PSA: iOS 8.2 Comes With An Apple Watch App You Can’t Delete

iOS 8.2 is here! Hurray!

It’s got bug fixes! It’s got stability enhancements! It’s got… an app that you can’t delete that currently does nothing but play promotional Apple Watch videos!

Joining the dozen or so perma-apps that Apple includes on the iPhone is “Apple Watch”, an app that doesn’t actually do anything yet.

Come April 24th when the Apple Watch actually ships, the app will allow you to customize your watch settings, sync up your data, etc. For now, however, it just plays videos about the Apple Watch. Yep.

Have you already seen plenty of stuff about the Apple Watch? Don’t intend to buy one? Too bad! You can’t delete it.

(Once you pair up a Watch, a second “Activity” app will appear. So that functionality is there.)

Holding the icon allows you to move it around and toss it into a folder to be forgotten, but for now, deleting it is a no go.

At this point, the list of undeletable apps is getting a bit silly. Weather! Clock! Maps! Notes! Remindes! Stocks! Passbook! Newsstand! iBooks! The settings screen is already messy, Apple — just add one more screen to the pile and give us a way to toggle these things off our homescreens.

Don’t want the app? For now, your only option is to just not install iOS 8.2, or just grumble and tuck yet another app in your “Things I Don’t Use” folder.

Google’s Copresence Looks Like A Cross-Platform AirDrop

GNN - Google has a new service in the works that could allow users of Android devices to share media with others nearby, even if those users are rocking iOS devices like iPhone and iPads instead of gadgets running Google’s mobile OS. The so-called Copresence feature, revealed by an Android Police source digging around in the latest Google Play Services APK, would allow devices to use location information or Bluetooth to authenticate based on proximity, without requiring contact list approval as does Android Beam.

The Copresence feature would then share information using either Wi-Fi or Wi-Fi direct to actually shunt info back and forth, and would enable the sharing of maps, music, photos, websites and more, and would likely sport a strong integration with its Hangouts chat application, based on the graphics uncovered in the Services APK. It would make a lot of sense to see this housed in the Hangouts app itself, too, but there’s also an API for Chrome that’s been revealed previously, and Google has a broad patent, so this, like the Cast function for Chromecast, could be something that we see made available to developers to include in their own software on an app-by-app basis.

Apple’s AirDrop on iOS allows for sharing between iOS devices that are near one another, across networks and with the option of sharing beyond your address book, but it doesn’t allow for sharing between ecosystems. The iOS 8 update and Yosemite mean that it can now shuttle things between mobile and desktop, but you still have to be an Apple device user to partake. Google’s Copresence feature would apparently go beyond that limitation, in the same way that its Chromecast abilities extend to the iOS ecosystem, while AirPlay remains an Apple-only affair.

According to Android Police, Google Copresence will debut sometime in “the coming weeks,” so hopefully we don’t have to wait long to get our hands on what looks like a very useful feature. With the release of Google’s next-gen mobile OS Android 5.0 Lollipop just around the corner, it sounds like a good time for Copresence to make its debut.

How Apple’s #HealthKit Could Offer General Wellbeing As A Platform Advantage

#GNN - #Apple’s HealthKit is coming in iOS 8, and while reports about the current beta version of the software paint it mostly as an empty vessel waiting for developers to build hooks that connect their data to the hub, and use the data volunteered by other apps and the user to inform their own health and fitness software. But Apple isn’t just waiting to see what people will build; behind the scenes, it has been having discussions with Mount Sinai, The Cleveland Clinic, John Hopkins and EHR provider Allscripts, according to a new report by Reuters.

These are in addition to partners Apple had previously revealed for the platform, including the Mayo Clinic and EHR software-maker Epic. But the expansive nature of Apple’s discussions with top health care providers suggest that the company is serious about filling HealthKit not just with made-up health metrics like ‘NikeFuel’ or steps that give a general indicator of one facet of fitness but don’t really act as a medical measure.

Apple’s desire to bring on partners that include medical professionals and institutions (many of which are already using iPads anyway) could present it with some considerable challenges: The more comprehensive the iPad becomes as a medical device, the more it becomes subject to government regulations and safety nets put in place to protect customer and patient data. There’s HIPAA compliance, which will likely be required if Apple’s HealthKit stores any real medical records and makes that available to other apps, for instance.

These hurdles make it hard for startups to innovate in healthcare-related software and services, but Apple has advantages when it comes to finding its way through the thorny maze that is healthcare regulation, because of its influence on Capitol Hill and the size of its available resource pool – including its more than $160 billion in cash reserves.

HealthKit itself is likely designed specifically with lessening Apple’s risk in terms of regulatory matters and the involvement of bodies like the FDA, as Apple has reportedly been taking to the FDA to discuss its obligations around HealthKit.

The time and investment required to get HealthKit ready and able to support genuine medical use is probably great, but the benefit that Apple stands to gain in doing so is greater. Competitors like Google have offered fitness hub-type functionality too (Google Fit), but Apple could be first to market with something that affects a user’s general wellbeing in non-trivial ways. And that’s a market advantage that will have impact far beyond flashy hardware features like a better camera or a bigger screen, in the long run.