Grapple with Apple 2

Because of a Mexican storm, this long time user of Apple products happened to come into the possession of two of their computers.
A MacBook and a MacBook Pro.

The first Apple computer was obtained in 1986.
This was the result of being one of the photographers participating in the project “A Day in the Life of America”.
The organizers had no money to pay the photographers but Apple was a sponsor.
Every photographer got a free Apple computer and an Apple printer.
This was the first computer Apple marketed.



Some months after working for the project “A Day in the Life of America”, a delivery company came in 1986 to the house in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, to bring two large boxes containing the Apple computer and printer.
The idea at the time was that a photographer, working with cameras, had no use of a computer.
And that the best was to sell the thing to use the cash for new photography.
In those days, this first Apple computer was in Europe very expensive.
About $ 7.000
And for this money, nobody could be found to buy the thing.
Eventually, more out of curiosity and frustration the boxes were opened.
The computer was fired up and as of then, there is an avid Apple user.

But now is the situation of having two Apple laptops and one of the things that a normal person would like to do is to synchronize these two machines.
If a person uses one computer some time, the agenda, the address book, the e-mails and documents have been accumulating.
If one next wishes to work on the other computer it needs to be updated with the information the other one has.

Apple has realized that this is a common thing.
That not only one person can have two computers.
But that there are also several people with every one of them their own computer who wishes to synchronize among each other.

Apple has commercialised this possibility of synchronizing their computers.
By first making it impossible to do it yourself.
There is no way you can synchronize two Apple computers.
The only way is to subscribe to a service of Apple called MobileMe.
$ 90 annually.
Once this money is paid it becomes possible to synchronize the address book and the agenda.
But one must realize that all the data are on a hard disk owned by Apple and there is no way of knowing how well protected the privacy is.
What if the CIA or the FBI comes to Apple and asks to see your Address Book stored there?

The other thing is that you cannot synchronize the existing e-mail with MobileMe.
One has to take a new e-mail address and this can be synchronized.
This is an enormous disadvantage.
Because the existing e-mails in the computer, written and sent, cannot be entered on MobileMe to synchronize.

To synchronize ordinary files between Apple computers is possible though.
But one needs to buy special software and next each file needs to be transferred from one computer to the next.

It might be possible to imagine that a common Apple user feels pissed off.
It must be a piece of cake to prepare Apple computers in a way that synchronizing them is easy and friendly.
But the urge of Apple to want to make money stops customers to have an ideal product.







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