Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Android and iPhone users can now share files, starting with the Pixel 10

blog.google

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

491–500 of 585 posts

Re: Android and iPhone users can now share files, starting with the Pixel 10

#491

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

rpdillon wrote: post #475
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize that you can copy files gl and from other providers like Google Drive, Dropbox etc from the files app on iOS just like you do on any GUI and you can also copy files from the iPhone by just plugging in a USB C mass storage device?

Never owned an iPhone, but I have familiarity. Here's Apple's instructions for "exporting" your photos from iPhone. Note: it does not say plug the iphone in and drag the photos from the "Photo" folder to your external device. It says this: > Export photos and videos to an external storage device > You can export photos and videos you took on your iPhone directly to an external drive, a memory card, or other storage d…

It’s asking for permission on the device because there are real threats that you plug up your phone to an untrusted device thinking it is just a dumb charging port and it can extricate your data.

As far as why you can’t export your edited photos, is that iOS doesn’t actually exit your photos. It applies the edits from what I can tell as a separate “filter” that’s stored as metadata so you can undo your edits. How do you export your edits in a cross platform way? Would you rather have destructive edits? Maybe you would. But either way there are tradeoffs.

And files have a different data store than a photo.

You just plug any mass storage device into your iOS device and it shows up in the Files app and you copy and paste files like you would in the Finder or Explorer. In fact, in the Files app, if you have a third party storage service like Google Drive or Dropbox, they also show up as location in Files along with iCloud. Meaning you can copy directly from Google Drive to your mass storage device.

You can’t do that with any random “file explorer” on Android - ie a consolidated location for local storage, cloud storage from 3rd party providers, network connections, and mass storage.

Re: Android and iPhone users can now share files, starting with the Pixel 10

#492

Post by kccqzy »

AirDrop sometimes just doesn’t work and gives you zero tools to debug why. In my experience airdrop between phones seem to work fine (probably helped by UWB), but involving Macs makes it an unreliable mess. Staring at the “there is no one nearby to share with” screen with little you can do. Bonus points when it’s asymmetrical: the Mac finds the iPhone just fine but the iPhone cannot find the Mac. When the device is finally found, tapping on it does not cause the other device to present any UI whatsoever to accept the transfer, and the sending devices simply displays “Declined” after a timeout. And if your Mac has multiple user accounts (traditional UNIX-style security boundary) it is undefined which user account will receive the notification to accept the transfer.

Re: Android and iPhone users can now share files, starting with the Pixel 10

#493

Post by givinguflac »

darkwater wrote: post #381
SchemaLoad wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's sad is what largely replaced device to device transfers was just messaging apps. But messaging apps compress media horribly. iMessage isn't so bad, but send a photo through almost anything else and all meta data is stripped, and the image resolution and bitrate are the absolute bare minimum to look ok on a phone. But try to print it and it will be horrible.

There could probably be a niche market (until platforms implement the functionality) for enhancing the metadata of Whatsapp pictures from family & friends and guess it from the context. i.e. your auntie sending you now a picture of yourself 30 years ago which will show up as dated 2025 by default, which totally sucks.

Your comment reminded me of this:

https://theyseeyourphotos.com/

Re: Android and iPhone users can now share files, starting with the Pixel 10

#494

Post by thewebguyd »

kccqzy wrote: post #492

AirDrop sometimes just doesn’t work and gives you zero tools to debug why. In my experience airdrop between phones seem to work fine (probably helped by UWB), but involving Macs makes it an unreliable mess. Staring at the “there is no one nearby to share with” screen with little you can do. Bonus points when it’s asymmetrical: the Mac finds the iPhone just fine but the iPhone cannot find the Mac. When the device is f…

I haven't had AirDrop fail on me, but I have had other similar issues with Apple's "ecosystem" integration.

And that's the frustrating part of using Apple. When it works, it works great. When it doesn't work, you have zero visibility into what's happening or what went wrong, and no tools to debug. It's just a magic black box and you are SOL.

Re: Android and iPhone users can now share files, starting with the Pixel 10

#495

Post by lukeschlather »

Lutzb wrote: post #383
kleiba wrote: post #363

It's amazing how seemingly trivial things turn out to be really hard to be in practice. Like: - sharing files between two phones - printing a page on that printer over there - getting the projector to display my screen (correctly, or at all) - getting my wife not to click on a link in a random email

I am still think that transfering state between devices is the next big thing(tm) waiting to happen. I am working on a file on my macbook, now I want to seamslessly move the whole application working on it to my nearby Windows machine and just continue. Seems impossible right now.

Even expecting state on a single device to remain is a pretty tall order. Something randomly happens at least once a week which forces me to close all my browser tabs, either the OS or the browser restarts. Often while I'm working.

Re: Android and iPhone users can now share files, starting with the Pixel 10

#496

Post by lxgr »

ricardobeat wrote: post #256
felipeerias wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was experimenting with this technology almost a decade ago as part of my work as interaction designer: https://darker.ink/writings/Mobile-design-with-device-to-dev... It has a lot of potential but unfortunately it has been kept back until now by lack of support and interoperability.

Waayy back in 2009 we had Bump [1], which allowed transfer between devices and later web apps as well – by banging your phone against the spacebar. It worked 98% of the time and was faster than AirDrop is today, even though we only had 3G. Google acquired it and immediately killed it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bump_(application)

> Waayy back in 2009 we had Bump [1], which allowed transfer between devices and later web apps as well

Over the Internet. There are dozens of such services, and none of them can compete with Airdrop.

The main point of Airdrop is that it doesn't need Internet connectivity and won't use any metered data (or, on recent iOS versions, at least if Wi-Fi Assist is turned off, I believe).

Just as important is the fact that there's no need to install any application – any Apple device comes with Airdrop preinstalled.

Re: Android and iPhone users can now share files, starting with the Pixel 10

#497

Post by Paradigm2020 »

sussmannbaka wrote: post #119
bigyabai wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure that iOS only has a file explorer app because Android supported it. There was almost a whole decade there where Apple pretended that the feature just didn't need to exist.

Am I supposed to be mad about them not supporting a feature during a time when I didn’t use iOS or is this somehow supposed to impact my current day use of Files app?

"Im not sure if Android has caught up but the iOS file explorer app is excellent." ~ you several posts up.

Re: Android and iPhone users can now share files, starting with the Pixel 10

#498

Post by Paradigm2020 »

sussmannbaka wrote: post #232
bigyabai wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iOS apps didn't , for the majority of the iPhone's lifespan. I explained this "technicality" upthread: > There was almost a whole decade there where Apple pretended that the feature just didn't need to exist.

The history lesson is appreciated but how does this relate to the current state of the stock file explorer that ships with the OS? I’m using my phone now and not ten years ago. edit: oh, I think I get it. My original post wasn't intended to be read "iOS invented the file explorer, has Android also a file explorer app" (which would be silly, of course) but "when Files app released, the AOSP file explorer that commonly…

Maybe include the word "default file manager" next time :)).

Android is possibility/ (overdose of) options Apple is polished (and late).

Different strokes for different folks

Re: Android and iPhone users can now share files, starting with the Pixel 10

#499

Post by extraduder_ire »

bmacho wrote: post #440

~a month ago I saw a comment on HN someone stating that the only possible way to send data from computer to phone is to convert it to base64, open it in a text file (several pages), photo them, OCR them and convert them back on the phone. The comment got deleted shortly after, but I like the idea of someone actually trying to send data from computer to phone, failing, and settling on this method

I'd use QR codes rather than OCR.

Re: Android and iPhone users can now share files, starting with the Pixel 10

#500

Post by polishdude20 »

RenThraysk wrote: post #127
polishdude20 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wormhole can be run in the browser easily.

Yep https://webwormhole.com/ Just needs a WebRTC capable browser.

The official one is at https://wormhole.app
Post reply on HN