Periods. Nobody likes them, but most women have them. However, Apple seems to not be aware of this fact.
Apple's highly-anticipated new HealthKit software is supposed to give you a wholistic picture of your health, from tracking your heart rate to cholesterol to your blood alcohol content. However, it seems like HealthKit can only give you the full run-down of your health if you're a man. As for the ladies, if you want to use HealthKit to track your menstruation cycle, you'll just have to go to another app for that, because it's not an option in the app, The Verge reports.
Apple's HealthKit is supposed to act like a dashboard that brings together all of the health information stored on your smartphone in various apps that track your weight, blood pressure and activity for you to view in one place. Even though there are several apps available that track women's menstruation cycles, such as Period Diary, WomanLog Calendar and Clue, users still have to visit those apps outside of HealthKit if they want to use their iPhones to track their periods.
Keeping track of your menstruation cycle is "a Quantified Self practice that a vast number of women do," Clue's Marketing Community Manager Lisa Kennelly told The Verge. However, she said that "maybe it's not as well known about yet on the tech and development side of things."
As The Verge points out, menstruation is clearly a health issue, so for it to not be included in an app boasting to be an all-encompassing resource for the Quantified Self, is a very glaring omission. Apple even partnered with the Mayo Clinic to get its Health app off the ground, which makes it even more surprising that the capability to track one's period didn't make the cut. Women have tracked their menstruation cycles for decades for fertility and contraceptive purposes, and as The Verge also notes, many doctors ask about the regularity of patients' periods. Not to mention, with slightly more iPhone users being female, isn't Apple really missing an opportunity here to connect with one of their biggest audiences?
The HealthKit launch hasn't been so smooth for Apple otherwise. Apple initially released the Health app without HealthKit during the iOS 8 launch, and when HealthKit was released with the patch, it erased some of the data users collected. With the embarrassing U2 album release and the iPhone 6 currently embroiled in "Bendgate," Apple has been going through a PR nightmare with every one of its new innovations it seems. Alienating more than half the population is not going to help get the company out of it, that's for sure.
