What’s new in Gym Buddy 1.9? 03/11/2009
Wow, Apple approved this one fast. Way to go, Apple.
I mentioned last time that I was able to spend some time in Photoshop. With 1.9, you see the results. Above you see the new ‘Colors’ theme, and the ‘Pink’ theme is much improved as well. Here is the new 1.9 icon next to the original 1.0 icon, just for old times sake:
Same theme, better execution. I think the new one is finally good, but then I thought 1.0 was good too at the time, so don’t go by me.
The two big additions to 1.9 are a new Exercises tab and a graph of your workout volumes. Your exercises can now be sorted five different ways -- and not just in the Exercise tab, but also in the workout tab when you’re adding exercises to a workout: 1) Indexed by category, 2) with a separate view for each category, 3) alphabetically, 4) by most recently added, so if you just added it you can find it quickly, and 5) by the # of sets performed, so you can easily find your favorites.
The Exercise tab also shows you how many sets you have performed of each exercise and from what date to what date. I thought seeing the number of sets was interesting, and since there was no where to put it but on its on line, there was also room for the dates.
I don’t know how useful people are finding the workout volume info. I think it’s at least fun to see how much weight you’ve lifted, and since we have the data, we have to graph it, right? I like this format of graph much better than the One Rep Max graph and hopefully soon I can update that one too to this scrolling style.
The Workout Volume report also adds something cool. Now when you select a row in the table, it takes you to the history for that day so that you can see and edit any of the sets on that day. In 2.0, this power will be added to the Previous section’s ‘Last 5’ list on the input screen. I can’t say I planned it that way all along, but once I figured it out I was kinda proud of myself. It’s amazingly cool. (I’m starting to sound like Steve Jobs.)
One thing I am hoping goes over well is the new alarm sounds. Someone in the comments suggested using a boxing bell and it sounded like a good idea to me. Because each timer sounds the bell a corresponding number of times, you can now easily tell which timer is sounding, as opposed to having to memorize which sound is which. Plus there’s something about a boxing bell that just makes you want to lift some weight.
The features I’m adding -- thanks to all the people who write me with feedback -- just seem to keep getting cooler and cooler, and I promise 2.0 will be no exception. I can’t wait for you all to see it.
What was new in older versions? Gym Buddy 1.1 Gym Buddy 1.2 Gym Buddy 1.3 Gym Buddy 1.4 Gym Buddy 1.5