Nice Cycle Ride



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Went on a nice little bike ride from my gym. I’m trying out a good little cycle GPS app called Cyclemeter, which does everything a basic cycle computer does – speed, duration, pace, distance – but not the highly complex stuff like cadence and presents it all in a much more intuitive way than even high end bike computers. You’ll need a contraption to attach the iPhone to your bike, but there’s a small company in the States, Bicio, that produces a great mounting system. Admittedly it’s for the 3G/3GS version, but it does for the iPhone 4 just as nicely.

It’s another example of the iPhone and their developer partners like Abvio exterminating the opposition by making things simple and well designed. It does everything a £50 – £150 bike computer does, but it’s in colour, in real time and generates a pile of easy to understand, easy to use and share online statistical information, none of which my former bike computers could be arsed with. All for a total cost of approximately £25 (iPhone not included obviously).  In the same way as I’m worried about Nokia’s future as the World’s premier mobile phone manufacturers, I’d be very worried for specialist sports computer manufacturers like Polar and Cateye, who can look forward to losing a large chunk of their market to smartphones like the iPhone.