Apple Health’s Woke Challenge

, Don Irvine, Leave a comment

I’m a bit of a fitness nerd. I’ve owned various Fitbit fitness trackers for nearly ten years and only converted to an Apple Watch last summer, when my current Fitbit device died.

While I miss the various challenges with other Fitbit owners, I have learned to try and meet my fitness goals using the tools in Apple Health. Included in the health app and tracked on the watch are daily goals for what are called “move calories,” “exercise minutes,” and “stand hours” (the latter is defined as one minute of standing or moving per hour). Then, there are the monthly challenges and the occasional limited-edition challenges that are short-term in nature.

Normally, I don’t pay much attention to the challenges, but the limited-edition for February caught my eye. It’s a Unity challenge and the description of the challenge is as follows:

Let’s come together to honor Black history. Earn this Unity award by closing your Move ring for seven days in a row during February.

Yes, February is Black History Month, but what does exercising have to do with unity and black history?

Nothing.

But this is Apple, a company that has become more woke over the years. If I’d known that their wokeness would infiltrate their health app, I would have bought a new Fitbit instead. Then again, Fitbit is now owned by Alphabet, the parent company of Google, which is equally as woke yet hasn’t politicized their fitness tracking app.