* Buy latest iPhone.
* Take photos and videos on iPhone.
* Tap a couple buttons to select photos and videos to share.
* Choose who to share them with, press Send.
* My family gets sent an email link to a webpage with thumbnails of the photos and videos sent, with a one-click way to view each of them. Could even be a native app experience if the recipient is a Mac or iOS user.
This is not a Apple vs Android comment but isn't most of this functionality available on Android? I click a photo, it is uploaded in background and I share it. The recipients get a email with link to my pictures/a red notification in their Google navbar. Point is, it is not a hard issue to address; it is already being done elsewhere in a seemingly peaceful fashion.
#6: Get an Android phone and do it in any combination of those ways or a million other ways.
In my opinion, one of Android's best features for years has been its extremely open "Share" button that developers can hook into for nearly anything, and all over the OS.
It's what every app on Android can do. It just needs to have the share intent and it can be used to share anything. This means that when I hit the share button on my phone at the moment I can send a file via everything from Bluetooth, SMS and email to DropBox, Twitter and FaceBook.
IMHO, it's the most important functional difference between the 2 platforms.
There is also a new G+ App on iPhone (it was even released before the Android version). But doesn't the same objections apply to that like on Facebook or Dropbox? Privacy concerns, most people aren't on G+ and are locked out or limited disk space? Of course he could just send Video to Youtube or Vimeo but then there are other objections like that these are separated places from photos. In the past flickr was here king but now I also see many Photobucket.com links (if one wants to avoid Facebook). Their website says they also do video and have "unlimited space" but I don't know what other restrictions apply for a free (or paid) account. But as the OP I would look into it.
What the OP really wants is his automagical "Photostream" to be shareable and to also handle videos. The first seems logical. I think this is a large customer request and it would be the next logical step for Apple to do with Photostream. But I would bet against on Apple including videos. HD vids are just to large, would gobble up tons of space in the iCloud and burn through battery life/traffic with an automatic upload.
The Google+ app on iPhone already uploads videos automatically (if you have it enabled of course). Sharing can be done with people who don't use G+ (they can receive a private album link) as well without issue as well.
> Even dragging out the USB cord to plug my phone into my MacBook Pro doesn’t yield a simple solution. Open iTunes, iPhoto, etc. – haven’t found the answer.
There's an app called Image Capture, installed on every Mac, that lets you easily download certain photos and videos from your iPhone (or any other camera). It simply presents a list of media on your device, which you can save in any location you want. There's no organizational aspect, unlike iPhoto. Image Capture doesn't help with the uploading/sharing part, of course, but it's much more streamlined way of directly downloading photos versus iPhoto.
> It simply presents a list of media on your device, which you can save in any location you want. There's no organizational aspect, unlike iPhoto. Image Capture doesn't help with the uploading/sharing part, of course, but it's much more streamlined way of directly downloading photos versus iPhoto.
iPhoto's "organizational" aspect, as far as mandatory core goes, does not go any further than an optional "event name" field (it'll just use the import date if no event name is specified). And it does provide sharing options.
Image Capture is useful if you want to download stuff to the filesystem or delete pictures without importing them (iPhoto can't do that), but it definitely isn't simpler than iPhoto to import media: on iPhoto you select your pictures, click "import selected" (or just import all if you don't want to bother) and when done select "keep imported" or "remove imported", on Image Capture you select your filesystem destination, select your pictures, click "import" (or just import all if you don't want to bother) and when done you manually remove the file from the device.
> it's much more streamlined way of directly downloading photos versus iPhoto.
Only if your end goal is to have the pictures in an accessible place on your filesystem in their raw form.
The new Facebook Camera app addresses some of these issues: you can select multiple images from your camera roll, tap a button, and send them to an album.
Yeah, some people have non-FB-using family members or privacy concerns. For most people, however, this is where sharing is headed IMO.
The author seems to want "his cake and eat it too ... for free". I'm not sure where you'll get cheap/free storage that (a) keeps up with megapixel growth, (b) is easy to use, (c) uploads fast in the background with no waiting, (d) doesn't require the recipient to sign-up for anything, and (e) is run by a benevolent CEO who cares about your privacy more than his/her startup's growth.
We are not necessarily talking about free here. Many people happily paid for MobileMe galleries. And there is yet to emerge a good successor, at least for me. Picasa seems to be the single alternative allowing for a similar workflow from within Aperture, though it is not as low-key visually and I'll have to consider whether I want to attache my albums to my Google account.
One solution outside of facebook is services like yogile, where anyone can add to an album without creating an account , as long as the album owner has one. The flaw is the lack of iPhone or android apps, and no external API to hack that in a clean(approved) way.
nah -- looking for a user-friendly solution that can recommend to non-tech friends. one click sharing from mobile -- not just getting raw files to a computer.
He pretty much described the "Journal" functionality of iPhoto for iPhone/iPad. You pick the photos you want to share, create a "journal" with them, and pick Share -> Share to iCloud. From there you can email a link to the journal to your contacts. They receive a link to a really nice gallery.
The journals can be customized, you can change up the layout and add little text boxes and maps and neat stuff like that. It's really exactly what he's looking for.
As far as getting the photos onto your mac- that's what Photo Stream is for. It pulls your photos straight into iPhoto without you having to do anything. It kind of sounds like he's trying to stay away from iPhoto, but that's like arbitrarily saying "I need a solution for this, but I won't use the solution that exists, I need something else!".
People always forget about the Image Capture app too. If you don't want to deal with iPhoto, just plug your phone in and open Image Capture. It's one window with all your pics and videos. Select a couple, drag to the desktop, then to whatever fancy app you want to use to share.
And this journal functionality is completely separated from anything you can do in desktop iPhoto. I guess it works ok if you have every photo on your iPhone.
That's just because Mac iPhoto hasn't been updated in a while. It'll be in the next major release.
If you don't have every photo on your phone/iPad you can always sync them back manually, or if you put the photos you want to journal into your Photo Stream they'll be transferred to your phone immediately through iCloud, and you can use them in a journal.
Yep -- you are right. Buying iPhoto for iOS looks like it'll do it. Funny, I'm a pretty big Apple fan and follow lots of their news, and still didn't know this. I suspect most people won't either considering it requires a separate purchase that seems unnecessary since I don't care about editing photos on iOS.
"Batch" does a pretty good job of allowing you to send groups of photos to friends and family. I don't think it supports videos, but for a photos-only solution, it's pretty good.
You've been able to upload a YouTube video (and make it unlisted, which makes it about as private as a Dropbox link) directly from the photo gallery since the iPhone could shoot video. Other than the fact that it doesn't compress in the background, that meets all of this guys' requirements. It's kind of interesting that the biggest video sharing site in the world somehow gets lost in this discussion.
I think the point is that he wants all of the content to be presented together, which includes a mix of photos and videos. Even if it were just videos, a batch of content could not be presented together (easily) via youtube, since videos are basically standalone (with the exception of playlists, which removes a lot of desired simplicity).
> Apple’s supposed to be the best at designing simple user experiences across hardware and software – and I believe they are.
As much as Apple is praised for simple user experiences, there's a lot about my mac that bothers me. For example, when I am browsing through photos in Preview (with arrow keys) and I come across one I do not want, I should be able to hit the delete key to delete the photo, but no, I can't do that. I have to stop browsing, find the photo in the side bar, right click and select 'Move to Trash'. Or, when I close all the windows for a given program (usually there is just one), the program stays open until I navigate through the menu to explicitly quit. I understand this is a design decision, but it just seems counter-intuitive, as does much else with this computer. Things like this annoy me all day long.
> For example, when I am browsing through photos in Preview (with arrow keys) and I come across one I do not want, I should be able to hit the delete key to delete the photo, but no, I can't do that. I have to stop browsing, find the photo in the side bar, right click and select 'Move to Trash'.
Command delete works here. It makes some sense as it's not likely you'll accidentally delete one of your photos that way.
> Or, when I close all the windows for a given program (usually there is just one), the program stays open until I navigate through the menu to explicitly quit.
That's not necessarily true in Lion (through a feature called Automatic Termination which requires the app to explicitly support it). Take Preview again for example. Open a photo, close the photo and then go back to another app. Check the Dock. This actually drives me nuts as I commonly switch app context's with command-tab and having a disappearing app makes this difficult. It seems like an odd feature to me because the process actually remains alive (check Activity Monitor), it's just in a state that makes it easy to kill if resources become scarce. I have 20GB of RAM, resources very rarely become scarce so all it does is end up hiding stuff I'd rather see.
> It makes some sense as it's not likely you'll accidentally delete one of your photos that way.
Well the file would go in the Trash, so if you pressed delete accidentally it's not a disaster. I use Presbutan so pressing delete on its own works, and pressing enter opens the file, instead of having to use Command-O.
"...you'll accidentally delete one of your photos that way.."
Now you know, that's what I am hating about Apple right now. From hiding the Library folder, forcing reopening of apps and docs after I restart (talking Lion here - and yes I know they FINALLY fixed that. But it only took the 6 updates), to wifi dropping on the MBAir, STILL not being able to easily change the system font, low-end accessibly features (especially when compared to Windows), control the keyboard to prevent me from "accidents" - most of what I've learned about OS' came from fixing my mistakes! And you know, maybe I WANT TO delete photo's that way.
Look it boils down too: after 20 years on mac I am getting damn tired of this recent trend to of holding my hand and telling me how to use the machine.
Every new update of OSX = less control of my desktop. Now I spend most of my time in terminal. So what's the point of having a mac? I can buy a high end pc that will also last me 5 years and do what I want.
Controlling me on the phone is one thing. On my machine is another. Now I'm running Windows on my mac. That's how pissed I am about this.
Apple needs to add a dummy switch. They can call it what they want, "Enhanced desktop experience" - whatever. But something I can check (OFF). Cause not every one who uses a mac needs his hands held.
If it was the other way around I bet you'd be complaining that you accidentally deleted some photos by hitting the delete key. Reaching over and hitting one extra key should not cause you this many problems. After 20 years of using a Mac I would hope that you know that the Command key really is your best bet at doing something, the same way that the control key works on windows. I'd also hope that after 20 years you would have found the keyboard preference pane.
Unhidding the library folder takes one line in terminal, you could even set up a launchd job to run it every day so that you're sure that you aren't missing it.
If you spend that much time in the terminal you would have looked up how to change the problems you're having with some easy defaults commands.
"f it was the other way around I bet you'd be complaining that you accidentally deleted some photos..."
Ahh no. That's what the trash bin is for. And backups.
"spend that much time in the terminal you would have looked up how to change the problems you're having with some easy defaults commands"
I know already. My point is I should not have to do type out commands with every install. A simple checkbox in preferences would be a better approach; allowing us "power users" to stay power users.
you can cmd+del to delete a file. cmd+q will quit a program, cmd+w will close a window/file either in finder or a piece of software. apple's always done it this way. personally, just because i've closed all of the files in a piece of software doesn't necessarily mean i want to close the software. i like the behaviour.
one thing on snow leopard that drove me nuts was selecting a folder, then hitting cmd+a to select all the files in it. but no, finder selected all of the items in the parent folder. thankfully, they fixed that in lion.
>Or, when I close all the windows for a given program (usually there is just one), the program stays open until I navigate through the menu to explicitly quit. I understand this is a design decision, but it just seems counter-intuitive, as does much else with this computer. Things like this annoy me all day long.
As you say, it's a design decision. You probably come from Windows -- their way is just as arbitrary, if not more.
One reason is to have it be explicit vs implicit (closing a Window just means "I want to close this Window", it should not mean "I want this application to quit").
Another reason is consistency: with apps with multiple windows, the close=quit behavior is only desirable for the last one. So the behavior would be inconsistent depending on the number of open windows for that app (some of which might even be minimized and hence invisible).
Finally, with Lion, you are not supposed to care if an app is open or not. Actually, it might even seem closed but still be loaded. This is because the OS is working behind the scenes loading and closing applications and will, to optimize responsiveness, loading time and memory use.
This is why I recommend that people buy Android phones. Sharing media on Android is dead simple and very powerful. For example: Take a photo, go to gallery, tap share, pick how you want to share it. If you want to share multiple pieces of media, go to the gallery and long tap to select multiple items and repeat the process.
This "share" process is deeply engrained in the Android OS and is one of the easiest things for an Android developer to implement. When a user opens a photo, the OS sends out an "Intent" with a data type as part of the metadata. An app can register to receive the intent if it matches their supported data type. If there are multiple apps registered for a particular data type, the OS shows a list for the user to select which app should complete the operation.
The trick is the "how you want to share it" portion.
The article is complaining there's no easy way to share mixed media. But it's primarily a complaint that there's no built-in service to upload said mixed-media to, for sharing.
The article then discounts Facebook for privacy reasons, Dropbox for space reasons and Kicksend for not handling mixed media. (One would assume g+ is similarly ruled out for reasons of privacy and accessibility to family members not on Facebook.)
So what the article is looking for isn't even strictly a mobile UI solution so much as a web service with effectively-unlimited storage, mixed-media support and some unspecified privacy/security options.
And that's something largely orthogonal to mobile OS.
But it's primarily a complaint that there's no built-in service
to upload said mixed-media to, for sharing.
I can think of several off the top of my head, Flickr being the best of them. To your parent comment's point, with an Android phone sharing those is just as "built-in" as the apps that shipped with the phone. It's right in the "share" menu with everything else.
So what the article is looking for isn't even strictly a mobile
UI solution so much as a web service with effectively-
unlimited storage, mixed-media support and some
unspecified privacy/security options.
TFA has a list of what he hopes to see from Apple in 2012. If you replace "iPhone" with "Galaxy Nexus" in the list, all but the very last item are solved, and that's just one more manual step away. And this works for any media-hosting service you want to use, not just the one that Apple blesses.
I'm willing to bet the problem is not technology but politics; more specifically stigma surrounding file sharing. Making it easy for users to share their own files with friends and family, and you are making it easy to share copyrighted material.
One Apple opens the gates, they will be very hard to close.
48 comments
[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 145 ms ] threadList of Albums -> Album -> Photo.
There are 2 share buttons. One at the album level and one at the photo level.
The Album share lets you select multiple pictures for sharing. Does not appear to work with multiple movies :(
Also, expect photo stream sharing soon!
#1: Have patience. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230437150457740...
#2: Deal with the fact that Facebook won and all of your family is on it and go to iPhoto, select some photos, and click Share -> Facebook.
#3: Go to iPhoto, select some photos, and click Share -> Email and mail them to your relatives, all of whom most certainly have e-mail.
#4: Navigate to minus.com, drag photos onto page, done.
#5: Batch MMS/iMessage, and then call mom.
Edit: typo
In my opinion, one of Android's best features for years has been its extremely open "Share" button that developers can hook into for nearly anything, and all over the OS.
- Plug in iPhone. - Browse iPhone in Finder (No iTunes, iPhoto etc.) - Grab files and do what you want with them.
Oh, if it was only that easy...
IMHO, it's the most important functional difference between the 2 platforms.
What the OP really wants is his automagical "Photostream" to be shareable and to also handle videos. The first seems logical. I think this is a large customer request and it would be the next logical step for Apple to do with Photostream. But I would bet against on Apple including videos. HD vids are just to large, would gobble up tons of space in the iCloud and burn through battery life/traffic with an automatic upload.
There's an app called Image Capture, installed on every Mac, that lets you easily download certain photos and videos from your iPhone (or any other camera). It simply presents a list of media on your device, which you can save in any location you want. There's no organizational aspect, unlike iPhoto. Image Capture doesn't help with the uploading/sharing part, of course, but it's much more streamlined way of directly downloading photos versus iPhoto.
iPhoto's "organizational" aspect, as far as mandatory core goes, does not go any further than an optional "event name" field (it'll just use the import date if no event name is specified). And it does provide sharing options.
Image Capture is useful if you want to download stuff to the filesystem or delete pictures without importing them (iPhoto can't do that), but it definitely isn't simpler than iPhoto to import media: on iPhoto you select your pictures, click "import selected" (or just import all if you don't want to bother) and when done select "keep imported" or "remove imported", on Image Capture you select your filesystem destination, select your pictures, click "import" (or just import all if you don't want to bother) and when done you manually remove the file from the device.
> it's much more streamlined way of directly downloading photos versus iPhoto.
Only if your end goal is to have the pictures in an accessible place on your filesystem in their raw form.
Yeah, some people have non-FB-using family members or privacy concerns. For most people, however, this is where sharing is headed IMO.
The author seems to want "his cake and eat it too ... for free". I'm not sure where you'll get cheap/free storage that (a) keeps up with megapixel growth, (b) is easy to use, (c) uploads fast in the background with no waiting, (d) doesn't require the recipient to sign-up for anything, and (e) is run by a benevolent CEO who cares about your privacy more than his/her startup's growth.
The journals can be customized, you can change up the layout and add little text boxes and maps and neat stuff like that. It's really exactly what he's looking for.
As far as getting the photos onto your mac- that's what Photo Stream is for. It pulls your photos straight into iPhoto without you having to do anything. It kind of sounds like he's trying to stay away from iPhoto, but that's like arbitrarily saying "I need a solution for this, but I won't use the solution that exists, I need something else!".
If you don't have every photo on your phone/iPad you can always sync them back manually, or if you put the photos you want to journal into your Photo Stream they'll be transferred to your phone immediately through iCloud, and you can use them in a journal.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/batch/id470069919?mt=8
As much as Apple is praised for simple user experiences, there's a lot about my mac that bothers me. For example, when I am browsing through photos in Preview (with arrow keys) and I come across one I do not want, I should be able to hit the delete key to delete the photo, but no, I can't do that. I have to stop browsing, find the photo in the side bar, right click and select 'Move to Trash'. Or, when I close all the windows for a given program (usually there is just one), the program stays open until I navigate through the menu to explicitly quit. I understand this is a design decision, but it just seems counter-intuitive, as does much else with this computer. Things like this annoy me all day long.
Command delete works here. It makes some sense as it's not likely you'll accidentally delete one of your photos that way.
> Or, when I close all the windows for a given program (usually there is just one), the program stays open until I navigate through the menu to explicitly quit.
That's not necessarily true in Lion (through a feature called Automatic Termination which requires the app to explicitly support it). Take Preview again for example. Open a photo, close the photo and then go back to another app. Check the Dock. This actually drives me nuts as I commonly switch app context's with command-tab and having a disappearing app makes this difficult. It seems like an odd feature to me because the process actually remains alive (check Activity Monitor), it's just in a state that makes it easy to kill if resources become scarce. I have 20GB of RAM, resources very rarely become scarce so all it does is end up hiding stuff I'd rather see.
Well the file would go in the Trash, so if you pressed delete accidentally it's not a disaster. I use Presbutan so pressing delete on its own works, and pressing enter opens the file, instead of having to use Command-O.
Now you know, that's what I am hating about Apple right now. From hiding the Library folder, forcing reopening of apps and docs after I restart (talking Lion here - and yes I know they FINALLY fixed that. But it only took the 6 updates), to wifi dropping on the MBAir, STILL not being able to easily change the system font, low-end accessibly features (especially when compared to Windows), control the keyboard to prevent me from "accidents" - most of what I've learned about OS' came from fixing my mistakes! And you know, maybe I WANT TO delete photo's that way.
Look it boils down too: after 20 years on mac I am getting damn tired of this recent trend to of holding my hand and telling me how to use the machine.
Every new update of OSX = less control of my desktop. Now I spend most of my time in terminal. So what's the point of having a mac? I can buy a high end pc that will also last me 5 years and do what I want.
Controlling me on the phone is one thing. On my machine is another. Now I'm running Windows on my mac. That's how pissed I am about this.
Apple needs to add a dummy switch. They can call it what they want, "Enhanced desktop experience" - whatever. But something I can check (OFF). Cause not every one who uses a mac needs his hands held.
Unhidding the library folder takes one line in terminal, you could even set up a launchd job to run it every day so that you're sure that you aren't missing it. If you spend that much time in the terminal you would have looked up how to change the problems you're having with some easy defaults commands.
Ahh no. That's what the trash bin is for. And backups.
"spend that much time in the terminal you would have looked up how to change the problems you're having with some easy defaults commands"
I know already. My point is I should not have to do type out commands with every install. A simple checkbox in preferences would be a better approach; allowing us "power users" to stay power users.
one thing on snow leopard that drove me nuts was selecting a folder, then hitting cmd+a to select all the files in it. but no, finder selected all of the items in the parent folder. thankfully, they fixed that in lion.
As you say, it's a design decision. You probably come from Windows -- their way is just as arbitrary, if not more.
One reason is to have it be explicit vs implicit (closing a Window just means "I want to close this Window", it should not mean "I want this application to quit").
Another reason is consistency: with apps with multiple windows, the close=quit behavior is only desirable for the last one. So the behavior would be inconsistent depending on the number of open windows for that app (some of which might even be minimized and hence invisible).
Finally, with Lion, you are not supposed to care if an app is open or not. Actually, it might even seem closed but still be loaded. This is because the OS is working behind the scenes loading and closing applications and will, to optimize responsiveness, loading time and memory use.
This "share" process is deeply engrained in the Android OS and is one of the easiest things for an Android developer to implement. When a user opens a photo, the OS sends out an "Intent" with a data type as part of the metadata. An app can register to receive the intent if it matches their supported data type. If there are multiple apps registered for a particular data type, the OS shows a list for the user to select which app should complete the operation.
The article is complaining there's no easy way to share mixed media. But it's primarily a complaint that there's no built-in service to upload said mixed-media to, for sharing.
The article then discounts Facebook for privacy reasons, Dropbox for space reasons and Kicksend for not handling mixed media. (One would assume g+ is similarly ruled out for reasons of privacy and accessibility to family members not on Facebook.)
So what the article is looking for isn't even strictly a mobile UI solution so much as a web service with effectively-unlimited storage, mixed-media support and some unspecified privacy/security options.
And that's something largely orthogonal to mobile OS.
(edits for formatting)
But since TFA also list Dropbox and Kicksend, both are not builtin in iOS, it seems the author would accept non-builtin Flickr solution as well.
So the whole article would come down to "I don't know Flickr exists and can share video".
One Apple opens the gates, they will be very hard to close.
1) Select images/videos
2) Click share
3) Select your option (such as gmail)
4) Automatically attaches those to the email for you.
Kind of surprised the iPhone doesn't already have that built in for multiples.