Why SO many random DCIM Folders? I want ONE!

tab1075 wrote:

punimitsu wrote:

Thanks Lawrence!

Great to see someone actually being *helpful* in this so-called community 😉

I didn't manage to read the 15 pages of comments, so this is a really useful summary...

I got to page 2, and was rather shocked by the nasty, unhelpful comments from TKBUSMC1973, Csound1 et al...

not sure why these people even bother engaging in a Support community!!!

Since you only made it to page 2, you're unaware of who has actually caused more trouble in this thread. The one you're thanking is the same one who basically said, and I'm paraphrasing, he's glad the fools stick to this thread so we don't ruin the rest of the community forums. He and another user you mentioned keep returning here to insult everyone, then report our comments for deletion when we defend ourselves. I just had a second comment deleted that in no way contained "inappropriate statements or comments," as the deletion notice claimed.

Your opinion and the moderators opinion differ, are you saying the moderators are wrong about your (now excised) post?

Either way, it is the moderators decision.

Criticism and differing opinions are fine as long as they actually contribute to the subject and have accurate information. Some people need to vent their frustration with Apple on this issue, and that's okay too. Further, telling them "it's not a bug, it's a feature" may be unhelpful in my opinion, but at least it's addressing the general topic.

Can we just let the other stuff go? Previous summaries like mine and Lawrence's are getting lost in the off-topic rants.

I don't understand why you're even bothering with the folders. I use PhotoStream as temporary storage for transfer to/from my Mac. When I use my iPhone to take a photo, it's automatically duplicated in PhotoStream. When convenient for me, I go to my computer and copy from PhotoStream to my hard drive (iPhoto). Then I delete them from PhotoStream. If I have photos on my computer that have been obtained elsewhere, I manually copy them to PhotoStream and then go to the iPhone and copy them. Again, when finished I delete from PhotoStream. Nu fuss, no bother.

See, in my situation, I use more than one computer. My personal computer at my house is set up with PhotoStream, and it works half decently (sometimes takes a while for pictures to load). On my computer at my office, I would much rather prefer to simply plug my phone in, extract whichever photos I have taken earlier that day, place them in the folders I need them in, delete them off my phone, and carry on with my day...

I hope no one misinterprets my response as anything negative... Hesitant to reply to anything at this point. 😕

can128 wrote:

See, in my situation, I use more than one computer. My personal computer at my house is set up with PhotoStream, and it works half decently (sometimes takes a while for pictures to load). On my computer at my office, I would much rather prefer to simply plug my phone in, extract whichever photos I have taken earlier that day, place them in the folders I need them in, delete them off my phone, and carry on with my day...

I hope no one misinterprets my response as anything negative... Hesitant to reply to anything at this point. 😕

Your unacceptable load time is likely caused by your Internet data rate, especially if you're using it at a popular time and competing with your neighbors for bandwidth.

Why not do the iPhone deletions while you're home (after you copy them, of course) and take one additional step - upload the latest pics to Dropbox or something similar? After you retrieve the pics at work, you can delete from Dropbox to keep your usage low (and free).

can128 wrote:

I hope no one misinterprets my response as anything negative... Hesitant to reply to anything at this point. 😕

I know the feeling. It's a shame we have to feel like that when all we want to do is come here for help, come here to help, and as drume mentioned, vent our frustrations on occasion.

You offer a great example of why it's important to many users to have Windows Explorer function as it once did. Sure, we can use alternate means, but Explorer was as readily available and about as simple of a tool as it got, and for many, that's all they care about. The advancements in the Photo App (editing capabilities and the Years/Collections/Moments view) are what "broke" Windows Explorer functionality, so we may never get all of it back, but better organization of the DCIM folders would be great.

The Windows image import capability is no harder to use than Windows Explorer. Windows Explorer was never intended by Microsoft to be the primary way to import photos; Microsoft has provided a tool designed for image imports going all the way back to Windows 2000, that opens automatically unless you went to the trouble of disabling it. It's name has changed from version to version, but it has always been there. It was just happenstance that Windows Explorer worked. And it didn't even work with all digital cameras. It doesn't work with my Nikon DSLR when I have a lot of images on it, for example. Or my Doxie scanners. And it doesn't work with many newer digital cameras that allows image editing on the camera. Apple could not have provided the added image management features in iOS 8 and still kept a single folder for images. So their choice was to leave the iPhone brain damaged for a few people who insist that Windows Explorer always worked and should forever work the same way, or to provide enhancements that most users would take advantage of and appreciate.

Lawrence Finch wrote:

....Apple could not have provided the added image management features in iOS 8 and still kept a single folder for images. So their choice was to leave the iPhone brain damaged for a few people who insist that Windows Explorer always worked and should forever work the same way, or to provide enhancements that most users would take advantage of and appreciate.

The enhancements are great, but it seems to me you're presenting a false dilemma. As I've said before, Apple could have programmed their Windows device driver to show as one folder to Windows Explorer, just as it does within the Windows import utility. Nothing about that necessitates breaking the new enhancements.

Plenty of the other necessary background organization on iOS devices is hidden away, doing its job quietly. But for some reason Apple specifically chose to show the confusing folder structure in Windows Explorer instead of giving us what we've come to expect from Apple: an intuitive experience.

I'm not usually a conspiracy theorist, but it certainly seems like Apple is going out of there way to make their stuff work badly with Windows (iTunes being the prime example). It would be one thing if they just didn't support PCs. But instead, they actually bothered to make Windows versions of iTunes and drivers, then made them work far worse than the iOS versions.

I assume you are not a system level software developer, then? A device driver is not supposed to interpret content that it handles; it should leave that to the application level. Which it does. It leaves it to the built-in Windows photo importer, or other third party tools. Of which there are many, and most of them free.

drume wrote:

Lawrence Finch wrote:

....Apple could not have provided the added image management features in iOS 8 and still kept a single folder for images. So their choice was to leave the iPhone brain damaged for a few people who insist that Windows Explorer always worked and should forever work the same way, or to provide enhancements that most users would take advantage of and appreciate.

The enhancements are great, but it seems to me you're presenting a false dilemma. As I've said before, Apple could have programmed their Windows device driver to show as one folder to Windows Explorer, just as it does within the Windows import utility. Nothing about that necessitates breaking the new enhancements.

Plenty of the other necessary background organization on iOS devices is hidden away, doing its job quietly. But for some reason Apple specifically chose to show the confusing folder structure in Windows Explorer instead of giving us what we've come to expect from Apple: an intuitive experience.

I'm not usually a conspiracy theorist, but it certainly seems like Apple is going out of there way to make their stuff work badly with Windows (iTunes being the prime example). It would be one thing if they just didn't support PCs. But instead, they actually bothered to make Windows versions of iTunes and drivers, then made them work far worse than the iOS versions.

"could have"

That's irrelevent. We deal with reality.

Philly_Phan wrote:

"could have"

That's irrelevent. We deal with reality.

I agree. I was simply refuting Lawrence's statement that "Apple could not have". But both Lawrence and I have provided multiple solutions to the problem at hand, and each solution has its strengths and weaknesses.

Lawrence Finch wrote:

I assume you are not a system level software developer, then? A device driver is not supposed to interpret content that it handles; it should leave that to the application level. Which it does. It leaves it to the built-in Windows photo importer, or other third party tools. Of which there are many, and most of them free.

"...not supposed to"? According to whom? Device drivers do this all the time, including Apple's Windows device driver. It only presents a small subset of folders and files to the Windows operating system, and it does so in a specifically chosen way.

It's not that they can't. It's not even that they didn't. It's that they absolutely did, but did it badly.

drume wrote:

Lawrence Finch wrote:

I assume you are not a system level software developer, then? A device driver is not supposed to interpret content that it handles; it should leave that to the application level. Which it does. It leaves it to the built-in Windows photo importer, or other third party tools. Of which there are many, and most of them free.

"...not supposed to"? According to whom? Device drivers do this all the time, including Apple's Windows device driver. It only presents a small subset of folders and files to the Windows operating system, and it does so in a specifically chosen way.

It's not that they can't. It's not even that they didn't. It's that they absolutely did, but did it badly.

I spent an earlier part of my career writing device drivers. "According to whom" means best practices for any who work at the OS level. Device drivers run as part of the operating system image, and the OS (at least Unix, Linux, Windows, Z/OS, HPUX and most other extant operating systems) runs with interrupts disabled, so it cannot time share with any other executables. Thus, code in a device driver stops everything else from happening until it completes its job. That's why device drivers do the minimum necessary. And Apple's Windows device driver DOES NOT do anything beyond basics. It's the phone's file system that presents a small subset of folders and files, not the device driver.

Your suggesting that the device driver should "lie" and combine folders for your convenience neglects the fact that there are other processes on the computer that need to know that structure, so munging it would break other things. There is no need to do something in the operating system that dozens of applications do correctly, notably every photo management app in the world, except for Windows Explorer.

Can I try and offer a practical solution to the issue

IHave made one one folder on my computer

I search DCMI for files named image

I Copy all into that folder

delete all

then replacing all back from the folder into my photo stream for which I want left on my phone

long winded but works fine for me

Here's what worked for me: As a previous responder suggested, I did a search for the character * in my folder containing the random-name folders. Then I simply dragged the resulting file names (appearing below the long list of folder names) to a new folder. I then deleted the folder containing the (now empty) random-name folders (or even, just delete their containing folder, which contains no files, just empty folders). I now have a single folder containing my 600 or so pictures, which I sorted in descending-date order.