19
votes
For every month a person completes their monthly exercise challenge in the Fitness app, Apple should give them a free month of the 50GB iCloud plan
The plan only costs $1 a month. Apple can almost certainly eat that cost, and anyone who cannot complete their monthly exercise challenge because of illness or injury can probably still afford the $1 to keep the plan going.
The monthly challenge in the Fitness app is tailored to each user based on their exercise habits, right?
But how does that help Apple, the business, make money? I can’t imagine people are going to switch from Strava to save a dollar, and it’s unlikely that a dollar is enough to convince someone to buy an iPhone and start exercising.
Might as well ask that medical insurance companies/governments in countries with single payer health care incentivize people to stay healthy, since it saves them money in the long term.
I imagine it makes them money the same way $1 for 50gb does: gets your data into the ecosystem. Once it is there, the inertia makes it harder to move off of it, even when the user inevitably stops exercising (or otherwise stops using the Watch)— bingo bango, you have a paying customer.
Just because they love you they removed the 'select all' button from the online interface of iCloud. Have fun clicking your 1.000+ photos off one by one when trying to escape their little fiefdom.
My medical insurance in the UK through Vitality offers a free Apple watch if you meet the weekly exercise goals. Which are things like step counts, cardio and mindfulness.
I think if you miss a month it's like £8.
I’ve seen a lot of people, mostly middle-aged, on the bus shaking their Apple Watch to trick it into logging more steps. It didn’t make sense until a friend told me about insurance policy incentives.
That doesn't really work any longer, well, it doesn't on my smart watch. I'm pretty sure the sensors are set to work with different gaits so it knows a step from a run from a random shake.
I was unaware of this connection btw. insurance and smart watches. The critical side of me sees social norms being paved toward a social credit scheme and health surveillance. I have a very bad feeling for the technological naivety of older generations, those I know seem so incredibly gullible.
If you put a financial incentive on it, people will quickly figure out how to game it
That goes for everything. People spend a lot of time working out how to game systems to make money, rather than simply getting a job.
So many on social, because they have worked out the forms and information required to gain access to "free" cash. However, to many, these systems are vital and are not a game. That is the reason they still exist, the good it provides is superior to the few that game it. Giving incentive in a health app could be tarnished with the same brush. It's worth doing it, even if some find workarounds.
I dare say you can set the health app to say disabled when you clearly aren't, then walking 100 steps grants you the 50GB, as an example.
Maybe if the goals are always set to improve your last goals automatically (within reason), this could work.