Bitter Apples

I have been using Apple computers from the start; my first was an Apple IIe, and my present is a six-core Mac Pro (Mid 2010). I don’t need, have or want an iPhone, Apple Watch or any other ‘imarketing’ must-have, although I recently bought an iPad Air 2. In order to transfer files between the two, I have reluctantly upgraded to OS X Yosemite, and can’t say that I have found any benefits at all. It’s proving impossible to get AirDrop to work between the two; I used to enthuse about how easy and natural it was to use a Mac, but sadly no more.

It’s turning into a continual uphill battle. Am I alone in this, or is it just another side effect of my old age? My wife’s Windows system by comparison often seems so much easier to use! Patrick Gosse

Seth Singh says… We understand your disappointment with Yosemite. We’ve slowly learned to appreciate the impact of its subtler improvements, such as the redesigned Spotlight window and the reduced space used by toolbars and title bars, but some of its best features – those Apple brands as Continuity – only work with very recent Macs and iOS devices (apple. co/1HIt1Iz).

Your Mac Pro is capable of using AirDrop to share with other Macs running OS X Lion or later, but the bad news is it can’t share things with iOS because that requires newer networking hardware, even though it works no differently than the original version (and is branded the same). Tucked away at the bottom of apple.co/1Q8tbIk, Apple says AirDrop between OS X and iOS requires a Mac from 2012 or later.

For what it’s worth, we like AirDrop because it helps us out in the office on a regular basis, but it’s easy to wish in hindsight that Apple had delayed adding it to the Mac for a year or two to avoid this confusion. It’s not like there wasn’t already an abundance of ways to transfer files between Macs before 2011’s OS X Lion.