one other than most of us realize. Trying new things, and see how we are affected by them, with data to back it up, will be greatly helpful.

I recently gave up on sleep tracking after doing it for over 2 years( neo, up band ect). It became one more thing to worry about. Just exercise, don't worry too much, read/learn, try to eat healthy and go to bed and don't worry too much about sleep quality/length etc, your body knows how to take care of itself.

I'd love to hear from some iOS developers who have played around with HealthKit, and get their take its strengths and weaknesses

I got to look at the API docs during the first beta. I'm sure things have changed and more features have been added so take my analysis with a grain of salt.

The HealthKit API is basically just a shared database with specific functions and structures used for measuring fitness units (e.g. time, distance, steps, heart rate, blood pressures, etc). There's a permissions model for granting read/write access to the various counters. It can also track some vitals (height, weight) and emergency contact information. And that's pretty much it.

I don't think HealthKit is really designed to do more than facilitate the storage and sharing of personal fitness data. It should have been named FitnessKit.

How does Pillow compare to Sleep Cycle?

It looks like they copied all the features of Sleep Cycle (and the companion app, Power Nap), made it look a little nicer, and tacked a few on like audio recording and achievements. The hardest comparison to make would be in the actually quality and accuracy of the tracking. I wouldn't even know where to start for that comparison.

I tried to make the move from Sleep Cycle to Pillow and found myself going back to SC. Pillow may be prettier but it doesn't seem as usable as SC.

How so? Less effective or just bad UI?

The excitement I feel every time HeathKit is mentioned dies away when I realize it's not about HeathKit but about HealthKit.

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