Technology & Science
Apple Shelves ‘Project Mulberry,’ Folds AI Health Coach Into Existing Health App
Apple quietly shut down its standalone AI health-coach project this week and will instead drip-feed its features into the iOS Health app over the next year.
Focusing Facts
- The ‘Mulberry’ service, once slated for iOS 27, was wound down in early February 2026 after several slips from an original iOS 26 target.
- Eddy Cue assumed control of the health division after Jeff Williams’ December 2025 retirement and judged the coach uncompetitive versus rivals like Oura and Whoop.
- Apple’s Oakland studio, built to film physician-led wellness videos for Mulberry, will repurpose that content for incremental Health-app updates starting later in 2026.
Context
Big Tech killing a high-profile moonshot mid-stream is hardly new: Microsoft axed its ‘Courier’ tablet in 2010 and Google mothballed ‘Google Health’ in 2011 when each proved hard to scale and regulate. Apple’s retreat echoes those moves and underscores two structural forces: (1) medical AI is shackled by data-privacy law and FDA oversight, slowing the ‘move fast’ playbook, and (2) platform companies are rediscovering that folding new services into mature ecosystems is cheaper than launching fresh subscriptions amid investor scrutiny of capex. On a century timeline, the episode barely dents the inexorable march toward ambient, preventative digital healthcare, but it reveals that even trillion-dollar firms must pace innovation between visionary leaps and regulatory reality—today’s incremental rollout may lay the groundwork for a more trusted, integrated medical AI layer in the 2030s.
Perspectives
Investor-focused financial media
e.g., Asianet News Network, Bloomberg Business — They frame Apple’s AI pivots and trimmed health-coach plans as prudent cost discipline that keeps the company a reliable, cash-generating haven even as other Big Tech firms burn money on AI. By zooming in on cap-ex numbers and share-price resilience, they risk glossing over long-term innovation risks that could undercut those very earnings — a blind spot that serves readers obsessed with near-term market moves.
Apple-centric enthusiast sites
e.g., AppleInsider, Cult of Mac — They argue the Mulberry retrenchment is a strategic rethink rather than a retreat, insisting Apple is simply breaking features into smaller releases while gearing up exciting new AI hardware categories. Because their readership skews pro-Apple, they tend to take company leaks at face value and downplay the possibility that delays stem from technical or regulatory stumbles, casting almost any change as a savvy master-plan.
Independent tech blogs and commentators critical of Apple’s AI pace
e.g., Phone Arena, 9to5Mac — They present the health-coach pullback and Gemini partnership turmoil as fresh evidence that Apple is lagging rivals in AI and scrambling reactively rather than leading the next interface shift. Highlighting missteps and uncertainty generates engagement and fits a narrative of the once-dominant giant losing its edge, so setbacks can be amplified while Apple’s cash, talent and ecosystem advantages get less airtime.