Making sense of file storage, Apple-style
Posted: Sat Nov 07, 2015 2:23 pm
This is partly a rant and partly a cry for help.
My girlfriend is a complete noob when it comes to computers, and insists on using a MacBook Pro and an iPhone. I've told her a jillion times "fine, but that means you have to work things out yourself."
Most of the time, it's OK, she'll browse the web, use Facebook and take photos. The problems start when she runs out of space on her phone and/or wants to back up her photos. In the past, I'd use her Windows laptop to import her photos in Windows and put them in a more or less organised folder on an external drive, together with all her pre-iPhone photos. Then she activated iCloud, and later she got an iPhone 6 and a MacBook Pro. Now, right out of the gate, trouble started. I told her if I were her, I'd take the opportunity to get a fresh start rather than restoring her old phone with all the apps and photos from the old one. She didn't take my advice, and for some inexplicable reason, her new 16GB iPhone started out as FULL as her old, 8GB iPhone.
So the first task is to get all those photos securely off her phone and backed up. So naturally, we open the Photos app on the Macbook, and start importing photos from the phone. As a photographer and Windows user, I'm used to a very simple and understandable 1:1 import scenario: I launch Lightroom and import the raw files from my memory card, converting them to .DNG in the process. The result is 1 file per photo in a meaningfully named folder (year/month/day). Lightroom also stores info in its library. Both the library files and the actual photo files are stored in my own Photos folder, which is in a custom locaton, and all this a breeze to back up, using SyncBack.
On the MacBook, using Photos, on the other hand, it's a different story. After a bit of poking around and not understanding where the hell the files are stored, I realised that it's possible to view the photo library in Finder - it's all jammed into some kind of archive, containing a bunch of folders. I figured, OK, I can at least drop that archive on the external drive, and have a very primitive backup. However, the library contains photos dating back to 2012, all viewable in Photos, but the only references to identifiable files in Finder are in folders called Masters, Previews and Thumbnails. These folders each contain a folder called 2015, with the expected files buried in numerous subfolders.
Question numero uno: where are all the other files? In the cloud? Does OSX tell me in any way? Nope.
Question number two: iCloud sounds like a nice idea in theory, but can you set it up so that you can safely delete photos from your phone to free up space, witout also erasing them from iCloud and other devices? I see some workaround solution involving "optimising" local copies, but why the fuck is stuff like that buried in some internet forum? Why doesn't Apple make it absolutely crystal clear what the various options will do to your files?
Is there any alternative way of handling this stuff on a Mac? A solution that imports the photos into an obvious folder system (year/month/date)? An app that will simply monitor a user-defined top folder and add contained photos to the library? A backup app that will mirror this folder to an external drive?
This stuff makes me feel so incredibly powerless. Is this shit actually working for other people? Am I just not getting something that's very intuitive to everybody else? I don't really like to play the part of the Windows/Google fanboy, but DAMMIT: *THAT* SHIT ACTUALLY JUST WORKS!
My girlfriend is a complete noob when it comes to computers, and insists on using a MacBook Pro and an iPhone. I've told her a jillion times "fine, but that means you have to work things out yourself."
Most of the time, it's OK, she'll browse the web, use Facebook and take photos. The problems start when she runs out of space on her phone and/or wants to back up her photos. In the past, I'd use her Windows laptop to import her photos in Windows and put them in a more or less organised folder on an external drive, together with all her pre-iPhone photos. Then she activated iCloud, and later she got an iPhone 6 and a MacBook Pro. Now, right out of the gate, trouble started. I told her if I were her, I'd take the opportunity to get a fresh start rather than restoring her old phone with all the apps and photos from the old one. She didn't take my advice, and for some inexplicable reason, her new 16GB iPhone started out as FULL as her old, 8GB iPhone.
So the first task is to get all those photos securely off her phone and backed up. So naturally, we open the Photos app on the Macbook, and start importing photos from the phone. As a photographer and Windows user, I'm used to a very simple and understandable 1:1 import scenario: I launch Lightroom and import the raw files from my memory card, converting them to .DNG in the process. The result is 1 file per photo in a meaningfully named folder (year/month/day). Lightroom also stores info in its library. Both the library files and the actual photo files are stored in my own Photos folder, which is in a custom locaton, and all this a breeze to back up, using SyncBack.
On the MacBook, using Photos, on the other hand, it's a different story. After a bit of poking around and not understanding where the hell the files are stored, I realised that it's possible to view the photo library in Finder - it's all jammed into some kind of archive, containing a bunch of folders. I figured, OK, I can at least drop that archive on the external drive, and have a very primitive backup. However, the library contains photos dating back to 2012, all viewable in Photos, but the only references to identifiable files in Finder are in folders called Masters, Previews and Thumbnails. These folders each contain a folder called 2015, with the expected files buried in numerous subfolders.
Question numero uno: where are all the other files? In the cloud? Does OSX tell me in any way? Nope.
Question number two: iCloud sounds like a nice idea in theory, but can you set it up so that you can safely delete photos from your phone to free up space, witout also erasing them from iCloud and other devices? I see some workaround solution involving "optimising" local copies, but why the fuck is stuff like that buried in some internet forum? Why doesn't Apple make it absolutely crystal clear what the various options will do to your files?
Is there any alternative way of handling this stuff on a Mac? A solution that imports the photos into an obvious folder system (year/month/date)? An app that will simply monitor a user-defined top folder and add contained photos to the library? A backup app that will mirror this folder to an external drive?
This stuff makes me feel so incredibly powerless. Is this shit actually working for other people? Am I just not getting something that's very intuitive to everybody else? I don't really like to play the part of the Windows/Google fanboy, but DAMMIT: *THAT* SHIT ACTUALLY JUST WORKS!