At its event today, Apple has revealed more details about its health and fitness data play.
Apple formally introduced HealthKit in June at its WWDC developer event which previewed iOS 8 to its dev community.
HealthKit and Apple’s new Health app combine data from various different health and fitness devices and apps, making them accessible in one place. Called “Health” in iOS 8, the new app acts as a physical monitor that could replace devices like Fitbit and the like.
One interesting addition to the HealthKit system is a built-in barometer in the M8 “motion” chip that the current iPhone and the new iPhones use to manage motion, count steps, and tell how many flights of stairs you’ve taken in a day.
This improved M8 chip makes the iPhone a true health wearable. In short, it makes a number of current wearables obsolete or at least redundant. If earphone can act as a Fitbit or Basis band, why do you need both?
HealthKit also makes it easier for developers to feed data into Apple’s Health app, meaning they don’t need to build custom tools to transfer, sync and collate health data themselves. And Apple gets more health info population its app.
