Why are my Apps here and not there....?

Any idea why my applications are in the Apps folder on the left in the Finder window, but when I click on my home folder, they are not in the Apps folder there? See attachments in order to make any sense of my question. Are they supposed to be in both? I was thinking that all the Apps should be in my home folder and the Apps folder I see in Finder was an alias. Wrong?

Big surprise why I'm asking. I'm playing "backup that computer and don't erase your old stuff in the process" as some of you may already know.

You have two Applications folders. The first screenshot shows one inside your home folder, and the second shows one (the "normal" one) at the root of your hard drive.

Applications in your Home folder (~/Applications) are for you alone. Applications in the normal Applications folder (/Applications) are for any user on that computer.

This is fine, but it may be confusing. You can always move an application from one to the other, but you probably don't want to have copies of the same app in both at the same time.

Apps in root > Applications are usable by all users on your machine

Apps in root > Users > You > Applications are only usable by You

Thank you! I thought I had screwed something up.