This story is part of ’s series celebrating Apple’s 50th anniversary.
April 1, 1976: 50 years ago, Apple was founded. 40 years later, to the date, I was a 25-year-old embarking on a health and fitness journey, and Apple was right at the core.
April 1, 2016: I started an Apple Watch workout streak that helped guide me to running. I’d never run in my life at 25, but I started closing rings on my watch with a used elliptical at home. By fall, I was running, and by New Year’s Day, I had lost 50 pounds.
April 1, 2017: I ran my first-ever 5K race. It was the “2017 Superintendent’s 5K Challenge: A Race for Education” in Miami, Florida. My 3.1-mile run time clocked in at 26 minutes 46 seconds with an 8-minute, 36-seconds pace per mile. I ranked 151 out of 2231 participants.
Apple Watch is a symbol for living a better day
Exercising with an elliptical to close my rings on the Apple Watch helped me get in shape and run my first mile. Getting comfortable running a mile pushed me to participate in that first 5K race.
Soon after, I was signing up for every 5K race I could find. 10K races followed, then half-marathon races. I completed seven of those 13.1-mile races before the pandemic rolled around and I slowed down.
Lately, the urge to run has started to return. I ran a couple miles on Monday evening and that felt pretty good.
Maybe I’ll keep it up and report back, but no promises. I’m pretty satisfied with daily dog walks and longer adventures on weekends.
Still, Apple Watch and the Apple Health ecosystem keep me aware of my own well-being in a way that I just didn’t consider before the watch arrived in April 2015.
The Apple Watch, to me, is a symbol for unlocking the ability to live a better day. What that means specifically may change throughout your life: from run tracking to sleep tracking and everything in between.
Now, as Apple turns 50, it’s their focus on health over the last decade that I feel most on a daily basis.
Apple Health is just getting started
It’s not just the Apple Watch either. I log my weight and other data with a smart scale that syncs to my iPhone. I’m tracking my blood pressure in the same way.
And reviewing all the data with the Health app on iPad is a great way to discover new insights and trends surfaced by Apple.
You also don’t get the Apple Watch without the iPhone, and you don’t get the iPhone without the Mac.
The Mac and iPhone are where I regularly process my thoughts with the Journal app, which has proven just as important as movement for me recently.
A lot of life has happened for me between 25 and 35, and I’m certain it would have been a whole lot harder without Apple’s focus on health over a decade ago.
I feel stronger and more capable at 35 than I did at 25, and Apple’s health and fitness technology has been key in making that possible.
As Apple turns 50 now, it’s also impressive to think about what difference the company still had to make at 40.
You can’t help but be excited for the future when you think about just how much of Apple’s impact happened in the second half of its 50 years as a company.
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