Hey guys,

I have finally released the iOS8 update to StepTracker! This means you can now install a Notification Center widget of StepTracker in iOS8, so when you pull the notification center down from the top of the screen, you will see a little display showing you your current step count and distance traveled. You can pull down notification center even when your phone is locked and StepTracker will load the latest step count and distance.

Another difference in the iOS8 version is that I am now using IOS to calculate the distance traveled rather than using the stride length to do that calculation myself. This is anew feature of Core Motion in iOS8, and I like the idea of the OS figuring out your distance travelled rather than you having to know your stride and entering it manually.

This update is available for free on the App Store today. Download it, and let me know what you think!

I wanted to let everyone know that the latest version of StepTracker has gone live on the app store. This version has a new feature called inactivity notifications that needs to be enabled via the settings page of the app. Inactivity notifications will make StepTracker notify you when you have been inactive for approximately one hour. Hopefully this can help people to remember to stay active. I find it useful at work to remind me that it’s time to get up and go for a short walk. I didn’t enable this feature by default, because I understand that some users don’t want more notifications bugging them and many app developers are too happy to make their apps send out annoying push notifications. So to enable this feature, just go to the settings and turn “inactivity notifications” on. Please let me know what you think, and enjoy this new feature!

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/steptracker-m7-fitness-pedometer/id714439468?mt=8

The 1.9 update to StepTracker is now out with some cool new features! First of all, StepTracker now saves all of your step data rather than just displaying your last 7 days which are stored in the M7 chip. Along with your step data, the app is also saving your active and inactive percentages. Now when you go to export your step data, it will export all of your data in a format that can be used in other applications such as Numbers or Excel. Also, you can now add a text description to each day, so you can add comments about what you did that day (ran a marathon, walked to work, was sick in bed and did not work etc) which will show up when you export your data. StepTracker also now has a scoreboard for best average step count. I thought this would be a good scoreboard because it means you need to keep working to stay on top - you can’t just get a good steep count and then slack off.

Coming soon in the next version will be a “stopwatch” mode, where you can click a button to start recording your steps on a trip or a run or a walk and keep track of how far you go and in what time. More on that later...

Here’s a quick video demo of StepTracker 1.9!

StepTracker 1.4 is now live on the app store with Game Center leaderboards!

Leaderboards are a very exciting feature to add from the perspective of a developer because it lets you see what your users are up to. In the first 24 hours, a user named lead21 achieved the highest score of over 34,000 steps! Good job lead21! I made 20th place with 14,000 steps.

If you want to check out the new features, let your iPhone auto update the app or head to the app store and download StepTracker for free!
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/steptracker/id714439468?mt=8

Version 1.4 is in review with Apple now, so hopefully you should be able to update to the new version with GameCenter support shortly.

I also wanted to mention something here that might be the confusing some users of StepTracker. If you want to see your daily distance in km or miles, just tap on the step count number in the main screen of the app and it will adjust between number of steps and distance. That’s all you have to do.

Also coming in version 1.5 are a few bug fixes, plus the ability to disable Game Center if you don’t want to use it. It seems like Apple’s review time is about a week lately, so you can probably expect that update next week!

The 1.5 update will also address the graph issue that has been affecting users in the UK, where the dates on the X axis would sometimes overlap. Sorry about that! I didn’t even know that was an issue until somebody wrote me a bad review. It is interesting that Apple formats dates differently in different countries.

One of the big projects I’ve been working on is StepTracker, an iOS fitness application which uses the M7 motion coprocessor in the iPhone 5S to display your daily step count. The reason this project is so exciting to me is the new technology in the iPhone 5S makes it not only easier to make this type of app, but more practical. On previous iPhones you would have had to monitor the accelerometer in real time and process that data into individual steps. Now with the iPhone 5S and the new APIs Apple has given us, the step counting is automatically done for me on the M7 chip. The M7 uses practically no additional power (it is always doing it’s calculations even if you don’t have a fitness app installed) and therefore your phone can act as a sort of “FitBit” type device without additional battery drain. And yet there was no built-in way to use this new functionality on the new iPhone. So the day I got my 5S I started writing this app.

Below are some screenshots and a quick demo of what the current version of this app (1.2) looks like. It’s currently awaiting Apple’s approval as of 10/13/13, so the app store version does not have all of these features but it is close.

I’ve got some really cool stuff planned for the next update, so stay tuned.