Apple employees ‘close your rings’ 2020 challenge is back

Since 2018, Apple hosts an internal challenge ‘close your rings’ for all of its employees in the corporate and retail division around the world. After a four months delay, the heart health-related challenge for 2020 is back. For the challenge, employees are expected to close all three of their activity rings on Apple Watch daily in the dedicated month. Based on their activity scores, three winners are picked and awarded with exclusive merchandise.

An internal source familiar with the matter told MacRumors that the challenge will commence this week till August 16. First, second and third winners are awarded gold, silver, and bronze pins and t-shirts with a 2020 logo. Previously, winners were given exclusive watch bands. Personally, Apple pins are every fan boy’s and girl’s dream.

The health challenge is always held in the month of February as an awareness campaign for world heart month. However, this year’s challenge was postponed due to COVID-19 pandemic when Apple employees were working from home, like people around the world, to comply with precautionary measures of social distancing and isolation to contain transmission of the coronavirus.

“The Close Your Rings Challenge is one of those rare opportunities to bring team members and colleagues from around the world together with a common purpose to close our rings, earn some points, and have fun. With a number of our offices and stores closed in China right now and some of our team members unable to participate, we’ve decided to postpone the 2020 Close Your Rings Challenge. At this time, our Challenge will be removed from the Challenges app.

We’ll update everyone as soon as we have a new date when we can all focus together in closing our rings!”

Close Your Rings on Apple Watch

Apple Watch is designed is not only as a smartwatch but a health monitoring device. When wearing, the Activity app on the smartwatch automatically calculates and records user movement regardless of the activity, gardening, climbing stairs, cooking, getting groceries, working out, and so on via three activity rings: Move, Exercise, and Stand.

For a more precise assessment, users can set calories goals for each ring. Paired with an iPhone, users can edit goals, compare their activity progress, share daily activity achievements with friends, and much more. For users with physical impairments, Apple has customized the move and stand rings for wheelchair support in the accessibility feature.

The description of Roll On reads:

“We’ve optimized the Activity rings specifically for wheelchair users. The Stand ring becomes the Roll ring. And during the day, Apple Watch counts pushes and identifies different stroke types to award the right amount of Move and Exercise credit. There are also two wheelchair-specific workouts in the Workout app.”

Read more about ‘close your rings’ here.

Close Your Rings on Apple Watch

Rida Imran

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