Tim Cook hints at greater health features for Apple Watch

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Stainless steel Apple Watch meets pumping iron.
Apple Watch could soon tell you more about yourself.
Photo: Graham Bower/Cult of Mac

Tim Cook has hinted that the Apple Watch will get even greater at monitoring your health and fitness. Speaking at Startup Fest Europe in Amsterdam today, the Apple CEO said the company’s wearable may one day tell you when it’s time for a checkup.

Your Apple Watch already wants you to keep fit. It reminds you when it’s time to stand, it sets exercise goals you can work towards each day, and it tracks all kinds of data that lets you keep an eye on your progress. But it could do more.

Monitoring health should be more like monitoring a car, Cook said. There should be a device that reminds us when it’s time for a checkup, or detects problems that might need attention. None of the wearables you can buy today do this.

Cook isn’t sure one device is capable of doing it all, either, but he does hope that Apple Watch can do more.

“The holy grail of the watch is being able to monitor more and more of what’s going on in your body,” he said, according to Bloomberg“If you could have a device that knew so much about you, it would be incredible, and would extend life and extend quality.”

Shortly after Apple Watch made its original debut, reports claimed Apple had much greater ambitions for health and fitness tracking. The device was said to be tested with more sensors that could read things like blood oxygen and blood pressure.

Unfortunately, these sensors just weren’t reliable enough, so Apple cut them. However, it’s clear the company wants Apple Watch to do a lot more than it does today, and that’s almost certainly going to happen as new technologies come along that make tracking more accurate.

Cook also admitted that although health doesn’t drive revenue for Apple, it is a “massive interest” for its teams.

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