A duff microphone means that my MacBook Air needs some attention from the techies at Apple. Last night I spent some time making sure that my spare laptop – a MacBook Pro – was ready to stand in for a few days. I have hardly used this laptop since I go the MBA almost three years ago so it was not exactly up to date. However, after signing in to iCloud the Safari bookmarks were updated to latest set and once Dropbox had finished its magic all my working files were in place too. No doubt some apps are not there but I can add those as I need them.
The ease of this got me thinking about the way synchronisation between devices has become so routine and easy that it hardly gets mentioned. During the course of today I have used a phone, a tablet, a laptop and a desktop. I have accessed the several websites, Kindle, email and a game from at least two of these devices yet I have not had to think about bookmarks, user names, passwords or even files. They are just there. Brilliant.