Sync or swim
Ihaven’t touched an ipad for a while, but I know they’re simple to use because Apple’s marketing has repeatedly promised me that its products “just work”. I was glad about this because recently I had an urgent need to transfer a PDF on to an ipad – one I’d commandeered from Mrs Rigsby. I’d forgotten to charge my own Android tablet, and wanted to read the document on a larger screen on the train, which was departing in about an hour.
So, already in a bit of hurry, I strung one of Apple’s laughably expensive Lightning cables between the ipad and my desktop PC, launched File Explorer and then… promptly hit a brick wall. It was only then I remembered that it’s not possible to simply drag and drop a PDF on to an ipad.
Instead, you have to… oh, goodness – where do I start? OK, deep breath. Actually, nope: my lungs won’t hold enough air. But know that transferring a PDF on to an ipad involves first adding the document to an itunes library. Then making sure the PDF is selected in that library. And then syncing the ipad with itunes. All of which would’ve been just about bearable if I’d actually had itunes installed on my desktop PC.
Needless to say, there was no time to do any of that because I was rushing to catch a train. Whatever happened to good old drag and drop? That just works, Apple!
But this isn’t really about Apple. Syncing anything with anything seems way harder than it needs to be. In fact, in some cases it’s demonstrably trickier than before. If my old Nexus 10 Android tablet was charged then yes, transferring the PDF
to that would’ve been easier. Well, for me at least. But that’s because I know about the extra step imposed by Android 6.0, whereby one must swipe down after the USB cable has been connected in order to tell the device you want to do a file transfer. Otherwise, the default now is merely to charge via USB — no drag and drop allowed. I’m sure erecting that invisible hurdle made sense to some Google engineer, but for the average user it’s complicated synchronisation.
In a frantic final flurry I threw the PDF on to Dropbox, knowing that at least I’d be able to squint at it on my smartphone’s small screen. Except, I’d forgotten that Dropbox doesn’t automatically sync files to mobile devices. Unless you mark a file as ‘offline’ ahead of time, triggering a copy to be downloaded to the device, Dropbox needs an active internet connection to view anything.
I had a strong mobile-broadband signal as the train pulled out of the station, but it evaporated soon after. My phone variously tasted 3G and even a smidgen of 4G, but the fleeting data connection never stuck around long enough for me to complete the download. Typically, the train’s onboard Wi-fi was unavailable due to a technical fault.
I never got to read my PDF that day. That was unfortunate because it was background information for the meeting to which the train was transporting me.
I could’ve transferred the file to my old Windows 7 laptop. However, for reasons that I’ve not yet figured out my new Windows 10 PC doesn’t see the laptop on the network. Besides, this was a 100-page document I wanted to read during a four-hour train journey, and my laptop’s battery lasts a couple of hours if I’m lucky. That’s why I wanted to take a tablet in the first place. I thought it wasn’t too much to ask. But my urge to sync was sunk, again and again.
Syncing anything with anything seems way harder than it needs to be – often trickier than before