Backing up iPhone photos to an external disk is pretty easy. It's not the happy path because most people cannot handle their own backups.

Not if you want to avoid itunes or icloud.

You can use an adapter:

https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MD821AM/A/lightning-to-us...

If you have macOS you don't need either, just plug your iPhone open up "/Applications/Image Capture.app" and it will show your photos. You can select and drag and drop to a disk and delete them all from this app.

Having it happen automatically is what I was after, and that isn’t particularly easy to achieve. There must surely be a better way than my nasty hack, but I do now have automatic backups of iPhone photos onto a nas:

A VM running macOS and a script. Open Photos.app and sync with ‘Download Originals’ checked. Quit Photos.app and rsync the folder ‘Originals’ out of the app bundle and onto a NAS. Once finished, reopen Photos.app.

It’s quite horrible getting the script to run as permissions get tricky with chrontab, so I used Lingon X to schedule it.

Maybe try it with an app on the phone instead? I've been using Synology's photos app to automatically upload everything in my photos library to my NAS for a couple of months now, and it's been seamless. Other apps, like PhotoSync, seem to offer similar functionality in a platform-independent way.

Thank you - I’ve had this suggested before but just couldn’t get it to work. I’ll have another go as that is obviously way better (and saves running a very large VM).

Modern versions of iTunes and modern iOS versions can be set up so that whenever they are on the same network iTunes automatically backs up over WiFi in the background. Then it's just a matter of a cron job pushing the files to the NAS.

That’s not a million miles off what I’m doing. It’s unhelpful that there isn’t a built in way to get images out of Photos.app as downloading a full library can use a lot of storage.

My bad, I misunderstood. Do you do all of this with an AppleScript? I would be really interested to look at this if you have it hosted on a repo somewhere.

Image Capture.app, which is built in to macOS, is very no-nonsense and works great.

I mean, "avoiding backup software on your computer" seems like a big ask for organized backups.

But, yeah, I have lightening drives that connect directly to download pictures onto (well, purchased as a gift).. They even also have USB to be read in a computer.

Can you just connect a external disk into the iPhone and click on "Backup" or it requires more than that?

No, but you also can't do that with a linux computer or any other device. You can easily copy and paste all of the photos onto a computer though.

What's stopping me from setting up a Linux computer to do that?

Maybe I’m misunderstanding what you’re saying, but idevicebackup2 does exactly that.

They make special external disks (that may require an iOS app). I bought some for a friend.

But you can also have it connect to a computer over wifi and auto-backup. Does Google let you do that?

this is false. Apple does not support this. If they did, you could connect a USB drive to your phone or tablet and save the photos.

To some extent this was eventually solved by third party vendors laboriously creating lightning flash drives and creating an app to talk to them.

But it is definite that you cannot backup your phone. Even apple's backup method is crippled.

I would like an image backup - where you could back up every bit of phone data - but apple gets in the way of that.

You can have it automatically generate an image over WiFi to a computer with an external drive. I mean, it requires iTunes, but it's trivial.

But compare that to an Android phone, where I have no idea how to get access to anything more than pictures without ADB.

This is where Android shines. I have everything on my phone daily backed up to my personal Nextcloud server. If I ever get in a bind, with a few gestures I can wipe my whole phone and then later restore everything. One can alternatively use Syncthing to sync files to a PC.

Well, I suspect you are rooted for this and a whole bunch of app complain about rooting. I have android and appreciate the ability to backup, but it's infuriating what apps are doing.

I am not rooted, but I am using GrapheneOS which is technically a fork of Android. I am using the built in Seedvault for app backup to Nextcloud. Files are synced with Nextcloud client.

I don't believe you can create an image even with itunes.

afaict it doesn't back up apps and app data. You can restore your phone, but the apps download again and app data is lost.

I believe this means if you are on version 10 of an app and 11 is the latest, a restore will upgrade you. And it you have say kindle books downloaded, you will have to re-download them again.

If Apple was satisfied with the money they were making, they wouldn't be Apple. They'd be another irrelevant consumer technology company. It is only due to that ruthless mindset that they have gotten where they are today.

To give them their due, they do a good job of at least appearing to offer superior service through vertical integration - as a long-time Android user, I am probably going to make the switch at the iPhone 15 release to make the most of this while it lasts.

Car companies can't offer anything close; this subscription features thing from Intel, Mercedes and BMW is bold-faced grifting and needs to be stamped out with extreme prejudice.

Running your own software on your own iPhone requires a $99 a year subscription. Just for code signing, it's basically pure profit, and there's no practical way around it.

It's a classic masterpiece of platform gatekeeping: Getting money for doing nothing, but being the only one who can do it.

> growth at all cost

Capitalism.

It used to be about making a great product, and people would buy it.

Then it became "We can generate a fake demand with various psychological tricks" to get people to buy it.

Then it became "Give away the razor and charge $$$$$$ for the blades".

Then it became "Buy the thing and subscription and save!"

Then it became "Buy this crippled thing so we can sell you the subscription for recurring income" <- This is where we're at.

Point being, it's not about making a great product. It's about using emotional tricks to get people to buy a thing AND a subscription, to get what 10y ago would have been a lump-sum you-own-it thing.

Where's "convince government to build a moat around our industry" fall on your timeline?

That's the brown smear underlining the whole thing.

That's not a step - it's whenever you are large enough or have the right connections to do that. I was talking about large trends of how capitalist thought in the USA is going.

And at this moment in time, the "best" strategy is to milk customers with recurring purchases. And it turns out the value-add didn't work. So feature-removal-and-sell-back recurring purchase is the current phase.

We're seeing that everywhere in IOT, gadgets, kitchen consumer gear, vehicles. Basically, it's the manufacturers exerting control post-purchase with the implicit threat that they can and will brick your stuff.

To put bluntly, we need government oversight over these realms. First-sale doctrine needs to cover "functionality sold at bill of sale". "No bundling" (of additional services that "complete" a thing) also needs to be strongly enforced. And if/when companies do stuff later and remove features (PS3 for an easy example), that they need to be dealt with as if a hacker did that - as C-level ordered felonies with prison, direct massive compensation to the wronged parties, and massive fines (company-ending if need be).

Still the devices I currently own are the best devices I ever had. And the services I subscribe to are incredible services that never even existed before.

Free markets are not always providing perfect solutions, but I am absolutely sure government intervention could only worsen the situation, never improve it.

What would change your mind?

Same things that would change anybody's mind: logical arguments and real-world examples.

Let me guess, there aren't any logical arguments, and no real-world examples that apply?

There are plenty of both but most are supporting my current beliefs, that is why I still have them.

I could just as well ask people who disagree with you and they would say the same thing, so that just says people find examples and arguments they already agree with. It's a bias indicator, which isn't really worth much.

Considering I'm not talking about you personally, nor do I know what things you personally have, that sort of dismissal is pretty pointless.

> Still the devices I currently own are the best devices I ever had.

"Own" - that's the key word here where the contention is. If the entity you bought this thing from still retains control over your thing, that's a rental.

> And the services I subscribe to are incredible services that never even existed before.

Considering you're not naming said "incredible services", it's irrelevant to dispute.

> Free markets are not always providing perfect solutions, but I am absolutely sure government intervention could only worsen the situation, never improve it.

Absolutely sure? That sounds extremely over-simplistic to reduce every possible legislation and governance down to "always sure government intervention worsens the situation".

And part of my recommendations are not needing new laws, but maintaining product truth-in-advertising in the face of remote access. And frankly, if I put in remote control, sold the machine, and then remotely destroyed it, I'd be brought in for felony hacking charges.

But really, the level of discourse of "guvernment baaaadddd" is damned distressing, and unfortunately a result of Reagan's very successful campaign to say that, defund public facing gov orgs, and then point at lack of performance for underfunded orgs, thus doing another round of underfunding.

>Free markets are not always providing perfect solutions, but I am absolutely sure government intervention could only worsen the situation, never improve it.

We don't live in anything remotely resembling a free market. Tens of thousands of pages of government regulations govern every facet of our commercial markets. The only question is how these regulations should be written.

IMHO a clear example of govt intervention being beneficial is the EU enforcing USB C for charging, and before that, USB for phones charging. Compared to the complete mess, inconvenience and waste of virtually every single model of phone requiring a proprietary charger.

But of course there are a zillion other examples, if you bother to look, it's just that those benefits disappear into the fabric of society.

To understand why you’re wrong ask yourself: would USB-C even exist if some global government would’ve succeed in mandating micro USB chargers as the EU tried in the past?! We’d all be stuck with the wold's worst connector.

Luckily usb c sucks less, but: What company will now have any reason to research a better connector to replace usb c when it’s not allowed to put it on the market?! Any innovation in this area was made illegal in the EU. Luckily we still have USA not yet succumbing to the madness.

These kinds of shortsighted decisions are why the EU stopped growing and innovating and started falling behind while becoming dependent on cheap Russian energy.

Even if well meaning and well written (two big ifs), the actual price of regulation is extremely high, it’s stagnation. But nobody realizes it because that lost opportunity cost forever disappears into the fabric of society…

nope.

Of course if you mandate a very narrow standard, completely inflexibly, you may have this kind of problem.

But from where I am, it looks like the 'swashbuckling free market' has stagnated due to monopoly power (Apple lightning), whereas the 'evil plodding government' has ensured compatibility, reduced waste, gauging, etc, while accommodating the incredible evolution of the USB standard.

The free market was doing just fine, thank you very much. It converged by itself into two pretty good standards (none of the previously UE-recommended micro-USB abomination) - one private one open but each having a big enough market to make sure there was very little of that much-pretended "waste". On the contrary - the e-waste next year when millions of Apple users have to throw away perfectly fine cables and charges will be absolutely gigantic.

Apple will have no problem complying as they already had a separate European nano SIM model. And maybe they were ready to move to the USB-C anyway, as they did for a iPad Pros and MacBooks. While us users will swallow the cost as always while bitching about downgrading to USB-C.

But now innovation in this domain was made illegal. There is no way a company will invest in researching a new connector when they cannot legally bring it to the market. So Europe is becoming dependent on American creativity in yet another area. A small and maybe negligible one, of course, but this is a symptom of a larger disease: the EU is voting to mandate stagnation. And the worst part when outlawing innovation is this: you don't even know what you are missing. Because nobody is allowed to invent that future anymore.

If you wanna be really cynical, then thats not a step the company takes, politicians are quite willing to do it for them, and all by themselves.

There's a degree of symbiosis here. Politicians may be willing to seek such opportunities out on their own, because it helps their constituents (short-term, at the expense of others), or at least creates an appearance of it, which helps them and their party.

I don't think it appears on the timeline because it is something every company does when they get an opportunity. When a company had a chance 50 years ago to do it, they did it. When a company today gets a chance to do it, they do it.

When we calculate inflation do we calculate this factor? That a product has become more expensive to buy, more expensive to maintain, more expensive to run and you have to pay for features you used to get as part of the product purchase.

You can literally configure a Mac with a couple of clicks to offload every image from an iPhone to whatever folder you want locally. It's honestly hard to think of a way it could possibly be made easier.

Where it becomes hard is if the photos only exist on icloud. I have a good 60gb i cannot move off icloud. First party tools dont work. The download website apple provides for icloud data doesnt work. Photos app crashes to desktop. Third party command line interface tools don’t work. I’m at a loss. These data are being held hostage.