4 ms·

It all works beautifully until it doesn't then it all becomes close to worthless. Take getting videos off an iPhone for instance, something I have to do many t

It all works beautifully until it doesn't then it all becomes close to worthless. Take getting videos off an iPhone for instance, something I have to do many times a week in my job. If you have AirDrop it's effortless. But my MBP has a faulty bluetooth chip so bluetooth generally stops working after the machine has been running a few hours so I need to reboot every time I move videos from my phone to my machine. Are there alternatives? Nope not really, moving iPhone videos to a PC, Which most video editing workstations are now because Apple neglected or fumbled the high end for close to a decade. You can't AirDrop so what do you do? - WhatsApp? Nope has a 60 meg limit - Slack? Nope, for some reason trying to send video files 90% of the time stalls or just takes close to 20 minutes. I think they have some built in throttling to prevent my using their service as a AirDrop-drop in because airdropping then sending the same video from desktop is fast - Email? Nope, files are too big Only real solutions are AirDropping to a Mac then sending on slack or over network or trying to figure out how to do it over the network via the Files app which is also slow and weird. All that beautiful interoperability goes from being a benefit to actually making the product look bad the second it can't just interoperate with things you need to get your work done. End of the day they can't do everything and are unwilling to create machines that are competitive in these niche areas but once you're in this niche the whole Apple philosophy starts to look like a bad one. All it would take would be for them to release an AirDrop for Windows app which would make their platform look better, I'm still your customer even when I have to send a file to a Windows machine Apple... not providing that feature isn't making Windows look bad because the reason I'm there in the first place is because it outperforms even a $20K Mac Pro.

javagram 5y ago
Couldn’t you just use Dropbox or iCloud Photo Library? Yes you would have to pay. I think you can transfer photos and videos for free using a usb cable as well. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/import-photos-and-videos-from-an-iphone-to-pc-2e4e4db4-4c3d-041c-b88f-3ee4358dd95e https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/import-photos-an...
snazz 5y ago
These came to mind right away and work for both macOS and Windows: - Upload to a cloud storage service of your choice and download on the other end—Google Drive is very fast - Use iCloud Photos (there’s client software for Windows too) - Plug a cable in and drag and drop like it’s any other digital camera - Create a Windows SMB network share (or Samba on other platforms), connect to it from Files, and use the share menu from Photos to put it in the network share
- larrik 5y ago
  > Plug a cable in and drag and drop like it’s any other digital camera Yeah, this rarely works. It takes a long time to acknowledge there's any files, and then it tries to copy them, and then crashes instead. Over and over. Turning off the mechanism that autoconverts image files from HEIC to JPG helps (I never tried JUST video files, but those are unreliable either way in my experience). Obnoxious, overall.
  - cutemonster 5y ago
    What about copying to a USB memory?
    - larrik 5y ago
      Straight from the phone? How do you do that?
      - cutemonster 5y ago
        Hmm I was thinking about a USB cable to the laptop (I do with my Android), but wrote USB memory instead. Now I see in the comment above that cables often don't work. I wonder if there're apps for saving files to USB memories
pzo 5y ago
Tip: You can connect your phone to you macbook and use build-in preview.app "File -> "import from YOUR_IPHONE_NAME" (however since the last few macos releases preview.app crashes like 50% of time when I'm importing). This only works for movies/photos though and only when using macos. Although I agree with general sentiment. I used to have android phone and I really enjoyed that you could just connect your phone with cable and browser data with any file manager. I always have a bad mood when I have to download/upload/sync something via itunes, e.g. voice recordings / pdf / documents / ebooks
lostgame 5y ago
In my experience - AirDrop works as expected about 30% of the time. Enough to make it absolutely by far the worst option for file sharing. I don’t even consider it an ‘option’ anymore while transferring files. I’ll just upload it to my server, since I know - by default - even on the same wifi network, AirDrop is as useful as picking a number in your head and having a friend guess it. I can’t honestly think of a regular ‘service’ on iOS and MacOS that is as fundamentally broken as AirDrop. I’m not sure what’s so complicated about writing a device to device file sharing service, but - for instance - I just tried to share a file from my Mac to my iPhone. Didn’t work; don’t see my iPhone. Same wifi network - no firewall; no filters. This is a majority of the time.
- watermelon0 5y ago
  Yeah, AirDrop is great when it works. However, when it doesn't work (happens sometimes to me), it cannot be easily fixed.
stjohnswarts 5y ago
Sounds like you need a new MBP?
MAMAMassakali 5y ago
You can use "image capture" app on mac. Also if you want you can use the ifuse method. https://github.com/libimobiledevice/ifuse https://github.com/libimobiledevice/ifuse But yes, Apple should have made it easier.

javagram 5y ago

Couldn’t you just use Dropbox or iCloud Photo Library? Yes you would have to pay. I think you can transfer photos and videos for free using a usb cable as well. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/import-photos-and-videos-from-an-iphone-to-pc-2e4e4db4-4c3d-041c-b88f-3ee4358dd95e https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/import-photos-an...

snazz 5y ago

These came to mind right away and work for both macOS and Windows: - Upload to a cloud storage service of your choice and download on the other end—Google Drive is very fast - Use iCloud Photos (there’s client software for Windows too) - Plug a cable in and drag and drop like it’s any other digital camera - Create a Windows SMB network share (or Samba on other platforms), connect to it from Files, and use the share menu from Photos to put it in the network share

larrik 5y ago
> Plug a cable in and drag and drop like it’s any other digital camera Yeah, this rarely works. It takes a long time to acknowledge there's any files, and then it tries to copy them, and then crashes instead. Over and over. Turning off the mechanism that autoconverts image files from HEIC to JPG helps (I never tried JUST video files, but those are unreliable either way in my experience). Obnoxious, overall.
- cutemonster 5y ago
  What about copying to a USB memory?
  - larrik 5y ago
    Straight from the phone? How do you do that?
    - cutemonster 5y ago
      Hmm I was thinking about a USB cable to the laptop (I do with my Android), but wrote USB memory instead. Now I see in the comment above that cables often don't work. I wonder if there're apps for saving files to USB memories

pzo 5y ago

Tip: You can connect your phone to you macbook and use build-in preview.app "File -> "import from YOUR_IPHONE_NAME" (however since the last few macos releases preview.app crashes like 50% of time when I'm importing). This only works for movies/photos though and only when using macos. Although I agree with general sentiment. I used to have android phone and I really enjoyed that you could just connect your phone with cable and browser data with any file manager. I always have a bad mood when I have to download/upload/sync something via itunes, e.g. voice recordings / pdf / documents / ebooks

lostgame 5y ago

In my experience - AirDrop works as expected about 30% of the time. Enough to make it absolutely by far the worst option for file sharing. I don’t even consider it an ‘option’ anymore while transferring files. I’ll just upload it to my server, since I know - by default - even on the same wifi network, AirDrop is as useful as picking a number in your head and having a friend guess it. I can’t honestly think of a regular ‘service’ on iOS and MacOS that is as fundamentally broken as AirDrop. I’m not sure what’s so complicated about writing a device to device file sharing service, but - for instance - I just tried to share a file from my Mac to my iPhone. Didn’t work; don’t see my iPhone. Same wifi network - no firewall; no filters. This is a majority of the time.

watermelon0 5y ago
Yeah, AirDrop is great when it works. However, when it doesn't work (happens sometimes to me), it cannot be easily fixed.

stjohnswarts 5y ago

Sounds like you need a new MBP?

MAMAMassakali 5y ago

You can use "image capture" app on mac. Also if you want you can use the ifuse method. https://github.com/libimobiledevice/ifuse https://github.com/libimobiledevice/ifuse But yes, Apple should have made it easier.