Other I need a 2TB iPhone 16 Pro Max

[cmcbhi]

An iPhone's screen is just too small to do justice to good photographs and off line storage is cheap. A 5TB LaCie hard drive is $169.95 from Apple. And an 8TB d2 is $254.95. You can get a nice Mac(book) and a 27" screen and see your kids much better.
You can also connect a 75" OLED TV for the price of a 2TB iPhone and stealing the pics would be much harder.

 

[blairh]

With cloud storage you have to deal with high subscription fees for large data, dependence on online servers, dependence on cellular reception, privacy concerns, data caps, buffering/loading, etc.

So you are making the case to not use cloud storage at all? Come on now mate.

Your cons are rather ridiculous as well. I want/need access to things and the cloud is the perfect solution for me.

 

[vertsix]

I get roasted when I say the same thing! I am currently at 636.4 GB used on my 1TB 15 Pro Max after deleting some files. 1TB is really not enough for some of us.

 

[Cirillo Gherardo]

Something seems off. I don't take quite as many photos and videos of the kids as I used to, but I have 256 GB iPhone plus a 2 TB iCloud and still have plenty of space all the time. I don't see how a larger phone helps either, because all I want my phone to do is take them, not store them. I want them all stored in iCloud where they're safe.

 

[ForkHandles]

Well it’s coming to that time of year again when I promise myself that I’m definitely not upgrading my phone but I end up doing so every single year 🫠

The thing is though, my 1TB 15 Pro Max is actually running out of space. It’s family photos and videos - I take a lot of the kids.

I pay for iCloud storage of 2TB and am pretty happy with it. I really want to have the original files on my phone but to keep that up I need a 2TB model.

What do you think the chances are of Apple upping the top tier to 2TB? Could it be a possibility this year?

The funny thing is that this would be the ‘feature’ that would push me to buy a new one. Not AI or a new camera button, but just good old fashioned storage space.

The iPhone cameras are great and I also use a Fuji, Sony and Ricoh camera, putting the pictures on my iPhone and iCloud. The Apple system works very well for this. Just the files end up growing and growing over time.

My plan B is to just rely on iCloud storage until a larger capacity iPhone pops out. It hopefully will in the next few years.

I envy the regular folk who only have a few hundred gigs of pics - that’s the happy balance.

I don't have solutions for your needs but genuinely 1TB of photos and videos is an awful lot. I have a 100Gb and that includes all of the home movies I have ever made, rendering at the highest level possible while the kids were growing up. They've finished growing now.

I too value having the originals on my iPhone. I can't stand the idea of wanting to see my pics and vids but having to wait. I also don't see the point in taking substandard photos and videos on lower quality, the world shifts and low quality soon looks poor after ten years.

Hopefully the 2TB will come out and save the day!

In the meantime you might want to check for the basics, like...
Are you taking every photo in RAW, what's the point if you never edit them.
Are you recording every video in 120fps, youre eyes just can't tell.
Are you being ruthless and discarding all of the crap and only keeping the gold, I find if I take too many photos without trashing the mediocre, I never look at them.
Are you duplicating items.

Any road up, I still have no solutions to offer. Best of lck

 

[subjonas]

So you are making the case to not use cloud storage at all? Come on now mate.

Your cons are rather ridiculous as well. I want/need access to things and the cloud is the perfect solution for me.

No, of course not. You asked why OP would want so much storage on their phone so I gave some possible reasons 🤷‍♂️.

In what way are each of them ridiculous? Hand-waving helps no one.

Despite the cons, which all do not necessarily always apply to everyone and everyone does not necessarily always care about all of them, cloud is the most ideal existing solution for many people because its cons are outweighed by the few but major cons of phone storage—namely price and availability. And consequently for lack of market (due to aforementioned cons), there is probably lack of proper local syncing software. But these are circumstantial cons, not technical or innate like most of the cloud storage cons. In other words, if phones had high storage for low cost and proper local syncing software, then local phone storage would be more ideal for more people than cloud storage. There would still be a couple situations where cloud would be advantageous, like photo album sharing and as immediate nonlocal data redundancy (though sync doesn’t make for good backup), but more likely in addition to rather than in place of local storage.

 

[subjonas]

An iCloud backup does not backup anything on iCloud that can be downloaded, including photos. That is why the size of iCloud backups is tiny compared to the storage used on the iPhone.

Do you mean iCloud backups don’t include photos? If so, that’s incorrect:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/108770
But if you just mean you can’t choose what to download, that’s correct, you have to restore the whole thing.

 

[blairh]

No, of course not. You asked why OP would want so much storage on their phone so I gave some possible reasons 🤷‍♂️.

In what way are each of them ridiculous? Hand-waving helps no one.

Despite the cons, which all do not necessarily always apply to everyone and everyone does not necessarily always care about all of them, cloud is the most ideal existing solution for many people because its cons are outweighed by the few but major cons of phone storage—namely price and availability. And consequently for lack of market (due to aforementioned cons), there is probably lack of proper local syncing software. But these are circumstantial cons, not technical or innate like most of the cloud storage cons. In other words, if phones had high storage for low cost and proper local syncing software, then local phone storage would be more ideal for more people than cloud storage. There would still be a couple situations where cloud would be advantageous, like photo album sharing and as immediate nonlocal data redundancy (though sync doesn’t make for good backup), but more likely in addition to rather than in place of local storage.

You gave reasons to not use cloud storage. OP clearly states he uses iCloud. So listing reasons to not use cloud storage is the ridiculous (and irrelevant).

Local phone storage only is never the solution. But that's irrelevant again as OP uses iCloud.

I personally don't store any photos/videos whatsoever on my iPhone locally and I'd hate to want/need an iPhone that had a huge storage capacity just to locally host my photos/vids.

 

[subjonas]

You gave reasons to not use cloud storage. OP clearly states he uses iCloud. So listing reasons to not use cloud storage is the ridiculous (and irrelevant).

Local phone storage only is never the solution. But that's irrelevant again as OP uses iCloud.

I personally don't store any photos/videos whatsoever on my iPhone locally and I'd hate to want/need an iPhone that had a huge storage capacity just to locally host my photos/vids.

No, you’re inferring a lot more than you should be. Listing its cons compared to local storage (which you asked for) does not advocate against it nor imply its lack of usefulness. It just means those are possible reasons why someone might choose the alternative, local storage, in addition to cloud storage or in place of it or less of it.

Local storage without cloud can be an adequate solution if you have proper local backup solutions (including offsite redundancy), and if you don’t need to constantly share data with others. If anything, I would actually say cloud storage only is not a good solution because you’re relying solely on one company.

It’s a good thing options exist.

 

[Wando64]

But the original has to be downloaded somehow in the first place, which for iCloud photo only works with “Download original”, and ALL originals, which adds up fast. Of course external library for photos app is also a solution but I ditched it after the external drive struggle to keep its connection up. This leaves buying super expensive internal mass storage as the only reliable option.
I don’t think Time Machine backup would download the original automatically During backup.

External storage for Photos library works well.
Apple knows this library can reach enormous dimensions and this is their solution.

I’ve no idea what do you mean with “struggle to keep its connection”, but whatever the reason, it is not the norm.

 

[cmcbhi]

I don't have solutions for your needs but genuinely 1TB of photos and videos is an awful lot. I have a 100Gb and that includes all of the home movies I have ever made, rendering at the highest level possible while the kids were growing up. They've finished growing now.

I too value having the originals on my iPhone. I can't stand the idea of wanting to see my pics and vids but having to wait. I also don't see the point in taking substandard photos and videos on lower quality, the world shifts and low quality soon looks poor after ten years.

Hopefully the 2TB will come out and save the day!

In the meantime you might want to check for the basics, like...
Are you taking every photo in RAW, what's the point if you never edit them.
Are you recording every video in 120fps, youre eyes just can't tell.
Are you being ruthless and discarding all of the crap and only keeping the gold, I find if I take too many photos without trashing the mediocre, I never look at them.
Are you duplicating items.

Any road up, I still have no solutions to offer. Best of lck

Why take raw pics?
Because every .JPEG is a copy of a copy Every time you save and/or change phones. you will lose some detail on every .JPEG. If you want to keep your images pristine , a RAW file is your only option. And back them up offline.
Personally, I use Time Machine in RAID0 and Carbonite.
YMMV

 

[JamesMay82]

External library for Photos library works well.
Apple knows this library can reach enormous dimensions and this is their solution.

I’ve no idea what do you mean with “struggle to keep its connection”, but whatever the reason, it is not the norm.

was fine for me as well prior to getting a larger internal drive.

My library is 880 gigs and lived on a Lacie 2 big USB3 drive and then later I moved it to a Samsung T7 all with no problems.

 

[Shirasaki]

External storage for Photos library works well.
Apple knows this library can reach enormous dimensions and this is their solution.

I’ve no idea what do you mean with “struggle to keep its connection”, but whatever the reason, it is not the norm.

I understand Apple allows users to create photo libraries on an external drive. The consequence of that is, if the said library can’t be read by photos App at launch, for whatever reason, it will fail.

And for external drive, I have ones connected via a cable. Initially I thought offloading Photos library from internal drive was a good idea, but since I use MacBook and need to move it around from time to time, I would also need to carry the connected external drive with me so photos app works fine. Because of the USB-C port, the drive disconnect randomly from my MacBook, causing issues with photos app and creating corrupted libraries.

You probably have better experience than me. But for me, external photos library Is not a viable solution, notwithstanding macOS tend to trigger photos app in various places throughout the system. You may want to say “then use a wireless drive“, but I am Not aware of any wireless external drive that can get power solely from a USB-C cable.

 

[ForkHandles]

Why take raw pics?
Because every .JPEG is a copy of a copy Every time you save and/or change phones. you will lose some detail on every .JPEG. If you want to keep your images pristine , a RAW file is your only option. And back them up offline.
Personally, I use Time Machine in RAID0 and Carbonite.
YMMV

RAW is intended as a file that allows for post production editing using different camera setups, not as a viewing file type.

JPEG is a compression standard, you lose a lot of data over RAW for sure, but you don’t likely need most of that once you’ve done your PPE.

JPEGs, obviously, are no more likely to deteriorate in quality than a RAW in transferring between devices.

 

[subjonas]

I understand Apple allows users to create photo libraries on an external drive. The consequence of that is, if the said library can’t be read by photos App at launch, for whatever reason, it will fail.

And for external drive, I have ones connected via a cable. Initially I thought offloading Photos library from internal drive was a good idea, but since I use MacBook and need to move it around from time to time, I would also need to carry the connected external drive with me so photos app works fine. Because of the USB-C port, the drive disconnect randomly from my MacBook, causing issues with photos app and creating corrupted libraries.

You probably have better experience than me. But for me, external photos library Is not a viable solution, notwithstanding macOS tend to trigger photos app in various places throughout the system. You may want to say “then use a wireless drive“, but I am Not aware of any wireless external drive that can get power solely from a USB-C cable.

I don’t run Photos app at startup but I do run iTunes and its library resides on an external drive, and similarly to your issue with Photos it’s never able to connect to its library at startup and shows ”can’t locate library” message. To remedy that, I use an app that delays the launch of iTunes for a couple minutes, giving time for the external drive to fully mount.

I have most of my data on an external drive. I’ve had issues with it randomly unmounting as well, not often but it happens. Not sure if it’s an issue with the drive or the USB port or something else internal or something with software, or some combination, but it’s annoying and I too would prefer to keep all my data (except backup of course) on the internal drive for convenience and just to be safe, but yes larger storage sizes are expensive. (Also for anyone with more than 8TB of data, which is the current cap for Macs, they have no choice but to look to external drives.) Thankfully I haven’t had any corruption that I know of so far.

 

[Amazing Iceman]

I understand Apple allows users to create photo libraries on an external drive. The consequence of that is, if the said library can’t be read by photos App at launch, for whatever reason, it will fail.

And for external drive, I have ones connected via a cable. Initially I thought offloading Photos library from internal drive was a good idea, but since I use MacBook and need to move it around from time to time, I would also need to carry the connected external drive with me so photos app works fine. Because of the USB-C port, the drive disconnect randomly from my MacBook, causing issues with photos app and creating corrupted libraries.

You probably have better experience than me. But for me, external photos library Is not a viable solution, notwithstanding macOS tend to trigger photos app in various places throughout the system. You may want to say “then use a wireless drive“, but I am Not aware of any wireless external drive that can get power solely from a USB-C cable.

If Apple is not able to read a photo library, you can still dive into the package's content and extract your original photos, and import them again into a new library.

The problem with USB-C port drives I have experienced before. Are you using a Dock or a direct cable?
Try disabling Power management for the drive.

 

[Funny Apple Man]

I get the attraction but 2TB would just be painful on the wallet!

That would be $400 just to upgrade from 1 to 2 tb. Ouch.

 

[Shirasaki]

If Apple is not able to read a photo library, you can still dive into the package's content and extract your original photos, and import them again into a new library.

The problem with USB-C port drives I have experienced before. Are you using a Dock or a direct cable?
Try disabling Power management for the drive.

I use direct cable. Didn’t think about power management thing in macOS. With that being said I kind of want the power management to be on so I can safely remove the drive as macOS won’t safely remove HDD like Windows did (send command to the drive so its head can park safely rather than cutting power abruptly).

 

[ToddH]

I use a Sandisk 4TB external SSD for storage backup since I can connect that SSD directly to my iPhone. Save everything to a Files folder on your phone and back it up on the SSD. No Need for cloud or anything else. The Sandisk is small, portable and lightweight

 

[cmcbhi]

RAW is intended as a file that allows for post production editing using different camera setups, not as a viewing file type.

JPEG is a compression standard, you lose a lot of data over RAW for sure, but you don’t likely need most of that once you’ve done your PPE.

JPEGs, obviously, are no more likely to deteriorate in quality than a RAW in transferring between devices.

JPEG images are 8 bit images. REW has more dynamic range.
Here’s the botton line on the Raw vs JPEG debate: if you are serious about your photography, you should always shoot in Raw format. If you are just taking pictures of your family for fun, and you are OK with not taking advantage of the capabilities of your camera, then, by all means, shoot in JPEG.
YMMV

 

[JamesMay82]

JPEG images are 8 bit images. REW has more dynamic range.
Here’s the botton line on the Raw vs JPEG debate: if you are serious about your photography, you should always shoot in Raw format. If you are just taking pictures of your family for fun, and you are OK with not taking advantage of the capabilities of your camera, then, by all means, shoot in JPEG.
YMMV

9/10 I don't edit our photos anymore but I still shoot in raw with my family but only because I might want the option in the future. a bonkers approach but at least I have the option. also I think with my media is optimised on the phone/Apple TV iCloud has already converted them to jpeg I believe.

 

[Aoligei]

I was able to get by with 32GB storage. My 128GB iPhone still have 70GB left and I have all my photo collection on Google Photo (unlimited storage saver from Pixel 5) and i have 8TB hard drive to backup purposes.

I just regularly, like every end of year, short all the photos taken this year, transfer to local storage. Using Pixel 5 to upload to Google photos for additional backup.

I don’t need 2TB iPhone, nor I need 256GB. Apple’s storage upgrade is insanely expensive and I am not paying for that.

 

[cocky jeremy]

My photos app is using less than 2GB of space

I have individual videos taking up that much. lol. 🙃