Apple HealthKit Is Sick and Fails To Launch. Pulled From App Store Until End of Month
With major egg on face or face plant depending on your favorite visual, the Apple HealthKit range of apps have had to be pulled today from their App Store launch right on the cusp of the release of iOS 8 which was to support them. The Health apps are now not expected to be released until the end of the month at the earliest according to Apple insiders.
iOS Health Apps Pulled
The MyFitnessPal app which supports the day one HealthKit functionality has had to be pulled from the app store due to a bug in the back-end functionality of HealthKit. In an embarrassing turn, the company behind MyFitnessPal are now retrofitting a separate updated version of the app without HealthKit support and resubmitting that to the Apple App Store while they then wait for a fix for the HealthKit integration problem.
The Carrot Fit HealthKit update has also been removed from the App Store as well. The developer of this app, Brian Mueller, tweeted over on Twitter that the HealthKit was broken and not read for prime time yet. A time-line for his fix for Carrot Fit's HealthKit has not so far been offered by Mueller.
Both of these situations are in stark relief to the jazzy Apple event recently on September 9 where the Apple HealthKit apps and functionality were trumpeted as a useful way to address health and wellness matters. Indeed, Apple CEO Tim Cook was interviewed on US talk show Charlie Rose this week where he said that Apple wanted to provide a full view of device owner's lives so they could feel empowered to use this information to improve their own health. Nice sentiment, but please get your HealthKit system health first, Tim, eh?!
What Is HealthKit?
The HealthKit itself is a tool to assist app developers in the new iOS 8. It is supposed to gather information from apps and devices like the Apple Watch, to determine heart rate and calories burned. In this way, a nutrition app could share information about what food and calories were consumed by the Apple device owner today to installed fitness apps.
Previously apps were largely ring-fenced in order to avoid viruses spreading and from data being obtained between apps without user permission.
The health apps are intended to be able to help doctors too who can be linked in to receive blood pressure readings and other relevant details like whether their patient is keeping to their prescribed healthy diet.
A new software update from Apple will be needed to address the bug that the HealthKit has picked up. Some more coding and testing is clearly the medicine needed here.
The Apple Health app in iOS 8 is separate to HealthKit and related apps supporting HealthKit features. The Health app provides a health dashboard but will lack information without the addition of HealthKit and other apps. It is still available at the present time.
While Apple tries in vain to make its push into health and fitness, their Apple Watch is still not expected for release until 2015 which will hold back their wearable device being the collector of fitness information. The device already requires access to an iPhone to add extra functionality like GPS and Wi-Fi access which is present in competing smart watches on the market but not with Apple's pricey watch.
