Microsoft Fitness tracker

Hello there !!..

Microsoft has released its own fitness tracker – for the moment in the US only, which means I haven’t been able to lay my hands on one. But plenty of people already have, and have written about their experience.

The Microsoft Band is roughly what it says it is – a wristband with a screen that shows various bits of data, such as how far you have run or walked, your heart rate and smartphone notifications (email, calendar, messages). And it has its own GPS, so that it knows where you’ve been while wearing it.

The problem that quite a few of the testers seemed to have was that they didn’t like wearing the brand.

There are some obvious questions here, such as why is Microsoft making a fitness tracker? This is a company better known to people of one generation as the maker of Windows and Office, and to another as the creator of the Xbox. Neither quite implies connection to knowing how many steps you’ve walked today or what your heartbeat is.

And Microsoft fans have delightedly pointed out that the band is “sold out” on the online Microsoft store. How many were sold? Well, that is not specified by Microsoft.

This is where we move into the real world that wearables have to fit into, or wrap around.

Unlike a desktop or even laptop computer, which can look ugly but still be wonderfully functional, wearable computers have to look and feel good. They’re an expression of ourselves and our choices: if you choose something that doesn’t look good, it’s not an accident, and all the functionality in the world won’t make up for the fact that you look as though you’re under house arrest. It’s a different era, one where designers’ skills will be at a premium.

But it’s not hard to think that it’s the companies with the best hardware design skills, allied to the best access to new technologies Like, how Samsung has a curved screen on its Gear Fit, because it makes the screens, and the best software that will succeed in the wearable era.