Q: Air Drop between iMac and iphone5 not working?

But nothing about it is easy, you have to figure out how to make it so that you can send just the pictures you want to iphoto, which requires creating a special stream in iphoto

Send them all via Photo Stream and delete those you don't want from your iPhoto Library on your Mac.

OT

What you're proposing is actually the exact opposite of what I want to do. 

I want to send only certain pictures to my imac via the wireless network in my home without using iphoto or icloud at all.  What you're proposing is sending all my pictures from my iphone (as many as 20 or 30 a day), most of which I don't want to keep anyways, to a program I don't want to use and then spending time every day deleting dozens of pictures I don't want just so I can keep the 3 or 4 I do want.  Why would Apple make it so that we have to do things completely backwards from what makes sense?

I've never met a person who wants to have every single photo they take instantly added to their iphoto library, or added to anything at all actually.  Everyone takes tons of pics with their phones these days and everyone I know would like to send certain pictures to certain places... some to iphoto for inclusion in the iphoto library, some to their computer desktop for use in something else (ebay, craigslist, editing, emailing etc.) and some to social networks. 

Inexplicably Apple doesn't offer this kind of integration.  Their solution is "Send every picture you take to iphoto."  Why?  Frankly iphoto suc ks, and I don't want to use it at all if I can help it.  So why can't I choose what I want to send and more importantly where I want to send it?  My phone and imac are on the same network, why can't I just move a picture from my phone to my imac's desktop?  Shoot, even my DSLR can do that.  But not my iPhone?  Makes no sense.

Try using Dropbox.  Install it on both devices and move the photos on the iPhone to Dropbox and then retrieve them from the Dropbox on the Mac and move them to wherever you want.

Sure, dropbox or any other file syncing service is a viable workaround.

My point is that I can't believe we have to use a workaround when everything involved is made by the same company all running that companies software.  Especially considering the mantra of said company is "It just works".  Yeah... no it doesn't.

I own an imac, an iphone and an Airport extreme, all working on the same network connection.  All these things are made by apple.  Yet I can't take a picture and move it from my phone to the desktop of my imac without jumping through a bunch of convoluted hoops or using 3rd party software?  I think it's just ridiculous, that's all.

We're just users like yourself here.  Post your concerns to Apple via  http://www.apple.com/feedback/icloud.html

Since you said that you do not care for iPhoto - just a thought: maybe it would work better for you to simply create a "Photos" folder in your Document folders (with sub folders "trip 2012", etc) - I don't have an iPhone, so I don't know if that would work. But, I do have a Photos folder and only import a select few pics into iPhoto when I need them in a movie or some such as I don't care for the filing/library system iPhoto uses. I use other photo "tweaking" software, but always return my photos to my Photos folder.

Looks like this is documented as not working:

Per: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5887

Note: AirDrop for iOS supports only iOS 7 devices. You cannot use AirDrop on iOS to share with OS X, and OS X users can't use AirDrop to share with iOS devices.

Which is frankly moronic considering that Air Drop is a feature found on both IOS devices *and* OS X devices.  So Air Drop exists on all devices but can't be used between all devices. 

I can stream a movie from my iphone to my ATV, I can use my iPhone to control iTunes on my iMac, I can send text messages and see entire text conversations from both my iPhone and iMac... but I can't do something as simple as put a picture from my iPhone directly onto the desktop of my iMac?  How did something so obvious and basic get completely left out of the environment?  It's beyond comprehension.

One pretty good alternative is to download the Bump app on your phone. You can bump from your phone to your computer.

You could just iMessage the photos you want from your phone to your Mac.

Simple to set-up and if you have the phone and mac on wifi then you don't have to worry about speed, etc. You can also select multiple photos to send at one time using the select option in the photo browser.

I too would like to be able to air drop, seems odd that this would have been left out of Mavericks.

all the work arounds and solutions presented in this thread assume both devices have an active internet connection.

what happens if I want to transfer pictures between the imac / macbook and the iphone / ipad using the home wifi but for some reason the internet is offline?

like some other users already said, Apple develps a great technology but then applies restrictions between their own products, this is counter productive at best.

specially when iphone 5s is running iOS 7 and macbook air is running mavericks. (latest version of both OS's)

While this is true and it certainly would be much preferred if Airdrop did work between macs and iphones, my understanding is that Airdrop still utilizes Wifi to make the transfer (meaning you could not Airdrop without an internet connection of some sort anyways). While the initial connection between phones is made via Bluetooth, the transfer itself is made over Wifi I believe. There may be other 3d party apps that accomplish the whole thing via Bluetooth, but I am not aware of which ones and I would think they would also be slower.

imessage?

jpeterdesigns - short as your question was...

iMessages, as in the apple version of internet delivered text messages from the iPhone. You can set iMessages up on your Mac as well. You can set it up so it knows you as the same appleid, phone number or alternate email addresses that are on your 'Me' contact card, or probably better a different email address as the id. This way you can send a message to the contact which is configured for use on your Mac iMessage account - therefore if you attach an image, or a number of images to the imessage sent from your phone you will get them on your Mac.

see

support.apple.com/kb/HT5395 for info on how to set up iMessages on your Mac running OSX

I totally agree. You summed it up - "nothing about it is easy". I am a huge apple fan but find this stuff pretty abstract too. I've watched first time users struggle with the basic requests that your outlining. Most people I know only get into the first 5% of what Macs can actually do and the rest is just way too convoluted. They say that their future path is really clear and with a design goal being "as easy to use an appliance" they have such a long way to go. The AppleTV is probably the closest thing they have to an "appliance".