Can't get 2164 pictures off iPhone

Question

Level 1

8 points

Can't get 2164 pictures off iPhone

At this point I have 2164 pictures I've taken with my iPhone, but I can't get a single photo off the phone via the USB connection (I can email a few, but this is not only extremely time consuming, but not very practical) and I need to get a few hundred off the phone ASAP for work.

I've read thru the many posts about this issue and I can not believe that Apple has let an issue this big slip past so easily.

I've tried to get the pics off with three different computers now - two Macs (a brand new 8-core Mac Pro and an older G5 2.0Ghz) and a Dell Inspiron 1501 (Laptop). None of them can read the pics on the iPhone. I've tried different USB ports and everything. This is most definitely an iPhone issue. The computers can see the iPhone, but iPhoto under Mac, Scanner and Camera Wizard under XP, and all other image programs I've tried will not read the pics off the iPhone.

Even worse, iTunes won't sync the photos without deleting what's on the iPhone first. And that doesn't do me a lot of good. I'm willing to look past the fact that this is a great disservice to what could be a great experience - as long as Apple comes out with a decent bug fix ASAP...

One last thing, I have only one folder for my pics, which is a massive amount of pics to have in one folder - scrolling thru to find one pic takes forever. Is there a way to put the pics in different folders thru the iPhone?

iPhone, Windows XP, Mac OS X 10.4.10

Posted on Sep 2, 2007 7:27 AM

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Answer 1

Sep 2, 2007 8:25 AM in response to crimsonchain

I thought Windows provided a manual method to remove photos taken by the iPhone when connected (that isn't available with a Mac) without having to use something like the Scanner and Camera Wizard under XP but I may have read this wrong or misunderstood it.

One last thing, I have only one folder for my pics, which is a massive amount of pics to have in one folder - scrolling thru to find one pic takes forever. Is there a way to put the pics in different folders thru the iPhone?

Not via the iPhone but with iPhoto on a Mac you can create/utilize iPhoto albums and transfer select albums to the iPhone only via the sync process which is what I do and there should be a way to do the same with Windows via multiple folders created to store chosen photos and then transferring those photo folders or with photo albums or folders utilized with the photo storage/access software used on a Windows PC that is compatible with the iPhone via the sync/transfer process.

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Answer 2

Rhyd

Level 3

800 points

Sep 2, 2007 1:13 PM in response to crimsonchain

Apple did create a solution. You probably ignored it. iPhoto pops up and asks if you want to let it import your photos if there are any on the Camera Roll. If you had let it, or let Aperture import the photos and "delete originals"; you would have had your photos on your mac and would not be in your current predicament.

You could try letting it happen now by opening one or the other when you attach your iPhone or you could have already exceeded the amount of memory that it would take to do so. Importing takes RAM and it takes RAM to display the pics to give you a choice of import. All the RAM that a MacPro can hold could not do this for you when you neglect to let it happen more frequently.

Message was edited by: Rhyd

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Answer 3

crimsonchain Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 3, 2007 12:53 PM in response to Rhyd

Rhyd, did you NOT read my post??? Your comment doesn't make any sense and comes off as sounding quite rude.

Even with only 5Gb of RAM, OS X can still cache to the hard drive whenever it needs to, so your comment about "All the RAM that a MacPro can hold could not do this for you" is absurd. The amount of RAM a Mac has, doesn't have anything to do with the fact that the iPhone isn't working properly.

No, I didn't ignore anything. I bought an iPhone specifically for a two week business trip (to Europe where I did not have access to iPhoto). When I returned with a lot of pics (2,164 pics to be exact), the upload process didn't work with anything - Mac OS X, nor Windows XP. iTunes didn't work. iPhoto didn't work. Nothing worked.

I took an additional 1500+ pics with another camera I had brought on the trip - filled up a 2Gb card with 6MP pics, and I didn't have any problems getting the pictures out of it. iPhoto is not the greatest of apps when you deal with a lot of pics on a daily basis, but at least it (usually) works. With the iPhone, it doesn't work - AT ALL. It doesn't see the iPhone as a camera device, and doesn't give you any options to even try, which leads me to believe that the iPhone has a few bugs that need to be addressed.

I doubt I could have exceeded the memory of the Mac for getting pics off an iPhone - we're talking roughly 930Mbs of pictures on the iPhone - which is not very much (I often fill up 2Gb cards on a daily basis) and even with the video and podcasts, the 8Gb iPhone still has over 4Gb of free space. If it's a problem with the iPhone not having enough RAM, then Apple should have made a built-in limit on how many pics you could take with it until they could figure out how to work with the limited amount of RAM the iPhone does have.

Either way, Apple needs to release a fix for getting pictures off the iPhone, ASAP.

And off the record, I probably take more pictures in a single week than most have in the past three years. I do Photography, High Definition, and Film for a living (including time-lapse photography) - I work with USB, firewire, SATA, and SCSI on a daily basis. I was using "OS X" when it was still called "NeXT" (btw, the spinning ball hasn't changed a bit). My systems aren't anything to laugh at here either - we're talking heavy duty 2k editing systems with over 9TB of storage on the Mac Pro alone. Needless to say, I don't dabble in video or photography, and these systems are not toys.

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Answer 4

WS6

Level 2

190 points

Sep 3, 2007 1:11 PM in response to crimsonchain

So when you attach it to the windows PC, you can't go into windows explorer and see it as a drive. On my iPhone, I connect it to either of my windows PC's, I then go into Windows Explorer and I see it as a removable drive that I can then open and drill down through the files and see my pictures and copy paste then from the iPhone to my hard drive. You might have already tried this but if not I hope it helps you. One other hint that I have found, If you delete them from that file in Windows Explorer you can't put them back in that folder. To put them back on your iPhone you have to place the files into a folder that you sync and then they will show up in your Photo Library not your Camera roll.

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Answer 5

sds13

Level 1

0 points

Sep 3, 2007 2:03 PM in response to crimsonchain

iPhone will not transfer photos to your computer if your phone is locked and you are using a passcode.

If you want to transfer photos, simply unlock your iPhone to transfer photos.

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Answer 6

viali17

Level 4

2,825 points

Sep 4, 2007 6:36 PM in response to crimsonchain

This was posted in an earlier thread:

"Well it's a superstitious fix because I couldn't recreate the problem and fix it again, but this is how I solve the issue described above. In iPhoto Preferences I went to the Sharing tab and try to click Share My Photos box. It returned an error message that said my OS X firewall settings prevented such sharing as it blocked port xxxx. So I went to the System Prefs and stopped the Firewall, reconnected the iPhone, restarted iTunes and restarted iPhoto. Viola!!, I now have my camera back in iPhoto. Sorry I cannot reproduce the problem and it could have been the restarts (but I had tried all that before), but hey, give it a shot it can't hurt. "

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Answer 7

Sep 6, 2007 8:13 AM in response to Rhyd

I've never deleted photos from a camera on import. It is best practice to make sure all photos were correctly imported before deleting them from a camera.

Unfortunately, Apple makes it very difficult to delete a large number of photos from the iPhone if you do not do it during import. My iPhone had over 200 photos on it, and I could no longer get it to appear in iPhoto. The only solution was to individually delete over 100 photos that I had already imported to get around the obvious bug. So the one bug (failure of iPhone to appear in iPhoto when it has a large number of photos) is compounded by the failure of Apple to provide an easy way to remove large numbers of photos from the iPhone.

Does anyone know the URL of the iPhone feedback page?

Rhyd's comments are completely unhelpful, and pretentious. 200 photos take up a tiny amount of space on my iPhone. iPhoto has no problem importing photos from other cameras with even larger numbers of photos. This is not a RAM problem. My computer has 4GB of RAM. In addition, the solution of deleting photos on import is dangerous.

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Answer 8

rkkeller

Level 1

137 points

Sep 7, 2007 11:30 AM in response to crimsonchain

Maybe there is a picture or space for pictures limit on the iPhone and you passed it. 2000+ pics at approx. a 1/2 meg each can add up.

Have you tried emailing a few to yourself then deleting them from the iPhone to see if freeing up some space helps ?

FWIW, I too choose the "delete pics after importing" option.

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Answer 9

tj202

Level 1

0 points

Sep 11, 2007 8:03 AM in response to crimsonchain

I was able to copy my pics from Iphone to my laptop via usb and using Windows explorer to open apple iphone as a temp disc drive reading the usb port. explorer had an option to copy or delete the pics. I transfered 117 photos no problem. I didn't see the option to delete the pics as I transferred however. Not really a problem though. Hope this helps.

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Answer 10

dongle

Level 1

25 points

Sep 13, 2007 9:41 AM in response to Rhyd

youre kidding me.

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Answer 11

Oct 5, 2007 10:27 AM in response to tj202

Not a real solution... but after trying nearly everything I could think of, I plugged the phone into the computer while toggleing between the "Organize" and "Import" buttons in iPhoto. It showed up, and is importing just dandy. Now if I can only get those 2 hours of my life back...

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