Apple wants its customers to get rid of their "chicken fat" using the iPhone 5s, which starred as a health and fitness tool in Apple's latest TV advertisement dubbed "Strength."
"You're more powerful than you think." So goes the familiar tagline first seen in Apple's "Gigantic" ad released earlier this year. "Strength," which was first aired at the Stanley Cup on Wednesday, shows footage of iPhone 5s users running, swimming, lifting weights and doing other workout activities while their iPhones monitor what they are doing. The 1961 song "Chicken Fat" by Robert Preston, developed for a youth fitness program for President John F. Kennedy's administration, plays like a marching band in the background.
The 60-second spot highlights fitness hardware, including Misfit's Shine fitness tracker, Zepp Golf Sensor, Adidas miCoach Smart Ball, Wahoo Fitness Blue and Withings Healthmate, along with a smattering of health apps such as Nike+ Running, Strong Lifts, Sprinttimer, Argus and Johnson & Johnson Official 7 Minute Workout App.
The ad comes following on the heels of an earlier announcement by Apple that it will start producing its ads in-house.
In 2013, Apple introduced the new M7 motion co-processor that will work alongside the iPhone 5's main processor to continuously record and aggregate data collected by motion sensors without sucking up the phone's battery. The new co-processor, Apple said then, would encourage developers to create more health and fitness apps, but only a handful of apps, such as Nike+ Move, Runtastic and Strava Run, heeded Apple's call for more health apps for the iPhone 5s.
This time, Apple is hoping to make a big splash into the health and fitness industry, with "Strength's" debut coming just a couple of days after Apple announced its HealthKit platform and its Health app for consumers at its Worldwide Developer Conference. These aren't the much-rumored iWatch, but it could very well be the next big step towards a fitness wearable device from the iPhone maker.
HealthKit, which will become available when Apple releases iOS 8 in the fall, will serve as a central hub of all health data recorded by a variety of apps. The app works similarly to Apple's PassBook, which curates data regarding gift cards and e-tickets and collates them in one single place. HealthKit will feature various "cards" that contain information on vitals, including weight, sleep, nutrition and possibly more advanced metrics such as hydration, blood pressure and oxygen saturation.
"Developers have created a vast array of healthcare devices and accompanying applications - everything from monitoring your activity level, to your heart rate, to your weight, and chronic medical conditions like high blood pressure and diabetes. But up until now the information gathered by those applications has lived in silos," said Craig Federighi, senior vice president of software engineering at Apple. "You can't get a single comprehensive picture of your health situation. But now you can with HealthKit."
