Windows PC to iPad

So... I was given an almost-new iPad. Nice size, good colors, looks neat. After some minor wailing and gnashing of teeth, I finally got it connected to my wifi at home, so I can get on the Internet with it. Good start.

Note: I've been using DOS/Windows since the mid-80's. So by now I'm pretty well entrenched in the Windows scheme of things. I have tons of schematics, for example, under a Peavey sub-directory, with a folder under it for "Triumph 60" for example, and in that folder will be schematics, pictures, Word documents, perhaps a spreadsheet. My whole computer is set up that way: in the Band sub-directory, I have various folders, including one for "song charts" with pdf's, Word documents, perhaps a jpg or TIF or two.

Okay, now I've got this nice little iPad. I figured it would be great to copy all my schematics and song charts and tube books and whatever onto it, I could take it down into the basement workshop when working on an amp, or out to a practice where I could call up the song charts. Only...it doesn't appear I can do this. The iPad (with the iOS) does not seem to be capable of organizing stuff under directories and folders with various stuff in there. Yep I could slowly and laboriously use the clumsy iTunes and the USB cable to copy the PDF's...to where? All lumped together, like it did my mp3's?? Yep, THAT's really helpful to have a couple of thousand PDF's all lumped together. Or pictures, or whatever.

I dunno. I fail to see the Apple scheme of things. Am I missing something? Looks like they just made this thing to play songs or videos or take pictures or get on Facebook.

Any iPad experts out there who can help me make this thing do some real work? I need folders set up like Windows, and to be able to put files of all types in each folder, and call them up easily. Not keep stuff lumped under an "app".

 

Cloud won't work, grasshopper. I need to access files where there won't be Internet access.

Not only that, I have many files and some of them are quite large (100 meg). Uploading them to Dropbox, and then downloading them via wifi to the iPad, would take a long time. Makes more sense to merely connect the USB cable from the iPad to the PC.

 

No, I disagree. The "traditional" way of files within folders WORKS. It's worked long before computers were even invented. You were working on XYZ project, stuff went into the XYZ project folder. Faxes, telegrams, pictures, letters, all went into the XYZ folder. You want info on XYZ, it's in the XYZ folder. It would be extremely impractical to store all the telegrams from all the projects together: XYZ, and ABC, and DEF, all together, and then all faxes together, and then all the letters. Gee was that correspondence a letter? Or a fax? Or a telegram? Better look all three places...now what order were they in? Yet that's the way Apple thinks they should be!

I don't want stuff on the Cloud. I want files ON MY IPAD. I don't want to transfer them twice (once to the cloud and then a second time to the iPad). I want them on my iPad permanently so I don't have to "download them before I lose internet access". I want them neatly organized where I can find them--- I want info on the Fender Princeton Chorus, I look in a folder called Fender Princeton Chorus and voila--there's a schematic, and pictures, and several other file formats. I may not know if a schematic was a PDF or a JPG or a TIFF or a BMP, I want to find it easily under a relevant folder.

I guess I should sell the iPad and buy a Microsoft tablet. It does real work, none of these clumsy workarounds.

 

This sounds like the typical Apple mentality. Telling ME what I need.

No, I'm the user. I have been using computers since the 1970's, back with IBM punch cards and FORTRAN through a compiler. I know my needs. I need to keep many file formats available under simple folder structures where I can locate them easily. And clumsy workarounds--yes they ARE clumsy, compared to merely sticking something on a USB flash drive--don't cut it. Storing files under their particular app and sorting them to find them is not efficient. I have hundreds, perhaps thousands, of various documents.

A Windows Surface tablet? Has a USB port. Lets me keep files the traditional way. I don't have to go to my "App Store" to download stuff.

 

I have a couple of major problems with the Cloud computing concept. First, it depends upon your ability to access the Internet. No Internet service means no Cloud access--and there's a ton of places still around that do not have cell phone coverage (furthermore, I'm just using the iPad on my home wifi, not on a cell phone plan).

Second, do we *really* want all our documents out there where the whole world potentially could get to them? The "Cloud Computing" concept has really been around for decades, and despite the hype, never has taken off. It's an outgrowth of the "dumb terminal" concept used before PC's were dirt cheap.

I have used Dropbox many times at work for transmitting files that are too big to email: it works...but transferring large numbers of files via Dropbox is slow. And in the end, I still would be faced with the organizational issue.

For now, I may just try to transfer PDF's across with their iTunes. Then I can make and organize libraries with their iBooks. Still, unless I convert everything into PDF, I won't have everything I need. Meh. I will give the iPad a chance, but it's not looking as promising as I had hoped when it was given to me.

 

I have worked in corporations where hundreds of folks were allowed to create folders and directories willy-nilly, and the result was pure chaos. No hierarchy, tremendous duplication, and searching was slow with too many unfiltered results.

Here, though, I've got the advantage that I'm the only one creating and accessing files on my system. I grew up in libraries with real books, and the Dewey Decimal System, plus I'm an engineer, so it was pretty straightforward to create a hierarchy that fits my needs. Note: I'm not talking about just some songs--if all I had to deal with were a few thousand songs on mp3, any media player out there would sort by artist, song name, or whatever.

And again, I need to access my files where there is no Internet access. I need physical storage. Anybody that keeps mentioning "cloud" or "don't need to save on my hard drive"...YOU'RE NOT LISTENING! If I'm in the middle of a New Mexico desert, I want to view my documents.

So here's an actual example. The other day, somebody posted on pickups for a Yamaha RBX760A bass. Hey I've got one, let me see. I click on "My Documents". Then I click on my "Music Gear" subdirectory. Then I click on my "Yamaha" folder. Then I click on my "RBX760A" folder...and there we are, a few pictures, a sketch of the controls, and some files with funny names cause that's what they were called when I downloaded them from Yamaha, but the one with ES in the title might just be the electrical schematic. Boom. 5 clicks and the schematic is open. Less than 30 seconds start to finish. No typing, no searching under metadata. And if I want to look at the pictures, hey they are there too, I had forgotten I took those of the inside.

Okay, now what if the same documents were not stored in some sort of hierarchy? Okay, I do a search...what for, "Yamaha RBX760a bass schematic", huh a couple of thousand hits and none of them are actually the right one. If everything is stored under the file type (app) okay *maybe* I find the PDF's but I probably forgot all about the pictures (JPG's) so those would be basically lost.

Now don't get me wrong. The iPad looks great for web browsing, or Facebook, or playing songs, or taking/viewing selfies. It could have the potential to be useful for folks like me, if it just supported a few simple things that are standard with Windows.