Get thinner, get stronger, get faster, get healthier with iMore and Mobile Nations in February!

New Years is over, January has come and gone, and for many of us, our get fit and get healthy resolutions have come and gone with it. Rather than leaving them lying in ruin with what’s left of our waist lines and good intentions, however, we want to do something about it. And we want you to do something about it with us!

Whether CrackBerry challenged Android Central, WPCentral threw down the gauntlet on webOS Nation, or iMore called them all out, who remembers? The important thing is this — we’re using February to get off our collective apps and get into shape.

Think about it — mobile is where it’s increasingly at for health and fitness. Our iPhone go everywhere we go and are the perfect way to record everything from our activity to our diet to our sleep cycles. And our iPads let us look at all that data on a bigger screen and really see where we are and where we need to be. Mobile has become lifestyle.

So… Want to eat better? iMore is with you! Want to get stronger? We’re spotting! Want to get into better cardio shape? We’re so there!

Each week we’re each going to set reasonable, attainable goals, and each week we’re going to take advantage of our awesome community to make sure we attain them. We’re going to have special editions of our ZEN and TECH and Superfunctional podcasts to help us get going and stay going, and we’re going to use our brand new Health and Fitness Forum to keep us focused, keep us accountable, and keep us keeping on!

Oh, and you could win an iPad 3!

You, the iMore Nation, are our motivation. And to keep you motivated, we have some great prizes lined up. Anyone and everyone who participates, who shares their goals and keeps us up-to-date with their regular progress will be automatically entered to into our:

• Weekly drawings for an iPod nano. We’re giving away 4 total, one each week!
• Grand prize drawing for an iPad 3 IOU! (You’ll get it when Apple launches it!)

There will also be some great app and accessory giveaways along the way to keep everyone on their toes.

Sound good? Sound great? Sound like you just can’t wait to get fit? Good! Jump into our new Health and Fitness Forum now and pick your goal for week 1.

Mobile Nations fitness month has begun!

Not content with merely making some of the best Bluetooth headsets and wireless speakers in the business, Jawbone expanded their product line this year with the Jawbone UP. A small, light bracelet, you wear it around your wrist and along with an iPhone companion app, it keeps track of how you’re sleeping, how much exercise you’re doing, and what you’re eating.

Live at CES 2012 we talk to Jawbone about the future of UP, the updated they’re pushing out, and why they feel mobile lifestyles encompass more than the traditional product lines.

• Jawbone UP app — Free — App Store link

Japanese news site Macotakara reported last week that Apple has supplied Made For iPhone accessory makers with a new authentication chip using Bluetooth 4.0 and the Bluetooth Low Energy protocol, making it easier to setup and authenticate devices for use over the dock connector and Bluetooth with a specific push for fitness and health-related apps.

It was previously speculated that this new authentication system would support Bluetooth for carrying content over AirPlay, but The Verge was able to squash the rumor with a bit of clarification from Apple. Instead, Apple wants more MFI accessory makers to use the new spec in devices like the recently-released Jawbone UP and similar hardware. The process will make it easier for users to configure wireless devices by connecting to WiFi networks and grabbing Bluetooth configuration information, ultimately requiring little effort on the user’s part to get everything up and running.

The Bluetooth Accessory Protocol was introduced in iOS 5, but only around 2 percent of MFI accessory makers are actually utilizing the new stack. Hopefully this new authentication chip will bring wider adoption to less tech-savvy iOS users, but we’ll have to wait until we start seeing supporting hardware pop up in the market.

Source: Macotakara via The Verge

The highly anticipated iPhone fitness accessory, Jawbone Up, will be available this Sunday. A colorful wrist band with built in sensors and a vibration motor, Jawbone Up is designed to track your eating, sleeping and exercise patterns.

Up is a tool designed to improve your lifestyle and it is designed to work with the iPhone, iPad or iPod touch via an app that can retrieve the information recorded from the wrist band; strangely via the 3.5mm headset jack. The app can then tell you a plethora or information and help you move more, sleep better and eat smarter.

• Use the UP wristband and iPhone app to track your steps, distance, calories burned, pace, intensity level, active vs inactive time, GPS routes and more.
• Program your UP wristband to vibrate on your wrist to remind you to move when you’ve been inactive for too long. You control the interval and timeframe.
• Put your wristband in sleep mode to automatically track your hours slept, deep vs. light sleep, awake time and overall sleep quality.
• Replace your noisy alarm clock with UP’s silent Smart Alarm; it vibrates on your wrist and intelligently wakes you up at the ideal moment in your natural sleep cycle just before your desired wake time.
• Say hello to your new food journal. It’s as easy snapping a photo and responding to prompts about how each meal makes you feel.
• UP gets to know you by asking how you feel after each meal. Over time, you can use your responses to help discover which foods make you feel your best.

The Jawbone Up will be available from Sunday November 6 online as well as in Apple Stores, Target, AT&T and Best Buy. The Jawbone Up Band comes in three sizes and will cost $99. The app is available as a free download.

App Store link

Source: Jawbone

The New York Times (via Daring Fireball) provided some additional information on Steve Jobs’ health, and the possible reason behind the announcement today that he was taking a leave of absence from Apple:

Two people who are familiar with Mr. Jobs’s current medical treatment said he was not suffering from a recurrence of cancer, but a condition that was preventing his body from absorbing food. Doctors have also advised him to cut down on stress, which may be making the problem worse, these people said.

Again, we here at TiPb wish Steve Jobs and his family the very best. Get well soon.

Following the speculation, the turning of the final Macworld Keynote over to VP Phil Schiller, and an unprecedented open letter to the Apple community on his health, Steve Jobs today sent out word to Apple employees that he was taking a leave of absence from the company he co-founded. Text via Engadget:

Team,

I am sure all of you saw my letter last week sharing something very personal with the Apple community. Unfortunately, the curiosity over my personal health continues to be a distraction not only for me and my family, but everyone else at Apple as well. In addition, during the past week I have learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought.

In order to take myself out of the limelight and focus on my health, and to allow everyone at Apple to focus on delivering extraordinary products, I have decided to take a medical leave of absence until the end of June.

I have asked Tim Cook to be responsible for Apple’s day to day operations, and I know he and the rest of the executive management team will do a great job. As CEO, I plan to remain involved in major strategic decisions while I am out. Our board of directors fully supports this plan.

I look forward to seeing all of you this summer.

Steve

Needless to say, everyone here at TiPb wishes Steve Jobs a fast and full recovery.

Wow. Anyone remember what Steve Jobs did to the New York Times when they merely inquired about his health? Imagine what he’ll do to those poor fools at Bloomberg’s who just accidentally published — and then rapidly retracted — his obituary. (Our guess? 9-finger Wu-Shi death touch, minimum).

According to Gawker, the obit-fart:

…contains nothing to indicate Bloomberg has new information on Jobs’s health, at least in our quick skim.

Real Dan (the artist formerly known as Fake Steve), offers perhaps a more appropriate take on both the incident and its reporting:

Luckily, Gawker decided to humiliate Bloomberg by publishing the entire obit, including the list of people that Bloombots should call if/when Dear Leader actually does die, which I’m still not sure he ever will, because as far as I can recall from all that Greek and Latin I took in high school a man-god born of Zeus and mortal woman should be an immortal being, and furthermore, how would Apple PR handle it? I suppose for a while they could just stonewall by saying they weren’t here today to talk about Steve, they were here to talk about how excited everyone is about [FILL IN NAME OF NEW PRODUCT HERE] and maybe they could buy themselves a year or two during which the Apple faithful would continue to believe Steve was really alive despite having seen reports to the contrary on the news.

Strangely, we can’t seem to determine whose filthy hackery is the most fake these days…

A reporter over at one of those reputable, printing companies recently received a phone call from Steve Jobs and this was his opening line:

“This is Steve Jobs,” he began. “You think I’m an arrogant [expletive] who thinks he’s above the law, and I think you’re a slime bucket who gets most of his facts wrong.”

The whole conversation with Steve Jobs was off the record so we still don’t know the nitty gritty details but according to the New York Times, it’s more than just a common bug but isn’t life threatening and it’s not cancer.

Some think his health should be a private matter, which makes sense because we should all have some level of privacy. Some think his health should be public knowledge if it is serious enough, which also makes sense because of Steve Jobs unique role in Apple and Apple being a public company.

We at TiPb just want him to get better and hopefully the rest will handle itself.

What do you think?

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