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Apple, IBM To Bring iPads To 5 Million Elderly Japanese
itwbennett writes: An initiative between Apple, IBM and Japan Post Holdings could put iPads in the hands of up to 5 million members of Japan's elderly population. The iPads, which will run custom apps from IBM, will supplement Japan Post's Watch Over service where, for a monthly fee, postal employees check on elderly residents and relay information on their well-being to family members.
I've got 2 modpoints left!
This sounds just like the LA school district iPad program.
NIce to see Apple and IBM profit further from the nanny state.
Damn you Apple!!!!!!!!!
They could get them from the LA School District. Hope the results are better this time.
Will be used as bed pans because that's all they're good for.
While teens may humor their parents in claiming to be more tech savy, the big drop-off in new tech adoption is over age 70 according to a PEW study. I dont know whether it is cost, learning difficulty, or conservativism. I've noted this pattern among people I know.
What do you think society is going to be like when so many of the people not having kids get older? It's going to look like this, where you hire services to check in on you regularly and make sure you are not dead or needing help...
Even as the population gets more dispersed, there's a need for things like this so family who lives far away can still make sure parents are OK.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Slashdot's gotten pretty dumb.
App appers who apped apps by App Apping Machines get apped by apps!
Apps!
Could someone help me program the VCR before introducing me to these pad thingys?
Seems if they all had 4G iPads and Apple Watches you could help track their general health and possibly even respond in case of emergencies.
"There are people who do not love their fellow human being, and I _hate_ people like that!" - Tom Lehrer
death by emfs
iPad Continues to Lead Declining Tablet Market in First Quarter
http://www.macrumors.com/2015/...
The point is not that Apple is leading, but that the market is shriking. This might be a way for Apple to ship more iPads.
This is right in line with my desire for a watch that asks me a reasonably simple math problem every day and then kills me if I get it wrong three times. Sadly this isn't one of the features Apple has included in its latest wearable attempt...
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
I hope they preloaded it with an app for ordering cat food.
I dont know whether it is cost, learning difficulty, or conservativism.
In my experience it's mostly disinterest and/or fear. They haven't needed it most of their lives, they are quite set in their ways and they aren't terribly interested in learning something new. They will loudly proclaim how they "just don't get this stuff" but usually that's an excuse for not wanting to learn because their brains work fine. If it's really easy the might give it a whirl but if learning requires real effort they usually cannot be bothered.
The guys who own my company are about 70. They are quite intelligent but will repeatedly ask me the same questions ("how do I print this", etc) despite having been given the explanation plenty of times. It has nothing to do with their brain but they just don't care about the answer so they don't bother committing it to memory. Easier to just ask someone else who has bothered to care.
I can't even get my USPS driver to deliver packages to my door for the last few weeks.
"The road's in poor shape." "We've improved the road twice since I bought my house. It's better now than it was when I moved in and it was good enough to deliver packages before we did anything at all." "We switched to LLVs and they don't get around as well as the personal vehicles did." "The only vehicles that have ever delivered mail on my route since I moved here have been LLVs." "I'll look into it."
You know, the ones that live next door. The ones who say hello when your paths cross and ask how you are doing. The ones that invited you over for dinner or a back yard grill out. The ones that had that cup of sugar you needed to borrow?
No? Well you are not alone. It seems that this day and age to many people are keeping to themselves. Closing out the rest of the word as unknown and therefore dangerous. Children can't walk to the local park or home from school on their own without police getting involved. They could have been abducted!
I'm speaking for the US only here but communities seem to have grown further apart with people more isolated than ever. Everyone is to blame. Be nice, be social, don't be afraid. Most people are good. Get to know your neighbors.
Apple and IBM will have brought million elderly japanese each a shiny new glass and plastic cutting board.
Good people go to bed earlier.
So they're implementing a Solid State Society?
Yay we will replace expensive human contact with machines great. Just what the elderly need...
...was that supposed to be... funny, a play on words since this thing is technically doing the job of a nanny for elderly people, and use government employees to do the care (so, Govt. TeleNannies Inc)
Or was a it a political dig at the implications of government sponsored cradle-to-grave security.
Just want to know how to mod it. :)
This will help Japanese Government look good while their failed reactor continues to spew poison in to the ocean. Thanks guys!
Hell, I've been working in tech for 30 years, and I have to get my daughter to show me how to do stuff on my iPhone half the time, because nothing is discoverable, if you don't know how to get to a feature there's no way in hell to figure it out, and 70-year-old minds with failing short-term memory will have a heck of a time remembering what you have to swipe over and in which direction to get to the pics of their grandkids. And a tablet's tiny screen is hardly friendly to aging eyes.
Hopefully I'm wrong, and they've conducted case studies where seniors did all kinds of awesome things with tablets. Oops, no they have not, but they are planning to run some tests in a few months. Sure would be interesting to see how they turn out.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
... not America!
Good thing the fucked up the GUI to make it unusable for people without perfect sight and agile joints (they even destroyed the usability aids). Makes it perfect for something like this. Maybe they are planning to give them an old version from the times when the GUI was designed for useability and not just looks?
NIce to see Apple and IBM profit further from the nanny state.
The geek seems to moving to the farthest right of the political spectrum. He is, after all, the creator of the "SJW" social justice warrior meme which the right has found so useful.
The postman, the doctor, the lineman, the visiting nurse. the preacher and the fireman, share a special place in American folklore and legend.
Loneliness and isolation, the need for human contact and support, is something a rural community, the elderly, the ill and the homebound come to understand profoundly.
"...the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; those who are in the shadows of life; the sick, the needy and the handicapped. " ~ Last Speech of Hubert H. Humphrey
Look at how the LA schools iPad program turned out.
Also note that there is an article stating the sensors on the watch may not with dark skin... LOL... Really Apple?
http://fusion.net/story/60771/...
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
modern, context based interfaces are TERRIBLE for seniors. just watching my parents struggle with touchscreen controls really cements the notion that sometimes, older style interfaces are better for some. a button is amazing because if they learn what that button does, they know that when they push that button, something specific and predictable happens. but with a lot of modern touch screen guis, everything is context specific and what works one way in one context will be different in another.
it's not something that most people who have no issue with modern guis can intuit themselves but they have to watch seniors interacting with these kinds of devices.
as "simple" as modern tech tries to be, they are a long looooong way from being accessible to everyone and the notion that we've arrived is completely delusional.
One weekend, I came home and he showed me the radio-fax kit he'd bought. Say what??? It was a receiver that plugged into the headphone jack of a shortwave radio on one side and the serial port of the computer on the other side. The software would record and decode faxes of weather maps that were broadcast over shortwave then print them on the DeskJet 500c. But, when this kind of thing became widely available on the internet, he wouldn't switch until either they stopped broadcasting or the software didn't survive an OS upgrade. I forget which.
The geek needs to take a closer look at analog systems and HF radio.
Rafiofax is over ninety years old and still very much alive. NOAA RADIOFAX If you think terrestrial satellite data services are expensive and limited try pricing off-shore marine.
WR-G33EM Marine Receiver
I do have a number of neighbors around me I know pretty well, that I say hi to - when I see them.
But I don't see them every day. In winter you may not see them for some time because people stay inside mostly.
Even a close community around you is no replacement for someone that checks on you daily.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The Japanese Gov has always had a compulsive-obsessive disorder in regards to wanting to know every detail of the activities of its citizens at any time.
Abe just like his hero Meiji wants to know the blood type and breathing of every citizen at any second.
Unfortunately, Abe will find that his "Senior Alert System" is as flawed as his "Earthquake Alert System" and even more expensive and even more racist.