How often do you use AirDrop?

[aDRock1154]

I use it everyday with my wife to share videos/photos of our daughter, without having them clog up our storage under Messages.

 

[Mess]

Never. Its on my 4s.

 

[d123]

I quite often send photos from my 5s to the iPad to edit before uploading. It's more convenient than iMessage for sending multiple pics at once.

 

[lancastor]

If AirDrop adds OS X support I would use it every day.

But for now I'm using it never.

 

[Badrottie]

I did twice with a friend at my school (it was slow) and testing between iPhone 5S and iPad Air (both worked very well).

 

[LOLZpersonok]

I've never used AirDrop before. I am still unsure of what it is.

 

[iolinux333]

If AirDrop adds OS X support I would use it every day.

But for now I'm using it never.

Ditto. Tested it once with a friend. I need it for transfers to OS X. That is all.

 

[JohnLT13]

Never. I forget I even have it most of the time.

 

[Abazigal]

Once in a while. Quite a few of my friends have either an iPhone or iPad capable of supporting airdrop, and it's quite handy for quickly sharing photos, links and other small files.

 

[dannyyankou]

Most of my family and friends don't even have devices with airdrop yet, so I haven't really had a chance to use it, haha.

 

[sflomenb]

I use it once a week when I see my girlfriend.

 

[chrizzz09]

i use it just to send Wallpapers from the iPhone to the iPad or vice versa...

Man i would use it more often if it was compatible with AirDrop for Mac.

 

[MinEderPlayz]

I use it frequently to transfer photos & videos from my iPhone to my iPad.

I looked into PhotoStream and found that it will reduce the size/quality before sharing with the iPad.

You can get around that with a Shared PhotoStream. But that comes with it's own problems. Like being unable to download video.

So I've found AirDrop to be the quickest and easiest way to do that transfer.

I do that occasionally too but only once a month or so. Unfortunately a lot of my friends think it's cool to have an iPhone... 4

 

[SomeGuyDude]

I'd use it if it could go from iDevice to OSX. It baffles me that this isn't part of the functionality.

 

[richwoodrocket]

I only use airdrop to demonstrate to people how cool it is. Other than that, I don't have any practical uses

 

[big samm]

I use it to transfer video between my 5s and ipad mini R... I have no other use for it!

 

[Smeehehe]

Mine never works....rarely finds the person that I suckered into air dropping with.

 

[afsnyder]

The problem is that I can't remember the last time I needed to give media to just one person.

Using Dropbox is a hell of a lot more convenient than having 6 people stand around while I Airdrop to them one at a time.

I understand the theory of why and when Airdrop is better, I'm just saying that it has yet to happen to me.



This is my other problem with Airdrop. It's never actually 3 seconds. My average in testing has always been more like 30 seconds. Asking a friend to stand there for half a minute while nothing happens is just embarrassing.

Errm. Well, you do realize that you can just tap on the faces and send them all at the same time right? (at least I think, the max I've sent was 2 people and idk if I waited..)

 

[richwoodrocket]

It's just easier for me to use messages. How many times are you at a party where you don't have other peoples contact info? And it's pretty easy to ask for someone's number to send it to them in an iMessage. Pl

 

[joejoejoe]

Because Texting/iMessage doesn't always send the full quality version of what you're sending. Typically, if you text a picture, it will send a less-quality compressed image to the other phone. With Airdrop, it's like using a USB drive, the full quality image is sent.

It's convenient if you have to AirDrop someone a 9 minute HD video you took on your iPhone, rather than sending an iMessage (which first has to upload to Apple's server, then be downloaded to the person's iPhone).

not to mention that same video takes up double space on your phone if done via imessage (takes up space in messages and in camera roll once saved).

 

[i1280]

I'll use it to send videos from my iPhone to iPad. Or photos from my phone to the wife's iPad.

 

[xoAnna]

I'm disappointed that the Airdrop on Mac OS can't "talk" with the Airdrop on iOS. If it did I would have used it more often.

Exactly! Until I can I use it with my MacBook Pro, I have really no use for it. So, yeah to answer the original question: No, I've never used Airdrop (except when I first tried to send something to my MBP)!

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I'd use it if it could go from iDevice to OSX. It baffles me that this isn't part of the functionality.

Strongly agreed! Come on Apple...:

 

[CutterSlade]

Until I can I use it with my MacBook Pro, I have really no use for it.

Same here. This is another feature that is, in its current state, of no use to pretty much everyone but the designers of that feature. I hate when Apple adds half-developed features like this.

 

[Shanghaichica]

I've only used it a few times. I've never really needed to use it because most things like pictures are automatically backed up to icloud as are things that I've purchased from iTunes. If I want to share with other people I'd sooner use imessage.

 

[Goldfinger]

Same here. I’d be shocked if we didn’t see this in the next couple of OSX updates - it seems like a painfully conspicuous omission, and unless I’m missing something, doesn’t seem like there’s any kind of technical barrier.

I remember reading that, in the current implementation, there actually is a technical/hardware barrier. Something to do with the bluetooth implementation or some hardware feature that iPhone BT chipsets have and Mac BT chipsets don't. Either way, if they would just use Wifi everything would be good (right now iOS uses BT for AirDrop while OSX uses Wifi). It's a weird design choice.

But I agree it needs to be compatible with OSX to actually be usefull. I used it once, just to try it out.

I'm also afraid that one of the big reasons why the two are incompatible is that iOS doesn't have a filesystem.
For example if I were to drop an InDesign file from OSX into my iPhone via AirDrop, the iPhone wouldn't know what to do with it. There are no apps compatible with that file format. And, because each app has it's own file repository instead of one big filesystem where everything is located, iOS wouldn't know what to do with the InDesign file. It can't store the file in the filesystem.
So in the end it's because Apple wants to keep things simple and dumbed down.