Apple has made the “Nike + iPod Sport Kit” available for order from their online store with a stated shipping time of “4-5 weeks.”
Transform your iPod nano into a personal workout coach with the Nike + iPod Sport Kit. This wireless sensor and receiver combination works exclusively with your Nike+ shoes and iPod nano to give you real-time feedback during workouts and let you track your performance on your Mac or PC.
Lance Armstrong and the Nike+iPod Sport Kit:
Direct link to video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrcDyxpDY9s
How Nike+iPod works video:
Direct link to video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVDEXzxZWQw
The Nike+iPod Sport Kit costs US$29 and contains:
• wireless sensor for Nike+ shoes
• Wireless receiver for iPod nano
• Printed documentation
More information about the Nike+iPod Sport Kit can be found here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “macnut222” for the heads up.]
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Not for me. The first pair of Nikes I bought fell apart within a month. There never was, and never will be, a second pair of Nikes for me.
Not that I’m going to get one but I do find it a bit odd that you can’t change the battery or even charge it seemingly. It doesn’t even supply any usage times. From a recycling point of view it seems a bit stupid to have to chuck away the whole lot each time the battery goes – not to mention the expense.
Also when does iTunes get updated?
M.X.N.T.4.1,
Nike+iPod Sport Kit sensor’s battery will outlast the shoes – May 24, 2006
It’s cheap enough to just get a new one every other pair of shoes or so – maybe it’ll even last longer. $14.50 per pair of shoes or even less.
That’s how they can do it for $29 – keep it simple with a sealed battery.
They previously stated battery life would be around 1000 hours.
Runners should change shoes approximately every 400-500 miles. But this can vary depending on the surfaces, mileage run, your body weight and the biomechanics of your feet. Generally speaking, heavy, biomechanically inefficient runners need to change their shoes more often.
So, let’s figure a relatively fast 7 minute mile base:
500 miles * 7 minutes = 3500 minutes or 58 hours.
The Nike+iPod Sport Kit’s wireless sensor’s battery life is quite sufficient.
Hopefully the shoes will be available then to. I got a free iPod nano and I neeed new running shoes so I set when these become available.
Now what I don’t know is how then measure distance. Is it set by your stride (which is really hard to measure and can vary) or does this have better technology to measure how far it has travelled. I couldn’t find any information on the websites.
The iPod nano’s stopwatch is pretty good since it remembers the lap times and saves the data for each run until you delete it. It would be very useful if you could DL this info to the mac to allow you to track the pace graphically. I couldn’t find a way to do that yet.
qka – I can understand if you spent a lot and they fell apart, but I have had dozens of Nike shoes and all but one survived quite nicely. The 1 pair I did have that fell apart in about the same time frame as yours was replaced after I sent a letter to Nike detailing the problem.
How long until someone publishes a hack for other shoe brands?
Neil,
According to Jobs at the introduction, the sensor is 90% accurate out-of-the-box and can be further refined (it’s based on your stride, not GPS).
90% base accuracy is an excellent number for something like this that retails for $29 in our opinion.
From what we’ve heard, once you tweak it, it’ll be quite accurate.
Thanks MDN
It will be interesting how it works in practice. Hopefully the shoes will be up to snuff. The shoes I use currently have been fantastic, so the Nike ones will need to perform as well.
1. Can this be used on non-nano iPods?
2. Can this be used on non-Nike shoes?
I’m really interested in getting one but I have the 3G iPod and New Balance running shoes.
Nike+Apple+TrailRunner
Even if it’s cool to hear some motivating tunes during your workout, how do you know what the 5 miles course is? TrailRunner is the next perfect addition. It’s a workout route planner of Mac OS X that can export route directions as small NanoMaps onto the Nike+Apple iPod. For more information visit TrailRunner.