1. Get the right tunes

Whatever music source you use, get in the groove during your workouts. My favorite right now is Pandora radio, since I find variety an excellent motivator when working out.
A good set of Bluetooth headphones is also probably a wise investment, since they prevent cords from getting caught during activity. My favorite right now is the Jabra Sport. Not only does it do audio and voice, but it also does FM so I can tune into the TV audio at the gym.

I also recommend Yurbuds. You send Yurbuds a picture of your ear and they match a product for a near perfect fit. The plastic molding is grippy and stays in your ears even while sweating. They also channel the sound directly into your ear and block out some of the background noise.

2. Track what you eat

Start with small steps tracking what you eat simply by taking a picture. Mealsnap is great for this. Being aware of what you eat and making it a habit is a great place to start.

When you’ve got that habit and want to start counting calories, the Lose It! app is a good choice. While I’m still a big fan of Livestrong’s calorie tracker, the excessive ads and upsells on their website became a turn off. Lose It! is free and has a clean, simple interface. It also can give you reminders if you don’t log meals.

Another key feature of Lose It! is that it can interact with other devices, such as the Withings WiFi Body scale and the Fitbit (more about that later).

3. Track what you do

Eating is only one side of the weight loss equation. How much you burn (or don’t burn) in a given day is the reason why the person next to you eats so much and stays slim, while you just even look at a bagel and gain three pounds. Both Lose It! and Livestrong Calorie Tracker will allow you to enter exercises, but don’t take into account more passive daily activities. While a pedometer will help, why use analog when digital is more fun?

The FitBit tracker ($99) is at heart a pedometer, but with added features. It tracks how many steps you take and uses your basal metabolic rate to determine how many calories you’re burning. The FitBit also uses gamification techniques, such as badge rewards you can tweet and share on Facebook, to keep you motivated. It can also be used as a clock and a stopwatch to track your workout routines.

I also like the fact you can get instant readouts to check your goals with the Fitbit; when you see you’re a few steps short of your daily goal you might decide to take that far away parking spot, or take the stairs instead of the elevator. Best of all, FitBit integrates with Lose It! so that way your activities and food log are shared between the two programs, giving you much more accurate results.

4. Break through the plateau with monitoring

Often, people attempting weight loss will hit a plateau. I faced that simply because my body adapted to the changes in my routine. The way to break through is not to look simply at your level of activity, but also at how hard your body is working.

The new Garmin ANT+ adapter for the iPhone along with the Garmin Fit App is a great way to do that. ANT+ is a widely adopted standard for monitoring devices, and in particular heart monitors. Some trainers have them, or you can purchase them independently. With a heart monitor you can determine exactly how hard your exercises are, and set accurate goals regarding heart rate and calories burned. That digital readout on the treadmill or elliptical is only an estimate, while a heart monitor combined with data you provide it can give you a much more accurate accounting of how hard you’re working.

The Garmin iPhone app keeps data for each session so you can compare. Some days I focus on distance, or pace on others, and always try to keep my heart rate in the zone. As I became more physically fit, I had to push myself harder to keep the same results. Gamification of weight loss through statistics helped me quickly punch through the plateau by changing my workouts.

5. Get a good night’s sleep

Let’s face it, if you don’t get a good night’s sleep, you don’t feel like tracking your food and you don’t feel like working out. Your Mac can help with that.

The free program F.Lux will dim your Mac’s monitor to match sundown and sunrise, thereby giving you visual clues it’s evening. Bright light says “wake up” while gentle reduction in brightness says “it’s time for bed.” I also wrote about how to use parental controls to keep you on task, and force you to stop working at a specified period of time. If you really want to focus yourself, turn off the Internet on your Mac at a scheduled hour.

For tracking your sleep, you can see my round-up of hardware devices here. The FitBit also tracks sleep. You can then use the sleep data to help you focus on why you had a “good” or a “bad” day.You can then modify your eating habits and workout schedule to achieve better sleep results.

You can also use apps like Pzizz to help you feel mor restful. The software generates unique “sound journeys” to help you transition from hectic day to gentle night.

If your sleeping partner doesn’t want to hear these sounds, there’s a solution. First you need some SleepPhones. This soft headband includes a set of integrated speakers and can plug directly into a headphone jack. Then attach a BlueBridge mini-jack RX to the SleepPhones. Now you’ve got an effective wireless solution for nighttime audio that won’t endanger your partner’s rest or your Apple gear.

Got any tips of your own for using your Apple devices to meet your fitness goals? Let us know in the comments.

Disclaimer: This isn’t medical advice, just one Apple enthusiast’s perspective and vendors mentioned provided items for review. Always check with your medical professional before starting an exercise program.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• CES 2012: a recap and analysis
• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution
• Opportunities and challenges for mobile deals

What to look for

Offline as much as possible. Companies are putting a lot of bells and whistles into their navigation apps these days, but their real value boils down to being able to find your way without an active network connection. Even if you are travelling in well-connected areas, carriers are cutting back on unlimited bandwidth, and having to download map tiles along your route certainly eats up your limits.

MotionX GPS Drive is a favorite for many, but the way it handles map downloads might not please some.

Pre-installed or downloadable maps. No navigation app will work without a map, but there are different strategies for getting maps on your device. Many include the maps in a very large initial download.  Others are starting to include ways for the user to pre-select which maps they want to download before a trip. MotionX GPS Drive, for example, allows users to download relevant maps along a particular route, whereas ForeverMap allows the user to select maps on a state-by-state basis for downloading. Each strategy has its advantages, but apps that pre-load all maps at once are less dependent on Internet connections.

Multi-point vs. preferred routes. This is a tricky feature that’s often misunderstood. Most apps allow you to plan a multiple destination road trip by adding several stops along a given route. But this doesn’t necessarily allow you to select a preferred route from a selection of many options. Many have implemented a way to choose the fastest over the shortest route, or a way to avoid toll roads, but ALK’s CoPilot Live Premium understands that users might have other reasons to want to avoid some areas and veer towards others. With its Drag Route feature, you can drag the route line to change how you get to your destination with more finesse.

Offline routes and POI database. Some apps have maps located on the device, but still need to be online in order to perform a route calculation. This may be because the route itself is calculated online, but more often, it’s because a GPS reverse lookup requires Internet access to turn a contact’s address into a format the routing system understands. This basically renders the app useless in a situation where network connection isn’t possible. Good navigation apps also include local points of interest (POI) databases alongside their installed maps that can be accessed and used to generate a route without connecting to the Internet.

iPad and iPhone versions. Having an iPad version of the app available is key to route planning for serious travellers. The iPad allows for easier review of the route, and while some may be using their iPhone as the only turn-by-turn navigation device while driving, but the iPad’s larger screen may be better for older eyes or co-pilots providing directions. This is more crucial if you have the 3G or CDMA version of the iPad, so you can use the device’s GPS  to keep you on track.

Here’s a chart of how the various apps I compared stacked up in these and a few other important categories. The apps are listed according to my order of preference, from left to right:

Leading the pack — CoPilot Live Premium

CoPilot Live Premium HD adds lots of value on the iPad.

After spending countless hours both on and off the road with more navigation apps than I care to remember, I would have to say that ALK’s CoPilot is currently the navigation app to beat. I particularly liked the way I could alter the calculated route by dragging the route line, that all the maps were included in the initial download, and that I had no difficulties creating new routes on the device at times when there was no Internet connection at all. The user interface is streamlined and easy to navigate, and there’s an iPad version that makes it even easier to find your way around the app. Route generation is quick, and browsing the maps renders the roads and street names very fast even when panning and zooming around. For road warriors and frequent travellers, CoPilot is the app to get.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Mobile Q2: Smartphone growth surges; iPad’s rule continues
• Mobile Q1: All Eyes on Tablets, T-Mobile and AT&T
• A Media Tablet Forecast, 2011 – 2015

Calendars have come a long way from the days of a pocket diary, with software able to manage your schedule and information much more reliable and accessible. iCal for OS X is the bundled calendar application, and works surprisingly well. It appears simple on the surface, but packs a wide range of different features and functionality.

This article will walk you through iCal from first opening the app, to having a diary filled with important events, recurring appointments, alarms, attachments, and attendees.

Getting Started

The first step is to open iCal for the first time from your applications folder. You’ll be presented with a window which looks something like this:

Before getting started, you might want to change a few preferences to match the way in which you work. Click iCal > Preferences in the menu bar to review the options available. You’re able to change the days per week, starting day of a week, default alarms for events and a whole range of other options. Once you’re happy with the settings chosen, close the preferences window and we’ll get started adding a few calendars and events.

iCal Views

There are three main viewing modes which can be used within iCal; Day, Week and Month. The month view can be seen above, here’s what to expect when viewing by day or week.

Week view shows you a clearer breakdown of each day:

And viewing by day makes a complicated schedule much easier to make sense of:

Dealing With Calendars

Within iCal, you are able to run several ‘Calendars’. These would commonly represent different projects or areas of your life. These are a few of the calendars I have running:

You can have as many or as few as needed, and adding a new calendar is simple. Click the ‘plus’ icon towards the lower left of the iCal window to add a new calendar (or hold Shift whilst pressing it to add a new group/folder). Once added, right click the new calendar and select ‘Get Info’ to bring up an options window:

Here, you can alter the color of the calendar, or ‘publish’ the calendar through MobileMe — this is a more complicated step, which you probably won’t need to explore at first.

Dealing With Events

Once a few calendars are in place, you’ll need to enter your events/appointments. To do so, right click on the appropriate day, then select ‘New Event’. Type a name, then double click the event. This will bring up a window similar to the following:

A number of options are available within the new event window:

• Location: Enter the place where you’ll be meeting
• All-day: If it’s an all day event, select this option to let iCal know
• From/To: You can enter the start and end time (or days, for an all-day event)
• Repeat: This allows you to schedule an event to re-occur at a set interval (every day, week, month, year, or a custom schedule). It works brilliant for birthdays, or regular bill payments etc
• Calendar: Here, select the appropriate calendar for the event
• Alarm: I’ve covered these various options below
• Attendees: Again, these are covered below
• Attachments: You can add files and documents to a calendar event so you have all the information you need at hand

Alarms

There are several different ways to be notified of an event:

All the different notification methods can be set to occur either at the time of the event, or a set period before. The first two cause a reminder to pop up on your screen with the details of the event, or you can perform more complex actions such as automatically sending an email, or running a file/script.

Attendees

iCal has fairly robust built-in support for dealing with attendees. Integration with Address Book means that sending invitations to attend is simple. Emails are sent to request the person’s attendance, to which they can reply in the way which best suits them. iCal will show a question mark next to the invitee’s name until they respond:

To Do Lists

If you have a list of tasks which need completing, but don’t have a set day or time, you can use iCal’s To Do feature. Clicking the ‘Push Pin’ icon in the lower right corner of the window will display the list of current To Do lists. Adding a new one is as simple as right clicking and selecting ‘New To Do’.

In the same way as calendar events, To Dos are assigned to a particular calendar. Priorities of High, Medium and Low can be assigned to automatically rank tasks in their order of importance:

Time Zones

The final feature to be mentioned is that of automatic time zone support. Clicking ‘Enable Time Zone Support’ in the preference window as outlined at the beginning will add the following text to the upper right of the iCal window (obviously varying depending upon your time zone):

Now, when scheduling meetings you are able to note the time zone in which it will occur. iCal will factor in the difference between your current location and automatically ensure that you’re notified about the meeting at the right time.

If you’d like to add an event which is independent of any time zone, you can select the ‘Floating’ option when adding a new entry.

Conclusion

When first opening iCal, it doesn’t seem like a particularly powerful or complicated application. However, as you start to enter calendars, events and to dos, it becomes clear that it can offer a comprehensive solution to managing your schedule.

I hope that this article has provided a good overview of the iCal basics. If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment!

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Mobile Operators’ Strategies for Connected Devices
• Mobile Winners and Losers of 2009
• Mobile Q4: All Eyes Were on Android, 4G and the Rising Tablet Tide

Meet the Contenders

Since the iPhone apps have some built-in advantages, I chose four programs that work with GPS devices, heart rate monitors or other accessories – such as the Nike + iPod kit – to even the playing field.

Garmin Training Center
Maker: Garmin
Price: Free
Compatibily: OS X 10.4+/Universal
Hardware Support: Garmin GPS

rubiTrack
Maker: toolsfactory
Price: $39.00
Compatibily: OS X 10.5+/Universal
Hardware Support: Garmin GPS, Nike+iPod, Amod GPS

Ascent
Maker: Montebello
Price: $40.00
Compatibily: OS X 10.4+/Universal
Hardware Support: Garmin GPS

TrailRunner
Maker: Berbie
Price: Free
Compatibily: OS X 10.5+/Universal
Hardware Support: Garmin GPS, Nike+iPod/Sportband, iPhone/iPod

NOTE: Real world workout data from Garmin and Nike+ devices were used in testing all four applications.

Garmin: Late to the Gate, Still in the Running

First up is Garmin’s flagship OS X offering. Fitness Center for Mac (GTC) is designed to be the way to get data from your Edge or Forerunner onto your Mac, and both device families offer GPS-tracking and optional heart rate monitoring, with the Edge also featuring cadence & power tracking for cyclists. The sampling from these sensors can be imported, reviewed and displayed in tabluar, graphical and cartographical format. GTC does a good job figuring out which activity (cycling or running) you were engaged in when it auto-classifies your imports.

You can customize user profile settings, including heart rate data and speed zones along with gear details and information on other activities, such as hiking, skiing or kayaking.

Workouts can be reviewed by date or type, and you can schedule, group and categorize them via recorded sessions or from various online sources. Any workout you define or find can also be uploaded to most Garmin devices.

If you have full Garmin map data sets, you can use other Garmin Mac utilities to get them onto your Mac (which will help GTC route maps look a bit nicer).

GTC will import and export TCX (a Garmin-originated XML format describing GPS and “fitness” data) files which many programs and web applications can work with, so you are not locked-in to them by any means.

Striving for Peak Performance with Ascent

While Garmin may be a bit generic, Ascent definitely has the feel of a more seasoned OS X application.

Most of these fitness-tracking programs provide a similarly paned “browser” to access your activities. Ascent kicks up the visual display a bit with map data from either VisualEarth or USGS, both of which have multiple feature display options.

Ascent provides more fields to describe your activities and has an amazing replay mode that will animate your recorded workout, showing key data in a “HUD” as the points move along. While it will sync from your GPS device with ease, the Montebello developers also added a wide assortment of import and export options, including reading data from Polar heart rate monitors, full manual entry of activity information and sending data out to Google Earth for a very spiffy fly-by.

Unfortunately, while the program provides many ways to view and analyze your workouts, you will not be using it to push data to your GPS.

TrailRunner Charts Your Path to Fitness

This once commercial offering is now free and takes a unique approach to tracking your training. As the name indicates, it is geared more for running, but can handle other activities.

If you are truly dedicated to your training program, TrailRunner will be a great digital partner and includes a highly-detailed diary view (that lets you post activities right to your blog) and an “event planner” (for that upcoming marathon).

TrailRunner also has a playback mode, but the most differentiating feature may be the ability to easily share your routes with other athletes and also find new routes (i.e. escape the rut). It also works with iTrail (for you iPhone-wielding fitness geeks) and can store routes notes and route “snapshots” to your photo-enabled iPod, which is especially helpful if you are racing un-tracked or with a non-GPS-enabled device (such as the Nike+ iPod kit).

To get the full feel for TrailRunner, you really need to download it and play with it a while. New features keep popping up as you explore the application and it will definitely have you looking at your workouts in a very different way.

One Step Ahead: rubiTrack Tracks With Style

Despite having a Leopard-only offering, the talented folks over at toolsfactory managed to make the most modern, Mac-like program of the bunch, which is evident right from program launch.

Map data crisp and the view options are abundant. One feature detail that I considered truly innovative was historical weight tracking, making the workout details very accurate over time.

Activities are auto-grouped by category on import and can be manually tweaked. rubiTrack also has “smart groups” (think iTunes Smart Playlists) which can auto-classify by any combination of activity details.

While it lets you review past workouts and activities, you will not be able to schedule a workout routine with this application and you will not be creating tracks to bring back to your training devices.

The Final Analysis

GTC is the least “Mac-like” application out of the four and is not even on equal footing from its PC counterpart. While it is completely functional for basic operations, it is obvious that Garmin wants you to continue to invest in their online offerings and map products to get the most out of your fitness routine. However, if you want to plan new workouts and have seamless integration with your GPS devices, GTC will have a place in your Applications folder.

Ascent was my primary tracking tool prior to rubiTrack (I paid for both programs). I would definitely pay for an upgrade if they keep enhancing both the visual elements and the core feature sets. It is also very geared towards cyclists and I expect enhancements to continue that focus.

TrailRunner is a must have for the avid runner. It does rely on many helper apps (including GTC) to import data. The blogging feature is something I wish more fitness apps thought to include. TrailRunner also has the most diverse maps and is perfect for those who wish to be part of a community of folks interested in fitness.

At the end of a ride, however, rubiTrack is the application that I fire up first. If you are just getting into a fitness routine and want some positive, visual reinforcement this will be a very easy program to get started with and will definitely help motivate you to constantly do better.

Despite all four applications being “made for Mac”, none of them auto-sync weather details and none of the ones with workout scheduling capabilities integrate with iCal. Even with those missing features, you now have no excuse to shake off that tryptophan haze and shed some of that holiday poundage. If you do receive Garmin or Nike+ gear for the upcoming gift-giving season, definitely give these programs a workout.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Big Data, ARM and Legal Troubles Transformed Infrastructure in Q4
• Facebook Remained Social Media’s Chief in Q3
• Report: The Rise of Mobile Health Apps