LifeSpan Active + at Mac App Store analyse

This is a barely minimal app that serves to send data from my treadmill to Lifespan’s branded version of the lackluster Interactive Health Partner service. The app is fine for that purpose. It sometimes takes a bit of fiddling to aquire a Bluetooth connection, usually a quit/relaunch of the app. I don’t find it takes much CPU type, nor that it uses Java as another reviewer has posted. The app’s weakness is that it requires the service to use, and the service looks to be stuck in the 1990’s. Without the service (and a live internet connection), the app does nothing, thus can’t log treadmill data. The app (and thus the $1000 treadmill) would be infinitely more useful if it didn’t require the service. It should simply log data to the local hard drive, thus allowing the user to track data in Excel or Pages, or upload that data to some better service.

This app is nearly worthless. It leads to an awful UI for managing steps. LifeSpan please just open the platform and let’s have some integrations with MyFitnessPal, FitBit, CardioTrainer, etc… That would be much better than this.

Unfortunately, this app has major bugs that still have not been addressed. First, the application will fail to reliably sync information to the LifeSpan Club system. There are several days when my sessions have not been uploaded. The application will show “Syncing” as normal, but nothing shows up on the website. No error messages are displayed. This forces you to open the website after every session and to check, and then start/stop the treadmill to trigger a sync again. But this problem is pretty much beside the point since the application stores incorrect distances when you set it to use the metric system. For example, I just finished 3.80km as displayed by the treadmill and the application. However, checking the website, it shows 1.49 miles. It’s pretty obvious the application does the ye olde-to-metric conversion incorrectly a couple of times since 1.46 * 1.6 * 1.6 = 3.8. I contacted support about this issue about a year ago without resolution or follow up.

This is a complete re-release of the previous versions of this application. It had a difficult if not impossible time actually connecting your computer to the treadmill. It was also a CPU busting memory hog, that often disconnected and crashed. This new version, tagged at 1.2, has a different interface that no longer pins itself to the side of the screen. While less CPU intensive, this version still uses far more CPU cycles than an app like this should. If only the developers would stop using Java to run this application. Also, connecting the app to the treadmill is a trick that should be made a lot easier. If you are having trouble, like I did, make sure that you are not actually using your treadmill at the time, and that it is in pause mode. Then, press the Bluetooth button so that the blue light is blinking, then launch the app. If you do not execute this sequence in that order, the app will probably not connect, and you will continue to be frustrated with this application and this company. Again, its a mild improvement, but this still is a pretty lousy application. LifeSpan makes treadmills. They seemingly care almost nothing about software development. What they *should* do is just open up the communications protocol on their devices and let fitness tracking software companies do what they do best. Right now, LifeSpan is trapped in the mid-90s.

I have never had a poorer experience with a piece of software, which is particularly frustrating because (a) it serves such a simple function and (b) i just made a $1000+ investment. When it did work you’d have to fight with it to get it to connect via bluetooth (not the greatest technology, that bt) and after I gave up on it a month I want to try again and it doesn’t like my password. An everyday occurence for all of us, but in this case there’s NO interface to update the password, no option to send a link to you email. nothing. you’re just screwed

Just click the x in the top left corner of the screen and you can bypass the login & their online sync service. Depending on your use case this may defeat the entire purpose of the app...

Features are pretty limited, but it seems to work well.