Not via a cable? I want to be able to use my phone while it syncs. Being tethered to a computer during syncing would be tedious.

I also don’t want to have the photos on “my computer”. I’m really bad at hosting large amounts of data, I let professionals do it for me for a few.

I’m sitting on my couch and my phone is syncing data to multiple cloud services.

I specifically updated my camera too so I could get photos off it via Wi-Fi instead of having to faff about with memory cards or cables.

Moi? I usually access my images via iPhoto or Google Photos in a browser and then download from there. Rarely have I connected a device to my laptop or MBP. Occasionally, I've used BT to transfer, but again that's rarely.

In theory, the USB C port should allow us to connect a docking station / monitor to a iPhone 15 but I'm not so sure Apple has that in mind. afaik, you need at least USB 3.0 to do that.

Most people don't do this these days; they use iCloud or Google Photos (or whatever that's called these days) or Dropbox or something. Assuming they want their photos on their computer at all, or indeed have a computer; for many the phone would be the primary doing-stuff-with-photos device.

I've had an iPhone since 2008 or so, and yeah, back in the day there were lots of cases where you'd want to plug it in. I'm not sure I've _ever_ plugged my current (4 year old) phone into a computer except purely to charge, though.

The photos are synced to the photo library on your Apple / windows pc in the background and appear there, thanks to iCloud Photos.

If you’re on Linux, install Jotta or Dropbox or Onedrive and the same thing happens.

Good point and it's where apple lacks - instant, potentially p2p sync or browse using mac. Wifi speeds are good enough. AirDrop is absolute PITA to use other than sharing few pics with friends once in a while. Waiting for icloud to complete uploads at ~10mbps is shit experience.

iCloud backup syncs to Photos on macOS. And then Time Machine backs up to a NAS.