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I am tired of having three “computers”

Hello all,

I have been thinking for a long time to use only one device. I have a MacBook Air 11” 2013 with 256GB and 4GB of RAM, I have an iPad mini with retina 128GB and an old iPhone 5 64GB.

You may ask why I did not buy something newer, the reason is Apple is too expensive last couple of years with fancy features what I really do not need, such as touch bar, new macs only with displays or antic macmini with 2013 hw for todays price. It is obvious that Apple is pushing customers to iOS more and more. I like apple environment but I am not willing to pay for such devices what I do not need. Firstly I was thinking about iPad Pro, but again do I need one for youtube, web, pictures and home movies? NO.

I am tired to maintain three devices, its synchronization over the iCloud and managing lack of storage on each of my device. I use MacBook as computer what sits on the table constantly connected to the Dell screen, iPad is a bed device and iPhone sits next to the MacBook when I am home.

I am tired to wait for iCloud to sync my new pictures and videos from my iPhone, or choose which device I use for this and that because every device can do it. I do not like the feature when I upload a new pictures from iPhone then it deletes them because of 64GB of storage but in a while I want to render some movies so I have to download them from iCloud to iPad or iPhone or MacBook, it takes so much trafic and so much time.

So I am thinking to buy an iPhone with 256GB because it can do everything what I need.

Is anyone here who is using iPhone as only computer? Since iPhone can work with RAW from DSLR and LumaFusion is very good for movies I think only big screen I will be missing. I can buy AppleTV for consuption of media or even connect a iPhone to the screen thru it. What do you think?

MacBook Air, macOS High Sierra (10.13.3)

Posted on Mar 17, 2018 12:49 PM

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4 replies

Mar 17, 2018 1:17 PM in response to doubr

Don't enable the iCloud Photo Library on the phone or iPad. Just make shared albums of selected photo and sync only those. Full use of the iCloud Photo Library means all content on all devices. You will always be limited but the device with the smallest amount of storage.


There may not be a need to have every photo in your library on every device. This alone will save you storage issues on your iOS devices.

Mar 17, 2018 11:52 PM in response to LACAllen

The problem is that iCloud uses some not smart logic. I have pictures in iPhone when on wifi it since to iCloud photo library and deletes them from iPhone. In an hour I want to edit those pictures on iPhone and I have to download them again, it is even worse with movies what I imported from DSLR, iOS wants 15GB of free space all the time. There is no option to keep chosen items.

Yesterday evening I enabled optimize storage on my MacBook only to see downloading few gigs with no reason, this morning, I just started the computer. I do not have unlimited internet connection. Another problem is with Theater on macOS if you click optimize storage it deletes movies from Theater and there is NO option to download them or play them unless you do not use optimize storage.

I am tired of having three “computers”

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