Apple Shelves ‘Project Mulberry,’ Folds AI Health Coach Into Existing Health App

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.