Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
"Much more" is maybe an overstatement.

It was never hard to email a photo. Let's not give Apple credit for just being Apple.
 
"Much more" is maybe an overstatement.

It was never hard to email a photo. Let's not give Apple credit for just being Apple.

Some reasons why AirDrop will be much more efficient:

1. Don't need to type in part of a name, or the entire email address/phone numbers of people not in your address book. You just press on an image icon.

2. If you take a video, there is no file limit cap to the transfer. If I'm trying to send many photos, I either have to send them at lower resolutions or send them as multiple emails which doubles reason #1.

3. Sending an email requires many more steps. This is what defines something as being much more efficient.

4. It will be faster if you are in an area with low signal and significantly faster if you are in an area with no signal. I frequently ride my motorcycles in rural areas with a group of friends so it will help me there.

5. The recipient does not need to wait for the email to arrive, open it, and then tell it to save the photo/video to their camera roll.

Now none of these things may be a big deal to you, but they do make the process of sharing much more efficient in the same way that Visual Voicemail is much more efficient than traditional voice mail systems.

But you're right, simplifying the process of something we do frequently is just Apple being Apple.
 
Last edited:
Some reasons why AirDrop will be much more efficient

1. Absolutely, but it's an iOS-only sharing feature… for a rather limited number of iDevices. I understand that we need to let it grow and slowly replace older methods, and although the market has turned out to be like this, no one likes the 1 year lifespan of smartphones and tablets.

2. Have you tried sending a large video over AirDrop on a Mac? If the iOS AirDrop is anything like its OS X counterpart, you could be standing there for hours to days, depending on the length of the video.

3. Where are all these steps? To send a photo from the share menu you hit (I) Mail, (II) Recipient address bar (III) enter part of a name (and given how fast today's people text each other, entering 1 or 10 letters make no difference once the keyboard is up and running) (IIII) hit send.

4. That I cannot argue with. You're right. (Although I couldn't imagine a scenario where I'm in a rural area and need to send pictures with my smartphone - but that's completely besides the point)

5. Okay, okay, another point for you.

There's nothing wrong with Apple being Apple. It's why we're on this forum, after all :) But let's not create up hype from thin air(...drop! badum tsh).
 
1. Absolutely, but it's an iOS-only sharing feature… for a rather limited number of iDevices. I understand that we need to let it grow and slowly replace older methods, and although the market has turned out to be like this, no one likes the 1 year lifespan of smartphones and tablets.

2. Have you tried sending a large video over AirDrop on a Mac? If the iOS AirDrop is anything like its OS X counterpart, you could be standing there for hours to days, depending on the length of the video.

3. Where are all these steps? To send a photo from the share menu you hit (I) Mail, (II) Recipient address bar (III) enter part of a name (and given how fast today's people text each other, entering 1 or 10 letters make no difference once the keyboard is up and running) (IIII) hit send.

4. That I cannot argue with. You're right. (Although I couldn't imagine a scenario where I'm in a rural area and need to send pictures with my smartphone - but that's completely besides the point)

5. Okay, okay, another point for you.

There's nothing wrong with Apple being Apple. It's why we're on this forum, after all :) But let's not create up hype from thin air(...drop! badum tsh).

1. The 4S doesn't support the feature, but those are two years old, so unless someone is holding out due to money they are up for a subsidized phone which does support AirDrop. The adoption rate of AirDrop compatible phones should be pretty high. In another year even more so. If the person doesn't have an iPhone, you can fall back on archaic :D email.

2. That video only needs to be larger than 10MB to make it worthwhile. And sending multiple photos now doesn't require separate emails.

3. It doesn't matter if people are used to typing. Being able to press on an icon makes this much more efficient than typing part of a name if they are in your address book and the entire email address if they are not. It cuts the effort by 50%, even more if the person is not in your address book.

Its not hype, its a more efficient solution for sharing files. Whether it appeals to you doesn't change that fact.

Excellent pun BTW.
 
Can't please everyone. You know what's useless for me? Airplane mode in control center.

The airplane mode feature is actually pretty good as I am on plane 4 to 6 times a week. The fact that I cannot change anything in the control center is useless. I would like to remove the features I don't use and add the features i use on a daily basis.
 
How do you airdrop device to device w/o losing photo quality/size?

Which will reduce the quality of the photo. I use this a lot to record videos on my iPhone and then transfer easily to my iPad for editing in iMovie.

I just tried an airdrop from iPhone 6 to iPad Mini Retina and the image size went from 2448x3264 (3.48 mb) to 1224x1632 (1.13 mb) - am I missing some sort of setting on either device or do airdrops by default resize the image?
 
I just tried an airdrop from iPhone 6 to iPad Mini Retina and the image size went from 2448x3264 (3.48 mb) to 1224x1632 (1.13 mb) - am I missing some sort of setting on either device or do airdrops by default resize the image?

I was under the impression Airdrop is for "Sharing" so you send out the optimized version.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.