Apple Sherlocking MyFitnessPal in iOS 15 could be great or terrible

MyFitnessPal on iPhone 6s
MyFitnessPal on iPhone 6s (Image credit: iMore)

New rumors yesterday suggested that Apple is getting ready to announce iOS 15 with new food tracking capabilities, likely built right into the Health app. That Health app already lets users collect all kinds of data, both automated and manual. The app can even pull data from apps like MyFitnessPal, but you can't add meals to it yourself. Yet.

If Apple does add support for proper food tracking to iOS 15's Health app it'll most obviously be Sherlocking MyFitnessPal, although the food app does have a presence on other platforms. But it's how Apple would approach it that is most interesting because MyFitnessPal has its problems. Problems that Apple could definitely fix.

As great as MyFitnessPal is, and as wonderful as people have found it when trying to keep proper tabs on their diet, it isn't a great app to use. It suffers from being cross-platform and doesn't feel like an iOS app one bit. It doesn't look great if we're being kind, and it's missing that little bit of Apple developer love that some other apps are full of. That's one area where Apple could definitely improve, especially if food tracking is built into the Health app as we're told it will be.

MyFitnessPal on iPad

MyFitnessPal on iPad (Image credit: iMore)

But Apple could also ruin the whole thing by being a bit too, well, Apple about it. By trying to reduce complexity it could ruin what makes MyFitnessPal so great – its huge database of foods and more data about just about anything than anyone could ever want to know. Apple is more likely to reduce the data in an attempt to make everything more accessible. And that's cool, so long as MyFitnessPal hangs around and can still access the same Health app hooks and whatnot that it can today.

As always, options are great. Apple adding food tracking to the Health app is a top-notch idea, but we probably need MyFitnessPal to hang around just a little while longer. Just in case Apple does us all wrong.

And that's assuming the recent rumors are accurate, of course!

Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.