How do we like those Apples?

Outlook

A woman looks at the screen of her mobile phone in front of an Apple logo outside its store in downtown Shanghai (REUTERS)

Each time I log on to my fantastically useful NHS Patient Access app to make a GP appointment, an automatic prompt appears asking if I would like to synchronise the app with the Apple Health data stored on my iPhone. Presumably this would enable my GP to see such valuable information as my heart rate and cholesterol intake. Apple likes sharing our information – all for our convenience of course. But the Cupertino crew are rather less keen on sharing their own granular data.

In this week’s update Apple, as usual, specified revenues from selling iPhones, iPads and Macs. And pretty strong they looked too, especially for the apparently invincible iPhone. But they didn’t break down sales of Apple Watch, which was, as normal, thrown together in a heading called “other products” along with iPods and Beats By Dre headphones.

Given that the Apple Watch, which went on sale in April, is, in Tim Cook’s words, the first smart watch “that matters”, aren’t investors entitled to know how many units it’s shifted? Don’t the sales matter too?

The watch is also the first entirely new product line introduced since Mr Cook took over from the late Steve Jobs.

Some guestimates suggest that it’s not selling as well as the iPad did when it was launched.

I don’t share my iPhone’s health data with my GP surgery. Why? Because, the truth is, I don’t want them to have it. The idea makes me uncomfortable. Perhaps that’s Apple’s thinking too when it comes to its watch sales.