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Comment by somberi | Hacker News Reader

Quoting an article from The Economist.com:

"... Strikingly, one-third of users discard their devices after six months, according to research by Endeavour Partners, a consultancy. Some industry insiders speculate that the true number may be much higher than that. ...The novelty of being able to track your steps, calories or other metrics is appealing at first, but swiftly wears off. ..."

Full article - http://goo.gl/hR5LxJ

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To compare Microsoft Band to a FitBit doesn't do the Band justice. FitBit is a toy - counting footsteps isn't "fitness" and a few LEDs isn't feedback. With GPS and an actual display, the Band actually has the ability to compete against Garmin and Suunto and actual fitness watches.

My Garmin is bulky, can't lock a signal in a neighborhood with tall buildings and has software reminiscent of an Atari. And it was more expensive than this.

I'm very excited about this. (Though, disclaimer, I work for Microsoft.)

Still, the proof is in the eating.

Battery life still is an issue and will remain so for the next while. Daily charging means it isn't really 24 hours and it also puts a hurdle on for use. My ipad is often dead in a backpack someplace because it's not as essential (to me) as my phone or laptop. Daily charging is like a daily price and a value hurdle this band needs to jump.

But I think this makes it more difficult for the device to succeed. The market for simple fitbit-style pedometers is fairly small, so the market for more expensive devices must be even smaller?

Presumably this would be able to play in both markets. That said, I can't comprehend this market around wanting to wear an ugly piece of plastic on your wrist all day, every day, just to convince oneself that they're getting more exercise than they actually are.

I think that once a person reaches puberty they should be forced to give up watches with cartoon characters or LCD screens.

I suppose a Quartz is acceptable on the weekends.

Hey, you seem to know to be an enthusiast about fitness tracking, can you give me a quick advice?

I want a fitness tracker, but I don't want the display. I want it to be lightweight and comfortable to wear, ideally wrapping around my wrist. Sweat-proof. Pedometer, accelerometer, and have decent sleep tracking. A killer feature for me for me would be measuring jumps, as in rope jumps.

Does something resembling this exist somewhere?

@blumkvist.

I own and use Argus (on the Iphone), FitBit and a Garmin Forerunner and in that order. The way I "teach" Argus is to first create a sample set of data and add it as an "new" exercise. In your case, I would count the number of jumps you do in a minute, obtain the calories burned online, and feed both into Argus. With Garmin afaik you cannot do that. FitBit has a funky "Steps climbed". I don't know what to make of the number it shows.

Fitbit uses a barometer/altimeter to work out the floors climbed so in place jumping shouldn't trigger it.

Is this too hard to make? Shouldn't 3 axis accelerometer be able to do it out of the box, if you program it?

If somebody from these companies is reading... this is a killer feature! Lots of people jump and would throw money at you if you can integrate it into a fitness app.

Suunto supports third party "apps" and has a "rope skipping" app[1]. Can't vouch for its accuracy (I'm personally more interested in hiking/climbing features), but it exists.

http://www.movescount.com/apps/app10028993-Rope_Skipping_R3

In theory the Amiigo does what you want. In practice... well the device and software is pretty rough at the moment. I'd send you mine but I lost the shoe clip part already and I'm not sure if it works w/o it (it complained every time I loaded the app about it being missing).

I think the Jawbone Up might fit that description; I know Fitbit Flex does (the Fitbit tracker ethompson must be referring to as a "Fitbit"; the other 3 shipping Fitbit trackers all have displays, as do the 2 that aren't shipping yet). I just did 20 jumps as if jumping rope and my Fitbit Charge counted 20 steps, so I bet there's a way to get your killer feature.

I work for Fitbit in site engineering; I don't speak for Fitbit -- this is my opinion, not necessarily my employer's.

All the 'newer' Fitbit models have displays including the Fitbit Force; the Charge (which appears to have replaced the Force), and the Surge (Which also has a GPS).

The big benefit I see to the MS product is that it is available before the Surge, and is a little cheaper.

The fact that Fitbit charges you $50/yr to export your own data is also probably also counts as an advantage to Microsoft as well...

If you don't want to buy Fitbit Premium, there's always https://ifttt.com/fitbit or https://www.fitbit.com/apps or using the API yourself.

I double-checked just to make sure, but even via the API, you don't get your minute-level data, only consolidated information. Fitbit of course collects and stores this information, and makes it available as a "partner feature", they just don't make accessible to you - apparently you don't have any claim to your biometric data in their view of the world. Honestly, that's rather galling and makes me hope they burn in a fire.

Thank you. I thought I was the only one who cared about getting the raw data out or was just missing something obvious. Why is it that hard to get the minute-by-minute data?

Really no different than any other form of fitness tracking (i.e. the ol' pen-and-paper). I don't think this is a device problem, this is a people-being-lazy-unmotivated-sacks-of-crap problem.

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