A bug in last week’s HealthKit developer tool has caused Apple to pull it from the iOS 8 launch, despite having many developers who rely on the integration for their apps. Any apps that had HK integration that were in the App Store have been pulled, and any that need HK and haven’t yet gotten approval will have to wait until the next iOS 8 update. The community is divided on whether this is a good or bad thing. On one hand, it’s great that Apple won’t let a flawed development go out, but on the other, there were a lot of people relying on it being ready. On Wednesday, Apple announced that there should be updates available by the end of September.
Users have to consider that the data held in HealthKit is extremely sensitive, given its medical nature, and Apple has to be responsible for making sure that data will be secure. If Apple were to release a not-yet-ready tool that saw people’s medical data being available to hackers, the company would never regain that trust.
