[miffed]

Being an iPhone "fanboi" , the most common thing I hear is the claim that the iPhone is This has remained to this day , and although it is very true that other handsets ARE catching up in terms of UI , and continue to trump the iPhone on specs & hardware .... but like anything , "the proof of the pudding......."

By this I am talking about the diversity of the Apps available , one only has to look at the mainstream (or otherwise) services and companies that have launched an iPhone app - this really does hit home how successful the iPhone and its platform has become , and also illustrates that Win Mo , Symbian and even Android (although its early days yet ) - simply don't matter !! Hell , even my local paper dedicated a page to advertising that their publication is available as an iPhone app !! , Symbian and Win Mo have been around for the best part of a decade - why did no one bother with apps for these devices ( and to be fair they are still not bothering ! ) ? , the only logical thing to do ,is admit that , by whatever reasoning , the iPhone IS a bit special !!

Here is my latest experience -
Being in the fitness industry , I help a lot of people with Diet & training , an area where a lot of people fall short is keeping track of their Calorie & Macro intake (Protein , Carbs & Fats ) .... there are several web based tools that can record and keep track of this , the user can input there food for the day and see a simple breakdown of the key nutrients , see if they are falling within target ranges - and also keep track of training etc. One such service is www.dailyburn.com ,
I recently noticed that Dailyburn have launched an iPhone app , this basically resides on the phone and syncs all info to the users web based account , which is pretty cool - if you are out and you have something to eat you can (in easy iphone style) look up the food on the huge database , or failing that , enter the details manually.
BUT the REAL cool part , is that there is also a barcode scanner too !! , simply scan the thing you are about to eat , and there is a pretty good chance that the app will instantly recognise the food and add it to your daily total , yesterday this worked for me on a tin of Tescos "own brand" Mackeral , and a tin of tuna .... Ok some things don't work , but with a large user base all submitting their own items , it won't be long before it contains most everyday stuff

This really is an amazing product ! , I suspect that unless you are involved with fitness nutrition / dieting you will not see the point in this , but believe me , this is pretty amazing to the point of being almost revolutionary !

I think the fact that Dailyburn have only bothered to do this with the iPhone speaks volumes ! , is it because Dailyburn is run by Apple fanbois ? , erm , nope !!

[DBMandrake]

Although at a slight tangent to your message, have you had a look at 'Absolute Fitness' for the iPhone ? When I was looking about a year ago for an app to help me log and monitor what I ate and the exercise I did, I tried quite a few before settling on that one, and I think in a lot of ways it's better than Daily Burn.

It's got a great built in food database that covers most things and lets you quickly and easily enter things as you eat them, or in advance (making your lunch to take to work for example) or after the fact - you can override the default "current time" of a new entry to any time during the day to do this. The database has a lot of detail in it, including Calories, Protein, Total Carbs, Total Fat, Saturated Fat, Cholesterol, Fibre, Sugars, Sodium, and Potassium, all of which are summed up to your daily running totals. It also has informational only values for most foods (like vitamins, minerals etc) which are not added up in a daily total. Built in database entries can be favourited for quick access.

For anything that is not in the database you can easily create a custom food for it, and access the custom list separately to the built in database. I like to do this for any foods that have clearly labelled figures. Another abstraction is what it calls a "meal" which is basically a meta entry that consists of two or more food items. I don't use it for actual meals, but use it for things that have more than one constituent that you usually eat in fixed proportions - for example for a cup of tea (which I always make the same way) I have a meal called cup of tea that consists of a certain quantity of milk and sugar.

Your daily targets for all the values for all the items listed above from Calories through to Potassium can be set manually (if you're an expert user) or calculated automatically based on a weight gain or loss guidance system, and you can check at any time of the day to see what percentage of your daily amount of each item you've consumed with a nice bar graph for each item. You can click on an individual item (for example Total Fat) and see a list of the items that provided fat from most to least, so you can see where it mostly came from. You can enter a proposed final meal for the day and check the daily figures to see if you will blow out your totals - if you do you can delete things until you see how much you can eat to reach your totals.

You can set what time thresholds separate morning from afternoon from evening, and the things you eat will be neatly listed in time order and grouped separately into morning, afternoon and evening items.

You can also enter your exercise for the day - again there is a built in database of common exercise and sports where you can choose the activity, intensity level, and total time, and based on your body weight it will estimate your calorie burn. You can manually override the estimated value, for example if you have an exercise bike that measure actual calories burnt. The exercise calories show up on your calorie total for the day as a negative, so you have calorie intake minus exercise calories and then net calories, so you can adjust what you eat to roughly compensate for extra activity.

Other optional information you can enter is daily weight, Body fat, Blood pressure, hours of sleep, glasses of water, and text based notes/comments.

The graphing system will graph any of the input or calculated values over 1 week to 1 year. Finally, it has a nifty export function that will export daily/weekly stats in tabular form such as what you ate, calorie/fat/carb intake and so on, and email them directly from the device. Although it doesn't integrate with a website like daily burn, it does offer a web based backup that will backup all your information to their website, and restore at a later time, in case your device is lost/corrupted, and your iTunes backup fails for some reason. It can also be used to transfer your information from one device to another.

Absolutely love this app, and for anyone involved in the fitness industry it would seem like the ideal app to recommend to someone to use to monitor their progress - it takes a little bit to learn as it's so full featured, and the first few times you enter a custom food it can be a bit tedious but once you have entered the custom foods you usually eat, and favourited the built in foods you usually eat, it literally takes a minute or two to enter a whole meal as you prepare it.

The fact that it's on your phone - a device that you take everywhere you go, means that you will never have an excuse not to enter what you're eating, whether you're at home or not :D

[Hands0n]

The iPhone does seem to have become the first choice for seemingly the majority of apps. Is this simply because it was the first? Because it certainly wasn't that - before iPhone there was Windows Mobile and Symbian. So what happened there then? Why didn't these become popular outside of the enthusiasts and perhaps the better informed?

That Apple did what they did is now a matter of historical record. I do think that Android stands a chance of making a bite into this area as the devices become more popular. That is, unless the fragmentation of Android causes incompatibilities and thus more complexity for the developers.

The next 12 months or so should begin to see Android's true potential become realised. If it doesn't then we may well see it end up an also-ran with Symbian and WinMo - albeit in relative terms :)