Photos functionality comparison iOS & MacOS

I have a MacBook, an iPad, and an iPhone (and even a watch.) I love my iPad, but I use the MacBook for anything serious-- certainly all editing and organizing of my pictures. The iPad is fine if you really need to travel light, but when I use it for Photos, I always wish I were on the Mac.

You're right-- iPadOS does not support keywords, titles, or Smart Albums. The iPad does some nice simple things with visual lookup and cutout clipping, but on the Mac I use Google Images, and, should I ever really need it, Finder does the cutout thing. Also, with a Mac, you can have multiple Libraries, so you don't have to share all your pictures with the iPhone and iPad.

Also on a Mac you have more exporting and printing abilities. For instance, you can print out pictures like this,

Including captions, titles, or whatever, and you can save it as a pdf rather than print it. The iPad is great! But it's not a Mac.

I second Richard's advice.

I like my iPad for browsing the photos and when I want to show my photos to other people - it is easier to pass around than a Mac. But when I want to work with my photos I need my MacBook Air or MacBook Pro.

Like Richard I need the ability to add keywords and Smart Albums. And on a Mac it is such easier to keep the alums organized in folders. And on a Mac it is much easier to have more than one library to archive the photos that I do not need on all devices.

And frankly, I could not find any feasible way to make a backup of my Photos Library, when I do not have a Mac as well and are limited to iOS devices. On a Mac I can make backups with Time Machine, or make copies of the Photos Library. The iCloud backup of an iPad or iPhone does not even include the photos and videos, if we are using iCloud Photos. And anyway, the iCloud backup does not offer a long history, like Time Machine does. There is no way to recover accidentally deleted items from an iCloud backup of the iPad, once they are gone from Recently Deleted.

When I needed to replace my MacBook Pro 2015, I got myself a MacBook Air with M2 chip, 24GB RAM, and 2TB storage.

It is very slim, easy to carry around, very fast, has a brilliant display. The only thing I am really missing are more USB ports. I had to get myself a docking station to be able to connect more than on external drive or import images from a memory card.

I've got about the same number of photos as you. I keep them on my Macbook and synch them to my iDevices using USB. They are also backed up all over the place, including offsite.

I don't use cloud at all. I use a semi-pro photos database app on my Mac to manage my pictures. They are categorized for people, family, places, events, etc. and the app writes the categories to the pic's metadata so that I can search for them on iPhone and iPad in Photos just using search. E.g. the way I've set up the categories on the app means that if I categorize a pic with "Sheffield" the pic will also pick up Yorkshire, England and Europe categories as well cos that's the way the category tree is set up. It's a fair bit of effort to categorize the pics, but the app has tools to help and if you're a nerdy type like me it's quite a relaxing way to spend a few evenings. It also has some basic editing apps and can be programmed with macros and batches to work on multiple images and has versioning to manage change.

A couple of posters have said that iPad OS doesn't support searching keywords. This is not my experience. I don't use Photos on Mac. I just put my images in a directory structure like user/Pictures/Synched Images/2024/240712 Cornwall Climbing and then USB sync all images in user/Pictures/Synched Images to my iDevices, including an iPad Pro from many years ago. All the images are catalogued using an image management app on my Mac (not Photos)- with date, family, friends, locations (most of my pics don't have GPS and dates cos they were taken with film) and so on. The app writes the catalogue items to the metadata of the (jpeg) images. Once synched I can go into Photos on my iPad Pro (16.7) and search for, say "Ford Capri""Mum" and it will find all the images with my mum and a Ford Capri. If I tap the "i" on an image the pop-up information box has all the keywords associated with a photo which is great for answering those "when/where was that taken?" questions.

kerraddoo wrote:

Interesting that you don't use iCloud. My goal is to move away from it and have a similar approach with a more disciplined use of Keywords and smart albums rather than duplicate a smart and standard album. Not overly keen on subscription services....

It is not compulsory to use iCloud. I am using it, because it is perfect for my needs. The only easy way to keep my Photos Libraries on all my Macs and other devices perfectly in sync, even with different system versions on all devices - two older Macs running Mojave (to be able to use deprecated video and image formats), one Mac on Ventura (can't be upgraded to a newer system versions, the two newest Macs on Sequoia, one for beta testing. And I can access my iCloud Photos Library on my TV, my Vision Pro, my iPhone and iPad. Only my macBook G4 in OS X10.5 is left out.

Without iCloud Photos I would have to sync the libraries manually, which would be error prone, as I have to remember what has been already synced, and recreate the albums and adjustments on all devices. And I have automatically several backups of my Photos Library, because each Mac is separately backing up to Time Machine. I would not use iCloud photos just as an external storage. There are alternate solutions. I wrote this a long time ago, but I think it is still valid: Three Good Reasons for Using iCloud Photos Library and when not to use it - Apple Community

Ah - yes. The other difference is that I don't use my phone for taking proper pictures. I use a camera, so there's not really a problem of remembering which pics I've synched. Camera pics are imported to the Mac (using Image Capture, never Photos), then into the database, catalogued and synched to mobile devices so they all appear in the "From My Mac" section of Photos on devices. If I do take a pic with the phone that I want to keep then I import it to the Mac as above and once catalogued and synched I delete the original from the phone. I tried Photos when I first got a Mac but gave up very quickly because it doesn't do most of the things I need from an image database and I bought a decent image-management app.

You are welcome to mention the app that you use. I do it all the time. If it helps people use Apple products, everyone will be pleased. Unless, of course, you are making money by advertising.

One of the things I have missed most from iPhoto and the iPhoto Library Manager (which became PowerPhotos after the transition) was the use of hierarchical keywords that you mentioned.

léonie's Tip about iCloud Photos use and non-use is still good, and I think maybe the most useful part for many people is what iCloud doesn't do. I'm going to repeat it (asking forgiveness rather than permission…)

Do not use iCloud Photos

• • if you want to back up your Photos Library. An optimized iCloud Photos library is even harder to back up.
  • If you want to remove the Photos Library from your device completely. An iCloud Photos Library will still need some storage on your device.

kerraddoo wrote:

Thanks for this. I agree with both of you and will keep with MBP or perhaps as you have done a MacBook Air given the cost differential. The lack of more than 1 USB port or memory card slot is potentially an issue though so may well bite the bullet and stick with MacBook Pro despite the cost.

I just bought a new MBP a couple of months ago. It's wonderful. The initial purchase was a little painful (made a bit less so because I got a decent amount in trade in form my MBP) but I haven't regretted it.

I upgraded earlier than I ordinarily would have because the MBA was a hasty purchase made because I had an immediate need but it really didn't do what I needed long term. I wanted to trade it in while it still had a fair bit of value (I think it was a 2022). But, even if you don't get what I got, every little bit helps!

Enjoy your new Mac, Idris!

I still have my MacBook Pro 16" 2019 when I need larger display or different ports. But for traveling I really enjoy the smaller MacBook Air. At first it has been a bit cumbersome to switch between two different Mac models and using them alternately, because the MacBook Air has no Touch Bar and I really missed it, for I had bound quick actions to the Touch Bar. But that is not so important.

léonie wrote:

Enjoy your new Mac, Idris!

I still have my MacBook Pro 16" 2019 when I need larger display or different ports. But for traveling I really enjoy the smaller MacBook Air. At first it has been a bit cumbersome to switch between two different Mac models and using them alternately, because the MacBook Air has no Touch Bar and I really missed it, for I had bound quick actions to the Touch Bar. But that is not so important.

I really liked the weight of the MBA but I had bought one with only 8 gigs of RAM. It was okay but I had to spend more time managing it than I like. It had just happened to be what I could buy off the shelf at that moment. Interestingly, the MBA was lighter than the iPad Pro in the Apple Keyboard case.

I miss the TouchBar on my old MBP...

It's not my app - it's commercially available and well supported and also a one-time purchase (except for major updates, usually when MacOS has a major roll) not a subscription service. If your photos already have categories it might be possible to import them - the dev. responds quickly to emails and would certainly walk you through it if it's possible. I'm not sure about the rules for naming non-Apple apps here and I don't want taking down.

If you're short of disc space then my process would not very good for you because when you synch photos via USB then Mac creates a database on the Mac which it uses for synching and it is huge - over a third the size of the photos that are synched. You also have to synch all your devices to the Mac and remember to do so if you've changed the metadata and will need it when mobile. The main use my pics get these days is embarrassing people down the pub, so it's not a big issue for me.