Criticized for the addictive nature of its devices, Apple is planning to unveil software to help cure people of their habit.
Apple is holding its annual Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose today, where Bloomberg reports it’s expected to lay out a software strategy for next year and tease the new editions of the iPhone.
Apple engineers have been working on an initiative dubbed Digital Health, a series of tools to help users monitor how much time they spend on their devices and inside of certain applications. These details will be bundled into a menu inside of the Settings app in iOS 12, the likely name of Apple’s refreshed mobile operating system, according to people familiar with the plans.
Earlier this year, Apple investors Jana Partners LLC and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System criticized the addictive nature of Apple’s devices. Apple responded by saying it would add more “robust” parental controls to monitor the use of its products.
At its own developer conference in May, Google emphasized similar tools. The company has a new Dashboard for Android phones that lets users monitor how long they’re using other apps and reminds people to take a break.
Apple is also expected to emphasize the supposedly bug-free nature of new software after a year of glitches, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Since September, Apple has issued 14 software updates for its mobile operating system and fixed 67 software flaws—a 46% rise from the 46 bugs addressed in the same period a year earlier, according to a tabulation of Apple’s software-update notes, which offer a publicly available snapshot of software issues.
Read the full stories from The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. Â
