I’m finally giving up and buying a MacBook for easy downloading of pics and vids from iPhone to PC. Between spotty connections and third party software I just don’t like, I figure this will be the easiest way. It will literally be the only thing I use this MacBook for. I’m planning on shopping NewEgg’s refurbed units. Two questions:

1) Are there any minimum specs I should be looking for, or does it matter for simple file transfer?

2) Is there any reason I can’t or shouldn’t use exFAT for ease of transfer (i.e., plug and play transfer of external drive between MacBook and PC)?

Thanks.

-Rob

Just a tangent, would a Mac Mini work? You'd need peripherals, but they're $600 new, so a refurb may be available for even less.

We have one at work, strictly for enrolling iPhones into our Apple Business Manager. Just sits on a spare desk & get used intermittently.

I use a MacBook. I would just say that any of the M processors would be good for what you want to do. I would recommend that you get the largest hard drive that is within your budget; as the drives are integrated and cannot be upgraded. Regarding pics and vids and other files, I use Airdrop between the MacBook and my iPhone. I haven’t needed a drive to use to transfer between the two.

You might already know, but the only place you can buy a truly refurbished Apple anything is from Apple.

Everyone else’s is basically cleaned up, checked out, and sold.
If you buy from Apple, it gets a new case, new battery, new screen, and a 1 year warranty just like new.

Anyway, if you keep your photos in iCloud, you can access them from your MacBook or your iPhone.

I'd say get the base HDD option and get a Samsung T7 external hard drive. Format that in exFAT to carry between Mac and Windows. You can get a 2 TB for less than the cost of bumping a macbook from 256 to 512.

quote:

Originally posted by BurtonRW:
2) Is there any reason I can’t or shouldn’t use exFAT for ease of transfer (i.e., plug and play transfer of external drive between MacBook and PC)?

No.

Can an ex-FAT drive be used for Time Machine? For the OP, Time Machine is the macOS built-in backup facility. It is not without its problems, but very handy without having to buy a third-party backup utility. Certain characteristics of Apple's native file systems are not supported on exFAT.

In any case, it may be worthwhile to have two external drives, one for inter-system file transfers, the other for backup and emergency recovery.

Macs will boot over the Internet from Apple servers as a last resort recovery, but it is quicker and easier to have a prepared disk (or thumb drive) for such.

I plug in my iPhone to my Dell and copy files from it to the Dell. What is this need for more equipment or software of which you speak?

Use a usb cable and file explorer.

quote:

Originally posted by BurtonRW:
I’m finally giving up and buying a MacBook for easy downloading of pics and vids from iPhone to PC. Between spotty connections and third party software I just don’t like, I figure this will be the easiest way. It will literally be the only thing I use this MacBook for. I’m planning on shopping NewEgg’s refurbed units. Two questions:

1) Are there any minimum specs I should be looking for, or does it matter for simple file transfer?

2) Is there any reason I can’t or shouldn’t use exFAT for ease of transfer (i.e., plug and play transfer of external drive between MacBook and PC)?

Thanks.

-Rob

I would buy a cheap 13” MacBook Air. M1 with 8gb ram, and probably 512gb storage so you have enough space for a phone backup to sit for a bit, if the situation warranted.

Apple still makes and sells these for EDU reasons, so they should be fairly easy to find on the cheap. If you’re not buying from Apple (refurbished) then I would consider finding one with the lowest battery cycle count you can find.

quote:

Can an ex-FAT drive be used for Time Machine?

I don’t think Time Machine is an option, in his particular scenario.

Mac mini might work, but then you introduce KVM or cable switching every time he wants to move the data. A notebook will pack up and store for as long as he doesn’t need to run his data move.

IMO YMMV XYZPDQ

quote:

Originally posted by 4MUL8R:
I plug in my iPhone to my Dell and copy files from it to the Dell. What is this need for more equipment or software of which you speak?

Use a usb cable and file explorer.

I'm wondering this as well. I plug my phone into the PC and use it like a thumb drive to get the photos on it. about as simple as it gets.

quote:

Originally posted by architect:
Can an ex-FAT drive be used for Time Machine?

I doubt it, TM is pretty picky. But that is not what the OP is looking for. OP described using external drives formatted as exFAT to transfer data from a Windows machine to Mac machine. The Windows can remain on NTFS, and the Mac on jhfs+, APFS (or whatever system TM likes). exFAT externals can move between the two just fine.

Any pictures I take on my iPhone are automatically put in my photo file in the cloud which I have access to both on my MacBook and iPhone.

quote:

easy downloading of pics and vids from iPhone to PC

As another thought, if you haven't already tried iCloud, maybe give that a shot before buying another box?

I get stuff back and forth from my PC to my iPad (not exactly the same use-case, admittedly) for free, using iCloud storage.

iCloud app for windows adds itself to Windows Explorer as another storage option. Put stuff there on one thing, it shows up on the other.

There's a limit to the size, but you can get a bigger iCloud limit if desired. Probably less over time than a new MacBook, if it works for you.

quote:

Originally posted by KDR:

quote:

Originally posted by 4MUL8R:
I plug in my iPhone to my Dell and copy files from it to the Dell. What is this need for more equipment or software of which you speak?

Use a usb cable and file explorer.

I'm wondering this as well. I plug my phone into the PC and use it like a thumb drive to get the photos on it. about as simple as it gets.

Yup...Been doing this since the iPhone 6 came out.

Some clarification is apparently necessary.

Our iPhones (12Pro and 14Pro) have taken the place of point & shoots. We (mostly Mrs.BurtonRW) take a ton of photos & videos.

We use Windows PCs for everything, including photo management and editing. Due to the volume of files, we have several multi-TB external drives where we store all of our media.

Simply using File Explorer to access the iPhones as an external drive has never worked well for me. Photos come off okay for the most part, but I occasionally run into what seems like a corrupt image file or if I try to transfer a batch of more than a few hundred pics, it hangs up. The only way to reset the iPhone/PC connection is to restart the phone. Videos are even worse. Can’t reliably transfer them except one at a time, and large ones? Forget it.

So… I want a cheap MacBook solely for the purpose of downloading photos & videos from the iPhones to an external drive that I can then access on a PC.

I haven’t considered iCloud because I figure it would be slow and I’d have to pay for it on a monthly basis.

Thanks for the answers to my questions. I do appreciate it.

-Rob

The other option moving pictures back and forth is using AirPlay to move pictures back and forth. As long as you're just moving pictures back and forth, it'll be fine.

If you're just doing a manual backup of just pictures, then exFAT will be fine. If you want to do a full backup of your computer using Time Machine, then you'll have to use the Mac file system.

I agree with the above recommendation: a MacBook Air with an M1 or M2 chip; 8 GB RAM—no MOR needed because of the way memory is handled—and 512 GB hard drive. Saving video takes up a lot of space; but 1 TB MB Airs are $200 more and hard to come by.
I just bought my daughter an M2 Air with 8 GB/512 GB for $1395 + AppleCare. Interestingly, I could have bought a 15 inch model with same specs for LESS, $1195 from Costco.
I would also have a back-up SSD with at least 2 TB, preferably with Thunderbolt 3 or 4 ability, and run Carbon Copy Cloner to backup the hard drive on the Air. It’s more transparent than Time Machine IMO.

 
If I understand, you have a way to get the photos from your phone to your Windows computer? (because you edit them there). Why can you not just copy from the Windows computer directly to an external drive and leave the Mac out of the equation (cannot believe I said that last part )

Been using Macs and iPhones for a long time. Refuse to use the cloud, all data stays local (other than whatever apple is spiriting away w/o my knowledge) and is backed up here. Works great, love it.

The only thing I’d caution you about is sometimes an update to the phone requires an update to the Mac software for the Mac to be able to “see” the phone. If the Mac you get is too old, there may not be updates available.

Have the reverse issue on this (old) iPad. After the last software update of the computer, iPhotos can no longer see any photos on the iPad. No updates available for the iPad. iTunes still works for syncing and foreflight is fine, but if I used the iPad as a camera, that would be a bummer.