A while ago I blogged about early impres­sions of the Fit­bit One, the fit­ness tracker that I’ve used since early 2013. I noted that it was promis­ing, but lim­ited in its use­ful­ness because the Fit­bit One is unable to report accu­rate data on some of my favorite activ­i­ties: yoga, kayak­ing and cycling.

Since then I’ve con­tin­ued using the Fit­bit every­day but remain annoyed at its lim­i­ta­tions. That said, I’ve per­suaded my hus­band and half a dozen fam­ily mem­bers and friends to buy their own fit­ness track­ing devices. My hus­band lost his device, but most of my friends still use theirs daily. He has­n’t replaced his device, which is in itself a com­ment on the fact that it does­n’t work for his pre­ferred activ­i­ties.

Your Conscience in Your Pocket

My friends, sis­ters and I all use our track­ers for sim­i­lar rea­sons: they’re a handy moti­va­tor to be more active, climb more stairs, go for longer walks; or get bet­ter sleep.

For me it’s like hav­ing a fit­ness con­science in my pocket — a daily reminder that my desk-bound daily work is not healthy for long peri­ods of time. Fit­bit One has been a good start, but its days are num­bered.

Change Is in the Offing

It’s clear that the fit­ness device indus­try is on the verge of a big tran­si­tion point, trig­gered by Apple. This is a make-or-break moment for smaller play­ers like Fit­bit.

If you fol­low this arena at all, you know that Apple is about to dis­rupt the health and fit­ness mar­ket with its IOS Health app, the improved motion track­ing capa­bil­i­ties of the new iPhone, the new Apple Watch and its strat­egy for HealthKit.

You can expect a whole ecosys­tem of health and well­ness apps to be built around the Apple Watch, IOS devices and the HealthKit ecosys­tem. Major play­ers are already work­ing on them behind the scenes.

As a sig­nal of upcom­ing change for today’s fit­ness incum­bents, online pun­dits are now writ­ing that Apple plans to remove devices (like Fit­bit) from the Apple Store if they remain incom­pat­i­ble with HealthKit. Typ­i­cal Apple: “You either play by our rules, or you don’t get to play the game with us in our global mar­ket­place.”

If you’ve fol­lowed the iTunes and iTunes Store play­book, this is a defin­ing moment for devices that choose to remain incom­pat­i­ble with Apple’s strate­gic software/ecosystem moves…

As a high tech indus­try mem­ber I pre­dict that we’ll see lots of interim con­fu­sion and con­sumer frag­men­ta­tion until the ecosys­tem shakes out. Most likely Apple and Google will con­tend for the lead posi­tion as the cor­ner­stone for health and fit­ness man­age­ment via con­sumer devices. In the mean­time con­sumers will buy today’s devices, not real­iz­ing they should really be think­ing about whose ecosys­tem they feel most com­fort­able join­ing. Many will unknow­ingly choose a device, only to learn that it’s incom­pat­i­ble with their Apple or Google ecosys­tems.

What’s the Right Fit for the Next Gen Tracking Device?

Every time the tech indus­try goes through one of these upheavals, you see com­pe­ti­tion between two dif­fer­ent philoso­phies: the “all in one” (we do every­thing) approach ver­sus the spe­cial­ized devices opti­mized to do one or a few things excep­tion­ally well.

I find myself won­der­ing which alter­na­tive will win out, and which will be best for me.

The Apple Watch and IOS 8 devices like the new iPhone 6 are con­tend­ing for the lead “all in one role” — at least for widely prac­ticed, main­stream fit­ness activ­i­ties that are easy to mea­sure.

I have no infor­ma­tion that would lead me to believe that the new Apple devices, ver­sion 1.0, will be designed to sup­port yoga or kayak­ing. Cycling is more main­stream so it’s more likely to be sup­ported early on. So that leads me to sus­pect I’ll be rel­e­gated to buy­ing assorted spe­cialty devices, the ones that inte­grate with HealthKit and my iPhone 6.

Given my pre­ferred phys­i­cal activ­i­ties and the dif­fer­ences among them, I’m likely to pre­fer a small unob­tru­sive device that inte­grates with HealthKit and sends data to my iPhone. That said, the device would need much more motion-related smarts than is avail­able with my cur­rent Fit­bit One.

Here are some of the require­ments for my ideal tracker:

• It would be small and easy to wear (or hide) for yoga classes at my local stu­dio.
• It would be savvy about yoga poses and their rel­a­tive effort or energy expended.
• It would make more intel­li­gent guesses about the dis­tance cov­ered when cycling and the rel­a­tive effort expended to cover that dis­tance (speed, hills climbed, etc.)
• It would be water­proof or come with a water­proof pack­ag­ing option, for peace of mind while kayak­ing.
• If I were younger, I’d want a device that knows the dif­fer­ence between walk­ing, hik­ing, run­ning or jog­ging.

Yoga Is Special

My cur­rent options are far from meet­ing these require­ments, espe­cially for yoga prac­tice. The Fit­bit One has proven to be use­less for yoga.

The ideal device would be capa­ble of detect­ing and mea­sur­ing dif­fer­ent kinds of move­ment and posi­tions in space while doing yoga poses. Upright or inverted, for starters… Surely a head­stand or shoul­der stand, even though motion­less, should count as more dif­fi­cult, con­sum­ing more calo­ries, then stand­ing upright in Moun­tain Pose. After all it takes more energy to bal­ance upside down on one’s head and hands than it takes to stand upright in a more nor­mal pos­ture.

Even though my iPhone 6 has decent built-in track­ing capa­bil­i­ties, bring­ing a mobile phone into a pub­lic yoga stu­dio is a huge no-no. If the Apple Watch makes noises for incom­ing phone calls, it too is likely to be banned from stu­dios.

Plus, there’s no good way to wear a big phone while wear­ing yoga gear and prac­tic­ing yoga. You can’t read­ily strap the phone to your wrist or upper arm because it could eas­ily get in the way of spe­cial­ized poses or inver­sions. It could smack you in the face dur­ing Down­ward Fac­ing Dog if you hung your phone around your neck. It could eas­ily fall from a pouch onto the floor, and pos­si­bly break from the impact.

The Apple Watch looks like it’s going to be too big to wear to a yoga stu­dio. Plus, it’s too flashy, too eye-catch­ing, designed to call atten­tion to itself — anti­thet­i­cal to yogic prin­ci­ples of non-attach­ment. That’s why some­thing small that could be stowed inside a tank top would be a bet­ter option for yogi­nis who want to track yoga for fit­ness rea­sons with­out call­ing atten­tion to what they’re doing.

Is Yoga That Difficult?

It’s hard to under­stand why there are no yoga-savvy track­ing devices today. Surely, this is an easy prob­lem to solve, given the right math and physics.

There’s a lim­ited “vocab­u­lary” of com­mon yoga poses, and each one is very well under­stood. Many resources have been pub­lished on the sub­ject.

I would think it would be easy to teach the yoga motion vocab­u­lary to a track­ing sen­sor, includ­ing pose vari­a­tions across the schools of yoga…

Something Different Is Coming, Someday

All I can pre­dict at this moment is that some­thing, rea­son­ably soon, is going to dis­lodge my Fit­bit One from my fit­ness wardrobe…

If Lul­ule­mon weren’t so pre­oc­cu­pied with its ongo­ing qual­ity and inven­tory man­age­ment issues, I might have expected a Lulu-branded device for yoga fans. Or maybe Man­duka.