iPhone Journaling App Reportedly On The Way As Apple Doubles Down On Health
Apple is expanding its range of health and wellness products with a new journaling app. According to reports by The Wall Street Journal, Apple's new journaling app is currently codenamed "Jurassic," and could be unveiled during June's Apple Worldwide Developers Conference. The app itself is then expected to arrive on phones later this year. It isn't known if the app will come with paid features, like some similar products, or be available for free like the bulk of Apple's software offerings.
Journaling apps exist in a pretty crowded marketplace, with the likes of Day One and Five Minute Journal developing strong user bases. However, Apple is no stranger to entering areas where other companies are well established and becoming quite successful. Journaling itself has many benefits, from helping people keep a better record of events and memories, to helping folks work through difficult times. It can also be habit-building and help people become more productive overall.
Details on Apple's potential journaling app are pretty sparse, but some information is available. As with a number of Apple products, "Jurassic" is likely to be heavily integrated with the rest of the company's ecosystem — though its interaction with other Apple products may not sit well with everyone.
Some of the alleged features are a bit creepy
While Apple is no doubt trying to be both cutting edge and helpful with its new app, some of the features the company may include are just downright creepy. If the documents seen by the Wall Street Journal are accurate, the app will go above and beyond to develop unique writing prompts for you. This includes gathering data from your phone, and how you've used it in the day(s) previous to the entry. The app may spot patterns, as well as changes in a user's behavior, and use that to create suggestions for journal entries.
The report also hints at an "All Day People Discovery" feature, which logs time spent with friends, co-workers, and presumably anyone else in possession of an iPhone. In terms of privacy, this data supposedly isn't going to make it into the cloud or onto Apple's servers. According to the documents, it will be stored on the device itself, and then deleted after four weeks should the prompts not be used.
While this feature may be seen as useful in some cases, it may put others off. Especially given Apple's complex history when it comes to user data and privacy. If you don't want your actions and interactions tracked, it is likely you'll be able to disable this feature and still access the app. Plenty of other iPhone settings can be changed for the sake of user privacy as well.