Yes, I’m afraid this is a complaint. I promise an adorable kitten at the end.
I updated to the latest version of Mac OS yesterday (I am no longer going to write out Apple’s stylized “macOS” anymore. I also say iPhones plural, so take that, Apple marketing department!), which is 14.1.1 as I type this. The update did not go smoothly.
It took multiple reboots to get everything working again. Why, I do not know. But now, the Photos app, which has always had stupid syncing settings on the iPhone, seems to have adopted these stupid, idiotic settings on the Mac.
I noticed that the last few photos from the phone hadn’t synced. I tried restarting the Photos app, to no avail. It said the last sync was yesterday and that was that.
I turned the Mac off, and went back to my Windows PC, which still behaves like a normal computer.
Today, I turned on the Mac and the Photos app presented me with this prompt:
Some context: I am using a Mac Studio with an M1 Max SoC. This is a desktop computer. At the time this prompt appeared, I had two photos to sync.
Two.
I am curious how much system performance optimization was achieved by not syncing TWO photos.
And look, Apple is being generous. If I really MUST sync, I can go ahead…for the next four hours, after which I guess I get this prompt again?
This isn’t just bad design, it is TERRIBLE design, and the people who coded and approved this are trying way too hard to be smarter than the user.
Here is your adorable kitten:
BONUS CONTENT:
I decided I should at least offer a solution or two instead of just griping!
- Make this a setting the user can control
- Allow granularity/context in the controls. Some examples:
- Always sync photos
- Never sync photos
- Only sync when system has been inactive for [xx] minutes
- Sync if there are fewer than [xx] photos
- And so forth
