Apple used its Worldwide Developers Conference, held June 8 to 13, 2026, to ship the most significant redesign of its Health app in years, complete with a rebuilt heart-rate engine and new perimenopause and menopause tracking. What it did not ship was Project Mulberry, the AI health coach widely expected to headline the event and anchor a rumored Apple Health+ subscription service. Apple pushed the feature past the WWDC window entirely, choosing instead to spend the year strengthening the biometric data the coach would eventually need to reason over.
What Actually Landed in iOS 27 and watchOS 27
The iOS 27 Health app redesign added perimenopause and menopause tracking, expanding the app’s coverage of health topics beyond its existing metrics, a change Sugam Budhraja, head of data and AI at digital health company Sahha, described as one of the most significant Health app redesigns in years. On the watch side, watchOS 27 introduced an overhauled heart-rate tracking engine aimed at improving measurement accuracy, enhanced sleep tracking, and an upgraded version of Workout Buddy, Apple’s AI-assisted workout companion introduced in prior years. Apple has also signaled separately that a blood-pressure sensing feature for Apple Watch, long rumored, remains slated for a 2026 rollout.
The Feature That Didn’t Show Up
Project Mulberry, Apple’s internal name for an AI-driven health coaching system that would use iPhone and Apple Watch data to deliver personalized nutrition and medical guidance, was expected to be the centerpiece of a new Health+ subscription tier. Instead, Budhraja’s analysis noted that Apple refocused near-term engineering on strengthening the reliability of the underlying biometric data before layering AI features on top, describing Apple’s guiding principle as the belief that an AI coach is only as good as the data it reasons over.
A Deliberate Bet on Sequencing
That sequencing choice, trustworthy data first, intelligent features second, is a notable departure from how much of the wearable industry has approached AI health tools, layering conversational or predictive features onto sensor data that has not always been rebuilt or re-validated first. Apple’s decision to overhaul its heart-rate engine in the same cycle it delayed Mulberry suggests the company concluded its existing sensor pipeline was not yet solid enough to support the kind of medical-grade recommendations a coaching feature would need to make credibly.
Google Didn’t Wait
The delay left an opening that Google moved into first. Google shipped a Gemini-powered Health Coach in May 2026, priced at $9.99 a month, putting a fully AI-driven coaching product on the market roughly a month before Apple’s developer conference and well before any public timeline for Apple Health+. That gap has fueled a narrative among industry observers that Apple, long considered the default leader in consumer health wearables through its Apple Watch ecosystem, is for the first time trailing a competitor on the AI coaching layer that many expect to define the next phase of the category.
Caution or Missed Opportunity
Apple’s defenders argue the company is right to prioritize data integrity, pointing out that a coaching tool built on flawed heart-rate or sleep data could give users confidently wrong advice, a worse outcome than simply arriving late. Critics counter that Apple has had years of Apple Watch health data collection to get its sensor pipeline right already, and that the delay looks less like caution and more like Apple being caught unprepared for how quickly rivals moved to ship generative AI health products once large language models became capable enough to plausibly play the role of a coach. That criticism has been sharpened by the fact that Apple has marketed the Apple Watch as a health device since its earliest heart-rate and fall-detection features, making the absence of a promised AI coaching layer more conspicuous than it might be for a newer entrant to the category.
What Happens Next
Apple has not published a firm release date for Project Mulberry or the broader Health+ subscription, leaving the feature’s return an open question for its next major software cycle. In the meantime, the redesigned Health app and improved sensor accuracy in watchOS 27 give Apple a stronger foundation to eventually build AI coaching on top of, assuming the company follows through. Whether that patience pays off will depend on whether users are willing to wait for a more reliable version of AI health coaching while competitors such as Google and Samsung are already shipping theirs.
