Chillin' With an iPhone - Part 4

I started to entitle this post "Don't Save in My Photo Stream" but I figured I'd get hate comments on that. Recently I posted on Photo Storage/Backup but this isn't about that.

Currently I'm using an iPhone X. Apple make it so easy to share photos using "My Photo Stream." But I discovered that Apple significantly reduced the resolution of photos stored in "My Photo Stream." While I didn't test iCloud sharing I expect that the same reduction is true of that as well.

To test this I took a photo with the iPhone X.

I looked at it in the iPhone X's "Recents" and "My Photo Stream." Then I let Google Photos and OneDrive upload it and looked at the pixels, resolution, and size on disk.

There were 2 surprises and one thing I can't explain.

First, "My Photo Scream" pretty well destroyed the photo. It reduced the resolution 50% which consequently reduced the number of pixels by 75%. The size on disk was reduced by almost 95%. This indicates that the JPEG compression was increased significantly creating more JPEG artifacts.

Second, Google Photos didn't resize the photo at all. In the Google Photos app on the iPhone X, I had set "High quality (free unlimited storage)" which in my earlier experiments had "significantly resized, around 40%." I can only speculate that Google has reduced or eliminated their resizing at this image size, i.e. 12.2MP.

The thing I can't explain is why the OneDrive backup doubled the size on disk. I wonder if that is some metadata they've added but that seems like a lot.

These results also make me wonder if now is the time to switch to using Google Photos as the source for my backup process. What I would do is to omit the OneDrive backup and then download photos from Google Photos into my archive process.

One downside is that Google Photos keeps the filename from iOS which tends to create duplicates over time. OneDrive creates unique filenames from the exif data for each photo.

I'll keep an eye on this and let you know if I make a change.

Windows 10 2004 and OneDrive - Again

With my new iPad and Nebo, I've kinda parked my Asus Transformer Mini.

I pulled it out recently and ran Windows Check for updates. Surprisingly it didn't offer Windows 10 2004. It doesn't run Storage Spaces so I thought it would be ready to upgrade.

So I took a backup, went to Microsoft's Download Center and clicked on "Update now".

The Asus isn't very fast so it chugged away for a while. Then it suddenly finished with a cryptic error: "Windows Update will offer this version of Windows 10 automatically when these settings are supported."

WTF?

I put this string into Google and came across this article on Winaero.

There is a problem determination step and then a workaround.

Look in  C:\$WINDOWS~BT\Sources\Panther folder for the a file that whose name ends with HumanReadable.xml. See if it calls out OneDrive. (What the hell is the "Panther" folder? and "HumanReadable" as a file name? Come on, Microsoft!)

If it does, then:

1. Uninstall OneDrive. Open Settings > Apps > Apps and features.
2. Find Microsoft OneDrive in the list of the installed apps on the right.
3. Click on the Uninstall button.
4. This will remove OneDrive from your current Windows version.
5. Upgrade your Windows to Windows 10 version 2004.
6. Install OneDrive. You can download the official client software from Microsoft.

Done. Upgraded. Frustrated.

I don't recommend rushing into Windows 10 2004.

I stub my toe so you don't have to.

Windows Explorer Search

Do you remember the good old days of Windows XP where Windows Explorer had a drop-down box in the search dialog where the keywords you could use were listed?

Well, that drop-down box has been gone for a decade.

BUT, the keywords are still available but not discoverable as far as I can tell.

Recently I was trying to find all the photos I had taken with my iPhone X. I could see that the detail information was there.

In a list of files in Windows Explorer, right click on a file and choose "Properties" all the way at the bottom.

In the pop-up window, click on the "Details" tab. There's a ton of information there. If you could only search on it!

Well, you can.

I found this on the Wayback Machine.

It's 10 years old but still works fine.

In my case, I put

cameramodel:"iPhone X"

in the search field of Windows Explorer and got just what I wanted.

Search around in that Wayback Machine article and see what you can find.

The Crow Needs a Little Salt

I have to eat some crow. Do you remember my recent advice on Windows 10 Updates?

Take a system image backup. Cross your fingers. Apply them.

Yeah, I got bitten. Not once, but twice by Windows 10 2004.

My big desktop is running Storage Spaces.

I guess Microsoft forgot to test Storage Spaces.

I saw that my desktop system was offering Windows 10 2004 but I was going through my normal sequence of applying the update to my less critical systems first.

Then I came across Woody Leonhard's article on Storage Spaces. When I went back to my desktop, the update was blocked. And it still is.

You can see Microsoft's support page here.

One of my less critical systems was my former desktop system. It doesn't run Storage Spaces so the update to Windows 10 2004 was offered and I installed it.

When I revisited it a day or two later, I noticed a pop-up complaining about OneDrive.

I didn't think much about it and chose to download files like it prompted me to. OneDrive started copying ALL my files to that system. I didn't think that that was the setting I had so I started un-syncing most of the directories and went on about my business.

A day or two later, I checked back in. None of the files had actually synced and the transfer rate was 0.0.

HotHardware has a good article on it here but there hasn't been much coverage of this. I followed the OneDrive reset (archive.is) process and that seems to have resolved it.

I'm not in much of a hurry to install Windows 10 2004 on my remaining systems.