Leaked: Apple Secret Health Play Could Push Out Smaller Apps

Leaked documents suggest Apple is working on an app for tracking mental health.

Nearly a decade since the launch of the Apple Watch and the Health App, Apple  (AAPL) – Get Free Report continues to pour a lot of resources into the health and wellness space.

The tech giant is constantly expanding features that allow one to access health data and track everything from sleep patterns to abnormal heart rhythms from one’s devices. In July 2022, it also acquired boutique primary care agency One Medical for $3.9 billion.

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The latest move is, according to an internal memo dug up by the Wall Street Journal, a journaling app where can write about one’s day and also track one’s physical and mental health in a more long-form format.

Apple Wants You To Track Symptoms In A Journal

While plenty of online journaling platforms are available both for free and purchase on the Apple App Store, the new program would come directly from Apple and be one of the apps that come pre-installed on new devices.

According to the documents viewed by WSJ, the decision to develop the journaling software it codenamed “Jurassic” was made after reviewing studies showing journaling’s connection to better mental health.

Apple regularly releases flowery statements about finding ways to “empower the mental health” of its customers and employees and, as of September 2021, was reportedly working on features that could be used to monitor common mental health conditions.

Rumored to launch as a feature of iOS 17 at Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference in June, “Jurassic” will reportedly have the regular blank space for day-to-day journaling while also allowing one to pull information or notes from other places on one’s devices and using AI to suggest topics based on what someone might have journaled about in the past.

Another featured called “All Day People Discovery” will also suggest friends and acquaintances that one regularly writes about, talks to or mentions.

Other products expected to be announced at the developers conference include a new mixed reality headset and a way to download third-party apps in order to fall in line with European antitrust laws. 

What ‘Sherlocking’ Is And How It Hurts Small Developers

But as with a number of past products, developers who currently have journaling apps on the App Store say that a competing Apple product could eventually push them out of business.

“It’s always the worst thing to have to hear that you’re about to be sherlocked,” Paul Mayne, who founded the popular journaling app Day One, told the WSJ. “It will definitely give us some competition.”

The term “sherlock” arose in the 1990s after Apple released a search software called Sherlock despite the existence of an existing app called “Watson” made by a third-party developer.

The journaling platform was founded in 2011 and has, to date, been downloaded from the app store more than 10 million times and has more than 200,000 subscribers who pay $35 a year for the premium version.

Day One also won a design award in 2014 but, according to Mayne, has been getting featured less and less prominently on the Apple Store in recent years.

When it announced new products and features at its last Worldwide Developers Conference in 2022, Apple was accused of similar “sherlocking” tactics with new “Buy Now Pay Later” features currently dominated by Klarna as well as the webcam-style camera capabilities currently provided by the Camo app.

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