Plugging the phone into a laptop seems far easier than connecting both to a shared network and then trying to find the right IPs to connect to.

Worse case you even have to make an access point which isn't a gui operation on most laptops.

I'm guessing you don't use Apple devices. AirDrop. Seamless adhoc direct connection. Easier than plugging in a cable.

I don't think "seamless" is a common word people use to describe it.

https://old.reddit.com/r/applehelp/comments/un9rjb/airdrop_h...

God forbid you'd ever want to transfer to a non-Apple device amirite? Most of the people that I know that use iPhones don't have Macs. And those with Macs don't have iPhones lol.

Comparing a shared RF medium to a fairly guaranteed point to point connection is one of those things that in theory works great, but in practice, not so much...

Wi-Fi 6 is faster than the internal SSDs read speed when there is direct line of sight and absolutely no cross channel interference*

>Wi-Fi 6 is faster than the internal SSDs read speed...

It isn't. Even the upcoming Wi-Fi 7 will be a bottleneck for modern SSDs.

But the much bigger problem is interoperability between different devices and OSs for Wi-Fi transfers.

AirDrop is dead simple device to device adhoc wifi. If you're close enough to plug it in, you're close enough to have line of sight.

Are you sure? A quick Google shows:

Wifi 6 bandwidth: 9.6 Gbit/s M1 SSD read speed: 6000 MB/s

So the read speed is about 6X faster than the Wifi 6 bandwidth.

6000 MB/s is 6 GB/s, no? Am I missing something?

Yes: GB vs Gbit. So an order of magnitude.