Apple has launched its iOS 8 operating system for iPhones and iPads today, but key new fitness features have been delayed after the discovery of a software bug at the last minute.
An Apple representative didn’t describe the nature of the bug but said the company was working to develop a solution in the next couple of weeks.
HealthKit is a major new feature of Apple’s new iOS 8 and is expected to play a key role when the Apple Watch launches next year.
A number of apps were expected to launch HealthKit-compatible updates as iOS 8 rolled out, but they are now unlikely to go live until the end of September.
Several makers of fitness-tracking apps had also planned to take advantage of the platform, including Lark, Strava and WebMD.
Unveiled in June at the Worldwide Developers Conference, HealthKit is a platform designed for app developers that want to collect health information or disseminate it.
Apple envisions the technology being used in tandem with its hardware to collect health information and then have that data sent off to doctors, with a patient’s permission.
HealthKit stores a patient’s health information in a centralized location that, Apple says, no one can access without the user’s permission.
The company says that once that permission is granted, it could go a long way toward improving health care and the ways in which doctors receive data about a patient’s health.