why does photos downsize my snaps while importing

I bought the iPhone 6 plus but am a steadfast believer in computers rather than cloud. I find that Apple is determined to cause me inconvinience by forcing me to upload to iCloud and then download into my computer, a long and tedious process in countries that do not have very high broadband speeds.

Apple does this by downsizing my snaps to one-sixth their resolution (or pixels) when pulling it in through iPhotos. If I upload to iCloud and then download, I get the full resolution.

Is there a way to directly pull in snaps with full resolution directly from phone to computer? Many thanks.