In a pre­vi­ous arti­cle for Sharp­Brains, 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

1. Appli­ca­tions Checklist

Apple has enabled much of what 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 the rest of this entry »