An idea I don’t have time to pursue right now:

The new iPhone SDK, which gives developers access to the accelerometer, should make it easy to write up a little iPhone pedometer application.

Just tell the app your stride length, turn it on, slide the iPhone in your pocket, and away you go. A friendly display can show your number of steps, approximate distance traveled, a reset button, a history log, and a picture of a puppy. Because who doesn’t love adorable puppies?

Edited to add: Nevermind. Rogue Amoeba reports:

… the SDK agreement expressly forbids using non-public APIs, attempting to touch other applications, and running in the background, among other things.

No running in the background makes a pedometer useless.

Lawyers and software. What a great combination.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 7th, 2008 at 10:59 pm and is filed under OS X, Programming, Somebody should do this. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.