I'm posting this from my refurb MacBook Pro that I got off of Woot for $279.00. I use it way more than I thought I would. But the iCloud is too easy.

Not sure I can add too much, but I do use a MacBook Pro (circa 2020) with am M1 chip and an iPhone 11. Since my son is in HS sports, my wife takes a lot of pictures and especially videos. Typically, she AirDrop's the media to my phone, and then I plug it into my MB. AirDrop is fairly slow, but transferring from phone to MB via cable is fast, easy and reliable for me. For reference, I have used this method with about 100Gb of pictures/videos these past 3 months without a hitch. I do not transfer files through other media like you plan to. However, I do use Time Machine to do backups to a USB drive through a port extender (USB -B). Compared to transferring from my phone to the Mac, the backups are sloooow. Like, it often takes 25 minutes for TM to complete a backup of one weekend's worth of media. I wish I had a Thunderbolt drive for backups.

Whichever Apple machine you go with, Rob, just use Air Drop to transfer from one to another. Both machines on same wi-fi. I use this every day to import photos into video projects.
Works very well.

quote:

Originally posted by VictimNoMore:
Whichever Apple machine you go with, Rob, just use Air Drop to transfer from one to another. Both machines on same wi-fi. I use this every day to import photos into video projects.
Works very well.

I will say, Apple’s NFC setup is pretty sweet. You don’t even have to be on the same WiFi for AirDrop to transfer stuff at ridiculous speeds.

Another option you may want to consider once you have your Mac up and running is that Apple supports network file sharing through SMB/CIFS which your PC's can mount as a "network drive." This may facilitate moving your photos from the Mac to your Windows systems.

Rob, if you don't mind driving over to VA, I will gift you an older MacBookPro2,2 (MacBook Pro (2.33 GHz, 15-inch Core 2 Duo Late 2006). Caveats: the battery is toast, it will only run with a charger attached (I don't have a spare charger), you will have to buy a charger and new battery like this one (it is a replaceable battery unlike newer Macs). This is an older machine that will not run the latest macOS, nor may newer versions of various Mac apps. This may cause some loss of capabilities with up-to-date iOS devices. The HD is a 160GB spinner, tiny by today's standards, you will probably want to upgrade to an SSD, it will support up to a 16TB SSD.

It should work for your limited purposes, however. Please e-mail me quickly if you are interested.