Why is it so frustratingly difficult to just add one movie to my iPad?

I just have one video, that I myself took, with whatever camera, which is now sitting on my desktop of my MacBook Pro. it's just a normal Quicktime movie, about 50MB, nothing special about it.

I just want to transfer it to my iPad so I can show it to my wife, who's in the hospital and has no Internet. If I don't bring it on my iPad, I would have to bring my entire computer—isn't that why I have a portable device like an iPad?

But you can't imagine the difficulties and technological SNAFUs involved in a simple transfer from one Apple device to another Apple device—a transfer of a file created using Apple software!

One shouldn't need an Apple Technician Certificate to be able to do this—it should be drag and drop.

But instead, I have to open iTunes. Then I have to navigate confusing multitudes of menus, with odd euphemisms like "Sync" which obscure the true meaning of a function, as if Apple want to avoid telling you what Sync" actually means (going to iCloud, registering your device with your Apple ID, approving your computer . . . what else could possibly be involved that "Sync" does not mention?)

I know that that is not necessarily what needs to happen when you click "Sync," but the word "Sync" in itself does NOT help me do anything. Every time I click on the word, either nothing at all happens—no progress bar, no error message, nothing—or some odd window appears that has nothing to do with what I want to do.

And then, sometimes I get the ominous message "Are you sure you want to remove existing music, movies, TV shows, books, and tones from this iPad and sync with this iTunes library?"

Well, NO, I DON'T. I don't even want to remotely do anything like that. I just want to transfer one home video from my MacBook Pro to my iPad. No Cloud, no Sharing, no Apple IDs needed here, no Libraries, no Syncing, no Restores or Backups needed . . . I just want to transfer one file from one computer to another.

Understand me here: I have been using Macintoshes since 1985. I have owned and operated Macs on almost every OS platform it has produced; I even ran MacOS that was made by PowerComputing back in the days when clones were briefly allowed.

I grew up through the nascent iTunes universe, did video editing with Final Cut Pro, created DVDs from scratch with motion menus with DVD Studio Pro.

I am not, repeat, NOT, an Apple neophyte.

But why has Apple gone down this route, a route of increasing obfuscation, obscurantism, bloating and feature-creep? I'm all for an application fulfilling multiple functions, but all I actually want if for it to perform just ONE function, one of the simplest that exists in the computer world and has since the dawn of the Macintosh Plus 512KE, which, yes, I owned.

I have been sitting here for about an hour with my iPad attached with its USB cable to this computer, trying every conceivable way to transfer this one movie to my iPad, with the assistance of multiple Apple Support articles, How-tos and other things, yet I still have not managed to be able to transfer this movie—indeed, any movie—from my computer to my iPad.

It simply cannot be this difficult.

I think the answer I want here is the answer I would expect from the Old Apple: "It ISN'T that difficult, dummy! Just go to "Transfer file from computer to iPad" in your menubar!"

But somehow, I don't think that is the answer I am going to get.