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Show HN: I made an app people call "Airdrop for Android"

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Re: Show HN: I made an app people call "Airdrop for Android"

#141

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

trackofalljades wrote: post #82
goosedragons wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also ONLY need Android File Transfer on Macs because Apple is too shit to implement MTP and wants to cripple non-Apple devices. On Windows/Linux/BSD you just plug in your android device and it works. A lot of devices support USB 3 speeds too so transferring is fast and not miserable unlike most iPhones and iPads. They also have a Nearby Share app for Windows that lets you use Nearby Share on Windows. Would be nic…

Hey, if you don't mind a question...I need to help a friend back up all the photos off an Android phone and have had a lot of difficulty doing it on my Mac for the reasons you've stated. I do have a Windows notebook at work, are you saying if I plug the Android phone into a ThinkPad, it will just show up like a drive and let me copy photos? It's critical that the photos (thousands of them) keep their original EXIF da…

HN may dislike it because it's an old protocol and it's more reliable than the newest crap today's developers are promoting, but I like PrimitiveFTP for this task. The .apk file is available at f-droid.org. MacOS should have tnftp(1) which is a preferred program of mine. Type ftp -h on the Mac to check.

The entire process can be scripted according to preference.

There are many way to do it. The following should work

Put phone and laptop on same network

For example,

192.168.1.1 is gateway

192.168.1.8 is phone

192.168.1.9 is laptop

Start PrimitiveFTP on the phone

On the laptop use tnftp to retrieve the photos

   # get list of the photos, where PrimitiveFTP has been set to use port 2121
   echo ls DCIM/Camera|ftp -P2121 ftp://192.168.1.8 > photos.txt

   # get the 1st 100 photos
   (echo cd DCIM/Camera;sed 's/.* //;s/^/get /;100q' photos.txt )|ftp -P2121 ftp://192.168.1.8

   # get all photos created/modified in 2023
   (echo cd DCIM/Camera;sed 's/.* //;/2023/s/^/get /' photos.txt )|ftp -P2121 ftp://192.168.1.8
The file attributes should be preserved.

Re: Show HN: I made an app people call "Airdrop for Android"

#142

Post by dash2 »

Zambyte wrote: post #139
dash2 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that gonna work for my non-tech friend's phone and my other non-tech friend's laptop?

mDNS and a GUI

So your story is that when I turn up to a new university and want to send my powerpoint to their computer, I just call the support staff and tell them "install mDNS and a GUI"?

Re: Show HN: I made an app people call "Airdrop for Android"

#143

Post by MaxikCZ »

It boggles my mind that the easiest way to send a picture from my phone to a notebook sitting next to it is to bounce it over servers on the other side of the world trough whatsapp/mail instead of some kind of 2 second discovery/highest speed negotiation/transfer over whatever hardware/protocol those devices dynamically agree upon..

Re: Show HN: I made an app people call "Airdrop for Android"

#144

Post by joshspankit »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #141
trackofalljades wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, if you don't mind a question...I need to help a friend back up all the photos off an Android phone and have had a lot of difficulty doing it on my Mac for the reasons you've stated. I do have a Windows notebook at work, are you saying if I plug the Android phone into a ThinkPad, it will just show up like a drive and let me copy photos? It's critical that the photos (thousands of them) keep their original EXIF da…

HN may dislike it because it's an old protocol and it's more reliable than the newest crap today's developers are promoting, but I like PrimitiveFTP for this task. The .apk file is available at f-droid.org. MacOS should have tnftp(1) which is a preferred program of mine. Type ftp -h on the Mac to check. The entire process can be scripted according to preference. There are many way to do it. The following should work…

The biggest valid concern about FTP is that it’s not encrypted. If you access files through any network that’s being even casually monitored, the monitor gets access to the username and password for you phone’s FTP server.

In my experience, a lot of security-related pushback on HN specifically is because many of us have seen how easy it is to forget that not everyone knows to be careful or how.

Re: Show HN: I made an app people call "Airdrop for Android"

#145

Post by Zambyte »

dash2 wrote: post #142
Zambyte wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

mDNS and a GUI

So your story is that when I turn up to a new university and want to send my powerpoint to their computer, I just call the support staff and tell them "install mDNS and a GUI"?

If the computers don't already have mDNS and a GUI, they should start with installing an OS shipped in the last 20 years, yes.

My point is that the technology to do this is already everywhere. People who control the software that runs on most computers would rather it be less convenient so they can push their own "solutions" to the "problem" though. Airdrop is a pinnacle example of this.

Re: Show HN: I made an app people call "Airdrop for Android"

#146

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #141
trackofalljades wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, if you don't mind a question...I need to help a friend back up all the photos off an Android phone and have had a lot of difficulty doing it on my Mac for the reasons you've stated. I do have a Windows notebook at work, are you saying if I plug the Android phone into a ThinkPad, it will just show up like a drive and let me copy photos? It's critical that the photos (thousands of them) keep their original EXIF da…

HN may dislike it because it's an old protocol and it's more reliable than the newest crap today's developers are promoting, but I like PrimitiveFTP for this task. The .apk file is available at f-droid.org. MacOS should have tnftp(1) which is a preferred program of mine. Type ftp -h on the Mac to check. The entire process can be scripted according to preference. There are many way to do it. The following should work…

For avoidance of doubt, 192.168.1.x in the example means a network that user set up, using a router chosen by user, running OS that user compiled from source. It does not mean a network open to the public, or someone else's network. Apps like "Airdrop" and other "secure" file transfer apps seem to encourage use on other people's networks, and many of them require an internet connection, and often use third party servers by default. In the example, neither phone nor laptop has an internet connection, only a connection to the router that user controls. The router does not have an internet connection either. (Compare using Wi-Fi Direct via a closed source app from Apple.)

Best solution: Do not take photos with a "phone". Use a "camera".

Re: Show HN: I made an app people call "Airdrop for Android"

#147

Post by lukeschlather »

grecy wrote: post #138
lukeschlather wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like Apple sat down and said "how can we make sure this NEVER works unless you're only using Apple devices?" and intentionally sabotaged open standards. The last time I had to do this between two Android devices I just used wifi direct and it worked flawlessly. And yet Apple doesn't support WiFi direct? I can't explain Windows, but the fact that iOS won't interoperate with Android seems like an intentional cho…

> The last time I had to do this between two Android devices I just used wifi direct and it worked flawlessly And you had to disconnect each device from the wifi they were using, separately.. and you couldn't use the internet during the transfer. That's a no from me.

I was on an airplane, so that wasn't a problem at all, and the lack of Internet was what made it a necessity.

Re: Show HN: I made an app people call "Airdrop for Android"

#148

Post by grecy »

lukeschlather wrote: post #147
grecy wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The last time I had to do this between two Android devices I just used wifi direct and it worked flawlessly And you had to disconnect each device from the wifi they were using, separately.. and you couldn't use the internet during the transfer. That's a no from me.

I was on an airplane, so that wasn't a problem at all, and the lack of Internet was what made it a necessity.

So it's something you do infrequently then.

Airdrop is something I use 10x a week.

Re: Show HN: I made an app people call "Airdrop for Android"

#149

Post by lukeschlather »

grecy wrote: post #148
lukeschlather wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was on an airplane, so that wasn't a problem at all, and the lack of Internet was what made it a necessity.

So it's something you do infrequently then. Airdrop is something I use 10x a week.

I've needed to transfer files between an iOS device and an Android device pretty regularly lately and it's simply impossible, I've literally been waiting months to transfer a few files because the person who has the files has an iPhone and has difficulty using any method other than Airdrop (e.g. Dropbox.) Which I view to be an intentional design decision by Apple. WiFi direct would be fine, Airdrop is proprietary and useless here.
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