Apple Opens Its Legendarily Closed Gates

By Hannah Ash, contributing writer

Often accused of keeping brands developing for its platforms, apparently much can be gleaned about Apple’s future philosophy based on its willingness to work with two new app designers: Home Kit and HealthKit. Apple has often been accused as allowing developers to work within a ‘walled garden’ in which innovations were closely guarded and limited; the way in which Home Kit and HealthKit have been created change all of that and truly signal a new direction for the brand.

HealthKit works to break down silos of information by allowing universal access to key data across apps; Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, commented: “Developers have created a lot of apps for monitoring your health, but up to now the information gathered by those applications lives in silos. But now you can with HealthKit: a single place where applications can gather the data.” Going further, Apple plans to expand beyond HealthKit to offer “Health” which will work alongside HealthKit and partner with important brands such as the Mayo Clinic to bring users top-of-the-line information.

Home Kit, meanwhile, is a new app that empowers users to control all connected items in their homes (from doors to Honeywell thermostats to lights) with the ease of their iPhones. Partners who have worked to develop this app include Osram, Texas Instruments and Broadcam. That Apple has opened its heavily guarded gates truly signifies a new direction for the company. The potential for growth, when aligned with ace players (Steve Jobs believed in only working with the best of the best), could transform the company and be the burst of energy it needs to compete in an increasingly digital world. As Lea Simpson, strategy director at digital marketing agency TH_NK, said: “for marketers this openness changes the opportunity quite significantly. We should shift our thinking from working with the Apple ecosystem to working with Apple.”