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WWDC

Watches

Apple Announces watchOS 2 With Native Apps

Apple watchOS 2 Announcement

At Apple’s WWDC conference this week the company announced watchOS 2. The new operating system will allow 3rd party developers to create apps that fully live on the Apple Watch and utilize of all the sensors and inputs available. With version 1 of the operating system, 3rd party apps only had access to the touch screen and were required to stream from an iPhone. This change will have a huge impact on the depth, quality, performance of apps. It will be exciting to see what developers dream of! The beta of the new OS is available now to developers and will officially launch this fall, likely along side iOS 9. Besides development tools, watchOS 2 does not offer much else new. The update, announced 6 weeks after Apple Watch started shipping, is likely comprised of features that were originally scheduled to be included at launch (the “new” watch faces, for example, had already been shown last September) but were not ready in time.

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App, Wearable Technology

Apple Announces Wellness Aggregator Health

iOS 8 Health App

Apple announced its widely expected Health app at WWDC this week.  While differing slightly from the rumored HealthBook app, Health serves the same purpose.  Using the HealthKit APIs, developers can enable their medical or wearable device to communicate with the app.  Health will then aggregate the data from a variety of devices into one unified location.  The idea is that your calorie and sleep data from your FitBit will be next to your weight and MBI info from your Withings scale, which can be displayed with your iHealth glucose monitor readings.  Collecting data from various 3rd party hardware is great, but one can easily see the importance of the Health app if Apple’s health-centric smart watch becomes a reality.  

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