An Apple for Your Wrist

When the Apple Watch debuts in the coming months, you won’t be able to avoid the hype—Apple’s entering its first new product category since the death of Steve Jobs. While Apple has yet to establish why a wrist computer is as essential as a smartphone or tablet, the Apple Watch is clearly more than a Dick Tracy gadget. It will undoubtedly kick-start a new wave of ideas about how to stay connected with your friends, work and fitness through a device that’s literally always on you.

How to get ready: Don’t buy one of the smartwatches already on the market. Most don’t look great and aren’t especially useful. Even if you favor Android, Apple’s entry will likely stimulate the competition to build better, sleeker wrist-tops.

Fitness Trackers That Actually Help You

Two big advances may, when they finally reach maturity, make us healthier humans. First, fitness bands and smartwatches—even connected workout clothing—are getting packed with sensors to track everything from heart rate to sun exposure. Second, instead of just saying you walked 4,382 steps today, cloud-connected apps are gaining increasing powers to interpret this data to provide meaningful workout and lifestyle feedback.
How to get ready: With Google, Apple, Microsoft and countless startups vying to win your heart (or at least your heart-rate data), the best thing you can do, ironically, is sit back and see which devices and platforms start living up to their lofty promises. If you’re wondering if a fitness tracker is something you’d want at all, try a cheap, dependable one like the $50 Jawbone UpMove.