Apple Watch to ship with all previously announced health features

February 21, 2015

Mainstream reporting on Apple is often sensational and superficial. Once and a while it's also stupefying. That's the case with this story about the Apple Watch, where it seems details of Apple testing various different health sensors during the normal course of their product development cycle somehow got warped and twisted into something profoundly stupid. CBS News

Apple is ditching the health tracking functions of the Apple Watch, which is going to start shipping in April.

Why? "They sorta had to," said CNET senior editor Jeff Bakalar. "Because it's not working."

Apple touted a new health and fitness app when they first announced the Apple Watch back in September. Since then it's remained a highlight of what to expect, and it was evidently still a part of the plan when details of the watch leaked in January.

John Gruber stated the obvious on Daring Fireball:

This is ridiculous. Nothing has changed about Apple Watch's health and fitness features since it was announced.

They have a web page explaining just which fitness tracking features it has

.

Despite that, and despite the articles own comments pointing out the errors over and over again, at the time of this writing it's yet had yet to be corrected.

In case anyone was left uncertain, here are highlights of the health and fitness features being included with the Apple Watch, as listed by Apple:

Apple Watch measures all the ways you move, such as walking the dog, taking the stairs, or lifting your kids. Apple Watch even keeps track of when you stand up. Because it all counts. And it all adds up.
The Activity app provides a simple and powerful graphic of your daily activity, with three rings telling you everything you need to know. The Move ring shows how many calories you've burned. The Exercise ring shows how many minutes of brisk activity you've done. And the Stand ring shows how often you've stood up to take a break from sitting.
Apple Watch is designed with customizable coaching options that will motivate you to reach your daily activity goals each day, and use your success to motivate you to new milestones.
When you're doing a dedicated cardio workout, the Workout app built into Apple Watch shows real-time stats such as time, distance, calories, pace, and speed for the most popular workouts in the world, like running, walking and cycling.
Apple Watch shows your daily activity at a glance. To see your progress and trends over longer periods of time, there's Fitness, an Apple Watch companion app on your iPhone.

You can visit the page to get all the details, and you can

to see it's exactly what Apple demonstrated on stage.

Precisely nothing has changed — and certainly nothing has been "ditched" — between then and now. Except, perhaps, the duty of the media to inform our audience as best as we can.