All iPads Why does the iPad only let you add 5 photos to an email?

[slapple]

In the iPad Photos app, if I select up to 5 photos, it lets me put them into an email. But if I select 6 or more photos, it doesn't show me the email option.

But if I go into the Mail app and compose an email, I can add more than 5 photos by doing the "Insert Photo or Video" for each photo. So why doesn't the Photos app let me add more than 5 photos to an email?

 

[samiznaetekto]

Because Apple is ignorant. They don't care about you. They put in these stupid limitations for no other reason than to make you feel like a prisoner. "You can do whatever you want as long as it's what we tell you."

 

[Alexl9126]

I just emailed 8 pics from iPad using the insert photo option in mail. Weird that the photos app is behind. Photos only let's me add 4. Maybe because apple wants you to use the shared photo stream option.

 

[a042349]

Because emailing 1-5 photos is considered a media consumption activity and fits Apple's iPad usage model.

Emailing 6+ photos would be considered a productivity activity and falls outside of the iPad's use cases.

See printing, USB hosting and shared file storage for other examples.

 

[darngooddesign]

Its probably a legacy issue no one has thought to fix.

That begin said you can select as many photos as you want, choose copy from the share menu, and paste them into a new email. You don't have to go the "Insert Photo" route.

 

[danielowenuk]

They are holding it back for IOS8 where they will announce it as a new feature.

 

[iCarabma]

Because sharing 5 photos is easy. Sharing 10-20 is harder. It's going to take longer, use more bandwidth, more resources. More chances to hangup and fail. More chances for someone who doesn't know what they are doing to assume the iPad has crashed when it's just working hard.

Apple will always choose to limit features rather than add features that might provide a bad user experience.

Every time they move into a new market we hear:

Apple didn't invent BLANK! There are X number of products in this category already in the market. And the new Apple iBlank doesn't even have these basic features that the others have.

Chances are that those basic missing features provide bad user experiences to most people. And the people buy the Apple one because it's easier.

 

[chabig]

You can copy and paste as many photos into an email message as you want.

 

[Nevaborn]

Just like in iCloud attachment maximum size is 20mb ...

Its rather pathetic in 2013

 

[enzo thecat]

Because sharing 5 emails is easy. Sharing 10-20 is harder. It's going to take longer, use more bandwidth, more resources. More chances to hangup and fail. More chances for someone who doesn't know what they are doing to assume the iPad has crashed when it's just working hard.

Apple will always choose to limit features rather than add features that might provide a bad user experience.

Every time they move into a new market we hear:

Apple didn't invent BLANK! There are X number of products in this category already in the market. And the new Apple iBlank doesn't even have these basic features that the others have.

Chances are that those basic missing features provide bad user experiences to most people. And the people buy the Apple one because it's easier.

Great post with which I agree. The reasoning behind this restriction has perplexed me for years and I've deduced this can be the only reason.

 

[ActionableMango]

Wow, lots of unhelpful sarcastic responses

I don't know why Apple has this limitation. Nobody knows except the software engineers. They may simply have higher priority bugs to fix or features to implement.

In any case, email providers have size limitations for email. These range from 5MB to 1GB (but most are much closer to the 5MG than 1GB). I personally use gmail, which has a 25MB per-email size limitation.

An email communication is actually limited by the smaller limitation for both the sender and receiver, so even if I have a 25MB limit because I use gmail, if my recipient has a 5MB limitation, I have to stick to 5MB.

I can only speculate that with the ever-increasing photo size of ever-increasing megapixel iDevice cameras, there is a natural limitation for email anyway, a limitation that does not exist for example if you use other sharing methods.