The move is being touted as wonderful because it is putting five million of the out of fashion toys into the paws of Japan's elderly population. The iPads will run custom apps from IBM tailored to the needs of Japan's elderly, who make up about a quarter of the country's population, IBM said.

The programs will remind people to take medication, offer diet and exercise information and connect them to services like grocery delivery, among other tasks.  Sadly it will be too late to warn them about the perils of buying expensive gear from people who wear blue teeshirts and think that they are geniuses.  The tablets will also come with standard Apple software like FaceTime for communication, iTunes for organizing music and Photos for managing pictures.

Japan Post will manage the devices and its 400,000 employees will receive training from IBM on how to use them. Japan Post, a government-owned holding company that offers banking and insurance services in addition to handling postal operations, will begin testing the iPads in the second half of the year.

However it is not as beneficial as anyone seems to be touting. The iPads 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. Information wasn't provided on a possible fee increase as the iPads are rolled out.

In fact it appears that the elderly will have to be bought by Japan Post which will have to sell them to the elderly.

No complaints 

It is then a win win for Apple which can shift some of its redundant iPads to a market which is incredibly unlikely to complain if they can't do anything useful with them.

The tablet market is drying up as the rest of the world wakes up to what Fudzilla told them five years ago that they were not quite, but completely and utterly pointless for anyone than Steve Jobs. As it turned out, they were useless for him too.