This caught me by surprise; I'm not sure if you're aware, but you can open up Image Capture (built-in Mac app) to import photos from your iPhone. Obviously iMazing can do other things as well, but just in case.
I don’t use that feature as much anymore as I’m all in on iCloud now, but it worked fine when I last did it about a year ago.
For perspective.. I remember downloading and installing Linux off floppies. That sucked too, especially with bad disks or download errors, but it was less frustrating than this.
It seems like they don't improve it because iCloud seems like it works smoothly, and they get an on-going profit stream out of it. The process was so brutal I almost broke down and paid for a ton of iCloud storage.. but didn't because getting lots of photos out of iCloud is also painful.
Are new iPhones really doing usb 2 over usb-c?
I expect most people import 100G if they have the cheapest model (128G flash), but the rest are importing 200G or more.
Firstly, they may not have a laptop. Secondly, I expect many more of those who have one will sync photos from their phone to iCloud and from iCloud to their laptop then directly from their phone to their laptop.
Yes, for large archives, that costs money ($10 a month gets you 2TB if iCloud storage), but I guess/think the convenience and having almost direct backups in case you lose your phone are worth it for most people who want to do such copying.
If so, it _is_ an edge case.