Proctele apps in the App Store

Proctele apps in the App Store
Click the picture to see Proctele apps in Apple's App Store

Monday, September 21, 2015

Proctele's Workout App: ExerLog

Proctele's new app costs $0.99 and has no ads. Proctele apps aren't free, but AD-FREE. 
ExerLog is for happy sporty people. Are you one of them? Then read further.

We all know it: these days all you need is your iPhone!
Leave your paper and pen at home: here are your workout sheets, as many as you like.

Here's the icon:


To keep track of your workouts, it's necessary to take notes of what exercises you performed, the repetition count and the weights used. You need a workout sheet.

With this app you create blueprints for workout sheets that you use on your iPhone. When you start working out, you select one of the blueprints. A workout sheet is created on your iPhone, which you use to take notes during the workout.

This app keeps track of your exercises and helps you determine if you're making progress. It does the same as a workout sheet and a bit more, because it's digital. A blueprint/workout-sheet can contain for example:
-your name
-workout duration
-your body weight
-your starting mood
-workout location

and most importantly:
-exercises and the weights and repetitions you use when you perform them.

Here are screen shots from an iPhone6:

 

Update: Price has been doubled to $1.99, two-thirds the price of a latte.

Sunday, September 6, 2015

3D-touch for iPhone?

Rumour has it that the next iPhone will have pressure-sensitive display. That means an item high up on my wishlist is coming to iPhone. I've blogged about this before.

3D-touch is not new. There are already pressure sensitive displays. One example is the company FlatFrog (www.flatfrog.com), which has displays in sizes 15-110 inch.

All the way from the start, iPhones have had a multi-touch-sensitive display. It was one of the reasons for iPhone's success, because it gave iPhone the famous pinch gesture. I still remember when I tried it out for the first time. At that time the iPhone was not for sale in Europe. A colleague had been to the US and bought an iPhone, and I was allowed to try it out. I was impressed. 

Multi-touch is two-dimensional, 2D, i.e. when the user taps or swipes or pinches, an app receives information about it in terms of x and y, horizontal and vertical coordinates. With pressure sensitivity the app will receive a third parameter, which tells how hard the user pressed. That means we can call it 3D-touch. 

For me the most obvious use of this feature is a scale app for weighing small and light items. But that's not what Apple has in mind. A new touch-type will probably be introduced: the force-touch, i.e. pressing harder. One good use for force-touch is to use it in a similar way the second button of a mouse is used (on Mac's one-button mouse it's done with Ctrl+click), and that is putting up a meny. Force-touch will be used for speeding up the user's interaction by reducing the number of presses he/she must do to accomplish something. Force-touch can also be used to reduce the number of user interface items on the screen, like buttons.

A possible use for 3D-touch is in games. Some games will benefit by testing the user's ability to use the right amount of pressure. The touch keyboard can most certainly be improved by 3D-touch, and thereby putting yet another nail in the coffin of hardware keyboards for mobile phones.

Reference:
http://9to5mac.com/2015/09/05/iphone-6s-3d-touch-screen/