All iPads Want mum to ditch white MacBook for iPad Air. How would she manage iPhoto library?

[patent10021]

Thanks Kuchen.

The services i.e. DropBox etc are large enough.

What I'm trying to do however is simulate what she would do without MacBook + Mac iPhoto application.

Let's say she has only a Canon camera + camera kit. Her photos would need to be upped somewhere.

Can they be uploaded from camera kit to a service like DropBox?


And yeah if she keeps her MacBook we could just use iPhoto sharing/Streaming. Library is only about 10GB.

Isn't it weird to share 10GB of photos though? Would you select ALL photos in iPhoto and then just the share button?

 

[thelookingglass]

Thanks Kuchen.

The services i.e. DropBox etc are large enough.

What I'm trying to do however is simulate what she would do without MacBook + Mac iPhoto application.

Let's say she has only a Canon camera + camera kit. Her photos would need to be upped somewhere.

Can they be uploaded from camera kit to a service like DropBox?


And yeah if she keeps her MacBook we could just use iPhoto sharing/Streaming. Library is only about 10GB.

Isn't it weird to share 10GB of photos though? Would you select ALL photos in iPhoto and then just the share button?

Photos in her camera roll could be automatically uploaded to Dropbox. But then you're going to want to upgrade her Dropbox account.

The problem is that this setup becomes sort of cumbersome. And is she OK with not necessarily having offline access to all her photos? There are ways around that, but I wouldn't call it intuitive.

 

[ApfelKuchen]

There are several way to get the photos from the Canon to the cloud (pick a cloud, any cloud...). In any case, either the iPhone or iPad would be the intermediary - your iOS devices are setup to communicate with the Internet, a camera connection kit is not.

One choice is either Apple's Lightning to SD Card Camera Reader, or Apple's Lightning to USB Camera Adapter. Either you remove the SD card from the camera and plug it into the SD Card Camera Reader, or plug your camera-to-USB cable into the USB Camera Adapter.

The principal alternate method is an Eye-Fi card for the camera - that's an SD memory card that includes Wi-Fi. The advantage of that is that you won't need wires or adapters. The downside is it takes a bit more to setup when you first get it.

Here's a link to the current iCloud photo limits: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4858

That'll tell you just how weird it would be to upload 10gb of photos (limits tend to be based on real-world usage patterns). Quite simply, not weird at all, though she may not be able to do them all in one go.

If each of your mom's photos was 1mb, that would be a total of 10,000 photos. Most likely, they're a bit larger than that.

Would I just select all photos and Share? No. Isn't the point to be organized? It'll be easier to organize with iPhoto at the start than to reorganize them later. Currently, you can have a maximum of 100 shared streams (100 albums). You might upload existing iPhoto Albums unchanged, you might re-arrange things before you do that....

After iPhoto is out of the picture... Import new photos from camera to iPad. Add those photos to existing shared streams and/or create new shared streams, as desired.

IMPORTANT: Storage capacity of the iPad is limited, as is iCloud backup space. Eventually, it'll be necessary to delete photos from the iPad that have been imported from the camera, and even before that, you may have to buy additional iCloud storage space to accommodate the large Camera Roll (remember, iCloud backup includes the Camera Roll). The basic strategy is to get stuff up from the iPad and into the cloud as soon as you can, then delete some or all of that stuff from the iPad's Camera roll.

 

[patent10021]

DropBox seems like a burn. What about Box? 10GB free. iOS etc.


Well I think if all her pics are on her 500GB WD Passport HD and SD as long as she has the camera kit she should be ok. Can the camera kit access photos on a USB HD or only the other way around?

You get 5GB of free storage on iCloud so she should also be covered there for all her primary photos.

 

[Barhen]

you are making this terribly complicated for your poor mother. :s Should have gotten her the macbook air.

 

[patent10021]

you are making this terribly complicated for your poor mother. :s Should have gotten her the macbook air.

lol well she already has a MacBook

We are TOGETHER trying to find out if it's realistic to own just an iPad because if she has to keep the MacBook then the Mac will be just for photos and that's pretty dumb.

 

[Defender2010]

DropBox seems like a burn. What about Box? 10GB free. iOS etc.


Well I think if all her pics are on her 500GB WD Passport HD and SD as long as she has the camera kit she should be ok. Can the camera kit access photos on a USB HD or only the other way around?

You get 5GB of free storage on iCloud so she should also be covered there for all her primary photos.

Upload all her Mac photos to Box from the Mac. You get more storage for free than Dropbox. Use the the Box app to access them from the iPad photos app and upload from the iPad to Box. Very simple. Use the Box service as an archive and the storage on the iPad to temp store and edit them before uploading to Box.

 

[Altis]

lol well she already has a MacBook

We are TOGETHER trying to find out if it's realistic to own just an iPad because if she has to keep the MacBook then the Mac will be just for photos and that's pretty dumb.

But keeping the Macbook costs nothing (2007 is likely not worth much vs the cost of a rMini), and meets all her needs, no? Why is it dumb to keep it just for photos? It'd be easier to argue, given everything you're trying to do, that trying to make an 8" tablet work in place of her MB is more dumb than keeping it. She could have all the local storage she wants!

I would encourage her to consider the ergonomics of the device, too (ie. having to hold it, the smaller keyboard of the mini, etc).

 

[charlituna]

Why do you think I'm posting this? She's not.

She may not be so happy with an iPad also. Not as her only tool. Photo management isn't so hot plus she'll need a way to backup, etc. Otherwise she could lose everything if something goes wrong at some point.

An iPad for carrying parts of her photo collection to show clients or on the go email email is great but it doesn't sound like a good fit as her only tool. That said if she's rocking ten year old gear it's time she upgrade. If only to be able to sync etc to the iPad. If she's not using it a lot a Mac mini hooked to her TV might be enough. Or a lower end iMac perhaps

 

[sugardrum]

Flickr?

Have you thought about using Flickr to store her photos? I'm not sure how well it works just on iOS as I use my Mac to upload my photos and then Flickring to view them on my iPad but you get a 1Tb of storage space for free and you can keep photos private or share them with just family and friends.

 

[179202]

She only uses the computer for email, iPhoto, iCal etc. The most basic Apple apps only. Even though she's comfortable with OS X and Macs since she's been using her Bondi iMac and white MacBook since 2000, she gets frustrated with file management i.e. location of files and difference between save/save as, where the files go etc. Not a big deal but I'm thinking she'd be better off with an iPad Air and the iWork bundle with full iPhoto.

Caveats: She'd not only need a wireless keyboard (no problem) but a lot of the normal text editing functions are absent on the iPad. As an example, most people use the mouse/trackpad to get to a position in the word doc for editing.

Also I'm wondering how easy it would be for her to manage her 10GB iPhoto library. Not huge but she needs complete control of this as she uses iPhoto for design portfolio. She wold definitely enjoy having an iPad to take to job sites to show off portfolio like she does with my iPad.

Sure she could have both a MacBook and iPad BUT we are trying to make things nice and zen-like. Not to mention tablets will soon rule the world so.


How do you think she could manage her portfolio? An annual subscription to iCloud for her library?

Any other tips re making document text editing OS X like?

EDIT: Even I get frustrated with the iPad sometimes and I've been using them since day one and have been a Mac guy for ages. I somehow think it might not be the best idea for her. But maybe iOS might be better for her since she ISN'T an OS X guru? Maybe iOS is actually easier for non techies? What do you think? After all, that's the whole premise behind iOS right?


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Shared photo streams would be great for her. Just share each album to iCloud (this'll be quicker to do on the Mac) and then the photos are in the cloud and STAY there (1000 photos per shared photo stream, 1000 shared photo steams per user). This is what I do and it's fantastic. A little marketing change around this and Apple would very much change how people manage their photo libraries.

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Upload all her Mac photos to Box from the Mac. You get more storage for free than Dropbox. Use the the Box app to access them from the iPad photos app and upload from the iPad to Box. Very simple. Use the Box service as an archive and the storage on the iPad to temp store and edit them before uploading to Box.

this is also a great solution.