brain fitness value

Apple iPad Thumbs-Up: Brain Fitness Value, and Limitations

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In a pre­vi­ous arti­cle for iPad2Sharp­Brains, I asked whether the Apple tablet (the iPad) would hin­der or sup­port cog­ni­tive fit­ness. Here, I assess the iPad against the cri­te­ria I laid out pre­vi­ous­ly. I then assess its poten­tial for brain fit­ness in gen­er­al. I am rely­ing on Apple’s infor­ma­tion; I have not yet used the iPad.

The iPad has been cov­ered all over the net, and Apple has much infor­ma­tion on its web­site, so I will not repeat that here, except to say that the iPad looks like a 9.7 inch iPod with a mul­ti-touch LED-back­lit IPS screen. It can run all iPod appli­ca­tions and more. It is a rather spec­tac­u­lar, attrac­tive plat­form for doing all of what you can do with an iPod but with com­pelling pos­si­bil­i­ties that a larg­er screen presents. It is also an eBook read­er and an extreme­ly impres­sive gam­ing machine. It is priced very com­pet­i­tive­ly ($500 and up). I imag­ine that many peo­ple will for­go pur­chas­ing an iPod, a game sta­tion, a net­book and an e‑reader and apply their sav­ings to this device.

The iPad itself, and as part of a tech­no­log­i­cal ecosys­tem of prod­ucts that work togeth­er, is some­thing which has major impli­ca­tions for the brain fit­ness market.

The fol­low­ing table sum­ma­rizes the check-list from my pre­vi­ous article.

Table 1 iPad Eval­u­a­tion Check-List

Cri­te­ria Assess­ment
Appli­ca­tions
Pow­er­ful per­son­al task-manager Yes (Third-par­ty)
Graph­ic Organizer Yes (third-par­ty)
Pow­er­ful outliner Yes (third-par­ty)
User-activ­i­ty monitor No (but with­in reach of Apple)
Inte­grat­ed self-test­ing system No (third-par­ty can do part of this).
Major Cog­ni­tive Features
Sys­tem inte­gra­tion and syncing Yes (for what is pro­vid­ed, anno­ta­tions not yet supported)
Rich anno­ta­tion framework No (but it is with­in reach of Apple)
Col­lab­o­ra­tion Some (anno­ta­tions not supported)
Mute func­tion (Atten­tion Protection) Close (iPad is attention-friendly)
Afford­able, rat­ed content Major pub­lish­ers are on board; book prices cur­rent­ly high; intel­li­gent qual­i­ty rat­ing sys­tem not announced

1. Appli­ca­tions Checklist

Apple has enabled much of whatchecklist is need­ed for the iPad to meet the appli­ca­tion cri­te­ria I laid out. The iPad is not just an e‑reader, it is an appli­ca­tion plat­form for cog­ni­tive pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, brain fit­ness and learn­ing. It will run all exist­ing (140,000 and count­ing) iPod appli­ca­tions. Some of the appli­ca­tions I called for are already on the Apple App Store, though they will require (forth­com­ing) enhancements.

I pre­vi­ous­ly not­ed the need for a task man­ag­er, a graph­ic orga­niz­er, an out­lin­er, and a spaced learn­ing sys­tem. These appli­ca­tions will not be pre-installed on the iPad. How­ev­er, many ven­dors have already announced that their Mac OS X cog­ni­tive pro­duc­tiv­i­ty appli­ca­tions (includ­ing graph­ic orga­niz­ers, out­lin­ers and task man­agers) are being port­ed to the iPad. So, we can tick those cri­te­ria off.

Apple has devel­oped specif­i­cal­ly for the iPad inex­pen­sive iWorks pro­duc­tiv­i­ty appli­ca­tions for com­pos­ing doc­u­ments, spread­sheets and pre­sen­ta­tions. This is implic­it sup­port for active learn­ing on the iPad. In addi­tion, Apple’s exist­ing iPod appli­ca­tions are also avail­able for the iPad.

I was puz­zled by the absence of a dic­tio­nary on the iPad home page. Users should not have to research and down­load dic­tio­nar­ies them­selves, par­tic­u­lar­ly since a use­ful dic­tio­nary is avail­able on OS X (its ecosys­tem rel­a­tive).

2. User Monitoring

I expressed the need for a user activ­i­ty mon­i­tor, which was not pro­vid­ed. What I mean here is that the Apple should include oper­at­ing sys­tem, MobileMe and appli­ca­tion sup­port for mon­i­tor­ing and report­ing on how the user is spend­ing their time across the Apple ecosys­tem. This sup­port [Read more…] about Apple iPad Thumbs-Up: Brain Fit­ness Val­ue, and Limitations