Apple v. Android - Picture Uploads to CHMW

[Susquatch]

@Brent H Pics - if android, edit right away from the camera app by selecting the tiny preview of image you just took at bottom left, crop as desired, then the pen for edit, then the 3 dots at bottom right for full menu, then resize at bottom middle and select 40% which will be about 15% of the original file size in comparison. Done.

If Apple, sorry about your luck.

 

[Brent H]

Apple….,

 

[DavidR8]

Odd I have no trouble adding pics from my iPhone 13. I only add them as thumbnails though so maybe that's the trick?

 

[Susquatch]

Odd I have no trouble adding pics from my iPhone 13. I only add them as thumbnails though so maybe that's the trick?

What size are your photos before uploading?

 

[DavidR8]

What size are your photos before uploading?

No idea, whatever the default size is. I’ve never changed the settings.
Edit: this is 3MB

 

[Susquatch]

No idea, whatever the default size is. I’ve never changed the settings.

Me too. I've never had a problem uploading till I deliberately tried max resolution. Besides taking forever, it got rejected.

My default size 4-8Mb, depending on details, will go through but takes forever to upload on my hic connection. So I just arbitrarily downsize to 40% (a few hundred K) and then things go fast.

 

[trlvn]

No idea, whatever the default size is. I’ve never changed the settings.
Edit: this is 3MB

It could be that the troublesome pictures are stored in HEIF/HEVC format. I believe that is the default for newer iPhones. HEIF has superior compression but some websites haven't been updated to be able to work with that format.

Go to Settings > Camera > Formats to check. Make sure 'Most compatible' is checked rather than 'High Efficiency'.

High Efficiency Image File Format - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Craig
(I believe some Android phones are or will be switching to HEIF as well.)

 

[Susquatch]

Here is the straight skinny from Apple themselves :

iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra introduced support for these new, industry-standard media formats:

• HEIF (High Efficiency Image File Format) for photos
• HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding), also known as H.265, for videos

From Wikipedia: The formats themselves were first identified by the Moving Pictures Expert Group (MPEG) in 2003. The requirements and in use cases of HEIF were defined in 2013. The technical development of the specification took about one and a half years and was finalized in the middle of 2015.

Apple was the first major adopter of the format in 2017 with the introduction of iOS 11 using HEIC variant.

Android devices containing the appropriate hardware encoders received support for HEIC files with the release of Android 10 in 2019.

In other words, both Android and Apple use it and it is not new. But Apple was indeed first to adapt their OS to use it.

I have used the video version for many years - for no other reason than to save memory.

 

[trlvn]

Apparently HEIF has been supported since Android 8:

Supported media formats | Android media | Android Developers

developer.android.com

USB-C is a disaster and I don't think you can lay that at Apple's feet:

It's 2024 and USB-C is even more of a mess

USB-C phones and devices are billed as the one-stop solution for all our future cable needs, but feature compatibility is a major problem.

www.androidauthority.com

A USB-C port can provide a data connection, video connection and/or power connection. Each such connection can range from very basic to the lastest-and-greatest. A USB-C cable may or may not be able to support the standard you want. Looking at a cable and the ports, there is NO WAY TO TELL. Different ports on the same computer may have different capabilities.

At least Firewire only came in 400 and 800 mbps varieties. And I still have SCSI cables in a bin somewhere...

Craig

 

[trlvn]

BTW, I think the JPEG patent issues were a big driver for Apple to start the migration to HEIF/HEVC. Patent trolls mean that none of us can have anything nice.

Craig

 

[Susquatch]

BTW, I think the JPEG patent issues were a big driver for Apple to start the migration to HEIF/HEVC. Patent trolls mean that none of us can have anything nice.

Craig

I hope you know I was just having fun with the Apple Android thing......

 

[Susquatch]

BTW, I think the JPEG patent issues were a big driver for Apple to start the migration to HEIF/HEVC. Patent trolls mean that none of us can have anything nice.

Craig

I also admit this comment of yours catches me off guard. I think I'm about to learn something. I always thought all these image standards were open standards that were free for anyone to use. I never thought they were proprietary.

I assumed - maybe wrongly, that they were like SAE Standards - developed by the entire industry for everyone's benefit. I admit I am a bit shocked to hear otherwise!

 

[trlvn]

I also admit this comment of yours catches me off guard. I think I'm about to learn something. I always thought all these image standards were open standards that were free for anyone to use. I never thought they were proprietary.

I assumed - maybe wrongly, that they were like SAE Standards - developed by the entire industry for everyone's benefit. I admit I am a bit shocked to hear otherwise!

The wikipedia JPEG article has a section on the various lawsuits. JPEG was _supposed_ to be unencumbered but then was attacked anyway. (Hence my comment about patent trolls.) I'm not a lawyer--as the phrase goes--but I think the fact that there have been multiple claims made Apple want to reduce the number of eggs it had in the JPEG basket, so to speak.

Plus, there really have been advances in compression technology since JPEG was developed that meant that HEIF could either give better fidelity for a given file size or more files stored with equivalent fidelity. I don't know whether compression/decompression is more or less computationally expensive* with either format. Decompression tends to be the more important side since a photo is often encoded once and then decoded repeatedly.

Craig

 

[Susquatch]

No, I was pointing out that Apple's CPUs are well ahead of the competition.

Ah, I understand what you meant now.

I don't know much about the internals. They both work better than I need.

 

[whydontu]

Apple has done a great job on processor development. I have access to both a 2018 Mac Mini with i7 processor, and a 2023 Mac Mini with the M2 Pro processor. Both have similar amount of RAM, SSD drives and running the same current Mac OS. The M2 is spooky fast. The difference between the two machines is much greater than the difference between 2019 Intel i7 and current Intel i7 machines.

 

[Former Member]

Apple trick is email yourself and select the attachment size, Apple does the rest.

 

[Former Member]

I just waiting to get my new work/design/fun Laptop, latest 13th Gen i9, 8GB Video card, 64GB memory and 2TB SSD (upto 8TB).

Replaces my i7, 2GB video, 16GB with 2TB system which is starting to show its age at 7-8 years old.

Now comes the dreaded transfer/install of software.......

 

[Former Member]

My daughter spent a ton on her Mac book only to realize it did not compare to my older laptop.

If you want a fast laptop for graphics you either buy a portable workstation (extremely expensive but high quality, robust and options galore) or buy a gaming laptop significantly lower cost, less options and good quality. Dell currently has the best prices on the latter and Lenovo on the former.

One other note, why do I buy laptops now compared to desktops which can be slightly lower in price and may have better options, simple, lower power consumption 130watts vs 1000+watts, less heat, and less cooling in the room in the summer (again power savings). Trying to be as environmently friendly as possible.

 

[Dabbler]

FYI about images, etc... No matter if an image is from my phone (!!) or my digital camera, or other (??) I load it into "Microsoft Picture Manager", crop and compress ("for Documents") the image before posting. For instance, a 3.5Mb image gets compressed to between 500Kb to 700Kb. In rare instances it goes down to around 200Kb.

Pro tip: I export the image into PNG. Firstly there's no wierdness about licensing. Second the colour model is superior, and it supports transparency, among other things, and thirdly, the file storage mechanism is more efficient, in most cases...

For instance, this picture of a boring bar I posted last night is 2.3Mb, and the one below it is 294 Kb after crop, compression and conversion to PNG:

-- If you zoom in, you can see there is minimal loss of quality.