Thursday Apple Rumors: New Apple Hire Suggests iWatch Health Focus

by Christopher Freeburn | February 6, 2014 1:40 pm

[1]Here are your Apple rumors[2] and AAPL news items for today:

Medical: When Apple (AAPL[3]) launches its long-rumored smartwatch later this year, the device may include significant health-monitoring features, 9to5Mac notes. That may be the implication of Apple’s recent recruitment[4] of Roy J.E.M Raymann, a sleep research expert. Apple lured Raymann away from Philips Research where he established the Philips Sleep Experience Laboratory to study sleep patterns. Raymann’s resume includes work developing wearable sensors for sleep research. Apple also recently posed a job ad[5] for a User Studies Exercise Physiologist. The listing indicated that the candidate would “design and run user studies related to cardiovascular fitness & energy expenditure, including calories burned, metabolic rate, aerobic fitness level measurement/tracking and other key physiological measurements.” Apple is reportedly working on an application called Healthbook for its iOS 8. Healthbook could be incorporated in the iWatch, which would be well positioned to allow the monitoring of vital health statistics.

Dumped: It appears Apple isn’t jumping on the bitcoin wagon. While a number of retailers have moved to embrace the digital currency, on Wednesday, Apple ditched the last bitcoin-sharing app from its App Store[6], PC World notes. Blockchain says Apple informed it that its app had been removed from the App Store over an “unresolved issue.” The app-maker was not pleased with the decision, noting on its website that: “These actions by Apple once again demonstrate the anti-competitive and capricious nature of the App Store policies.” Blockchain’s app can exchange and store bitcoins. Apple had already ousted other bitcoin wallet apps, including Gliph and Coinbase, from the App Store. The Blockchain app had been downloaded 120,000 times during the two years it had been listed on the App Store.

Android iPhone: It might sound like heresy, but Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak says Apple might someday build a handset running on Google’s (GOOG) Android operating system[7], Wired notes. Wozniak made his comments during an interview at the Apps World North American conference. He noted that Apple could build Android phones as a secondary business. “We could compete very well. People like the precious looks of stylings and manufacturing that we do in our product compared to the other Android offerings. We could play in two arenas at the same time,” he told Wired. Woziak dismissed criticism that Apple takes too long to release new products. “A whole new category of products doesn’t happen very often,” he said noting that such breakthroughs happen when small teams of “great people” work together in secret. “It might happen once a decade. Sometimes you have to wait for one of those to come about.” Wozniak als0 praised Apple for not overburdening each iPhone generation with unnecessary features.

For more about the company, check out our previous Apple Rumors[8] stories

Source URL: https://investorplace.com/2014/02/thursday-apple-rumors-new-apple-hire-suggests-iwatch-health-focus/

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