When Apple kicks off its Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, it’s largely expected that Apple CEO Tim Cook will introduce a few new "digital wellness" features for iOS, the iPhone's operating system. It would follow in the footsteps of Google—which introduced its own suite of wellness tools[1] for Android last month—and a growing sentiment in Silicon Valley that we need better tools[2] to unglue ourselves from our phones.
On iPhones, though, building those tools hasn't been easy. A group of 20 app developers and thought leaders in the “digital wellness” space—people like Chris Dancy, author of Don't Unplug: Embracing Technology to Improve Your Life, and Catherine Price, author of How to Break Up With Your Phone[3]—are now calling attention to the ways Apple's platform has historically stood in the way of third-party digital wellness apps. In a petition to the company[4], they're asking Apple to open up its software development kit and give developers the ability to customize the iPhone's home screen, auto-trigger Do Not Disturb mode, or provide richer insight into app usage.
“We have millions of iPhone supporters waiting for us to make our innovative tools available to them,” the petition says, “but all we can do is offer unsatisfactory products, or encourage them to switch to Android.”
It's a clear message to Apple: The digital wellness revolution is coming, and if developers can’t make tools for your platform, you’re going to get left behind.
“If 70 percent of people really care about this, like Google announced a few weeks ago, then Apple’s going to have to make some radical changes,” says Andrew Dunn, the creator of Siempo[5], an Android launcher that changes...