Immich and iPhone Storage
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Immich and iPhone Storage

Byrichard

When experimenting with the Immich iPhone app I found it impossible to upload beyond 15,000 images and I supposed that it was because the phone timed out before it had checked all the previous files before moving on to the last four thousand images. In reality the problem is that Immich downloads the media from iCloud and leaves it on the phone. The result is that if you have one hundred gigabytes of photos on iCloud you need one hundred gigabytes of storage ony your phone.

I only came across this after several attempts. I realised that it was a storage issue because another app said “Phone memory is low, please clear some data, or something to this effect. As this is my old phone I could clear files from other apps to make sense for iCloud to download the last of my photos, to be synced with Immich.

A few hours later I had downloaded and synced all iCloud photos to Immich. I can now delete iCloud images and have plenty of space for future growth. I have the 200 gigabyte plan so it doesn’t really matter.

iCloud and iPhones

My second to last phone as an iPhone 8 plus with 256 gigabytes of ram but the next one was an iPhone SE 2 with 128 gigs of ram. The reason for the downgrade in storage is simple. Two hundred gigabytes with Apple costs 3 CHF per month whereas 2 terabytes is 10 CHF per month. The cost per gigabyte makes the 2 terabyte plan more interesting but the difficulty of retrieving data makes the plan uninteresting. You end up paying 120 CHF per year until you find a way to retrieve that data.

The Shift from Self-Storage to Online Storage

Many years ago Google had Picasa, and Apple had and still have iPhoto. Both apps expected you to store your files locally. With time, as people shifted to laptops so the amount of storage available on devices declined. That’s why Picasa enabled cloud storage, and why Google Photos and iPhotos allow you to backup to the cloud and clear space on mobile devices. With android devices it’s easy to add a miniSD card up to two terabytes. With iOS, but also with MacOS devices getting more storage costs hundreds of francs more.

With Apple you pay 1 CHF per month for 50GB, 3 CHF per month for 200GB, 10 CHF for 2TB, 30 CHF for 6TH and 60CHF for 12TB. By dumping my photos from iCloud to Immich I can downgrade my iCloud plan from 200GB for 3CHF per month to 50 GB for a symbolic franc per month.

iCloud Photos use 135 gigabytes of storage out of 185 gigabytes of storage.

Local Storage and Cloud Storage

If you have one hundred and fourty gigabytes of photos then you need a phone with at least 140 gigabytes of storage but the SE has just 128 gigabytes of storage. The laptop has about 256 gigabytes if I remember correctly.

This means that if you store two terabytes of photos in the cloud you need a two terabyte drive to recover them, whether on your phone or your laptop. Since this costs thousands of francs it makes more sense to have a solution such as Immich, Nextcloud and photosync and Photoprism.

I believe that both Nextcloud and Photosync download photos from iCloud, upload them to their respective services and remove them, whereas Immich downloads them and keeps them in place. With Immich you need to have enough storage on your mobile phone whereas the others adapt.

And Finally

Immich did not give an error message. It just got stuck so I tried over and over without success. It’s because another app said that I had run out of space that I was able to resolve the issue and accomplish my goal of transferring files from iPhoto/iCloud to Immich.

Now is the time to evaluate Nextcloud Immich, and Photoprism over a number of days.

The iOS Astronomy Wallpaper and Seasons
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The iOS Astronomy Wallpaper and Seasons

Byrichard

If you’re wondering why one of the tags in my post is “Day 388” it’s because I shifted from WordPress to ClassicPress once again. In so doing I lost access to Akismet and Jetpack. By losing Akismet I lose comment spam filtering. I also lost access to the Jetpack app so I lost access to my streak info. That’s why I included it as a task.

Astronomy Wallpaper

If, like me, you’re using the Astronomy Wallpaper on your mobile phones you will have noticed that the shadow over the Northern hemisphere has shifted. It has gone from being a south to North shadow to an East to West shadow from the top of Europe. You can see how parts of Norway, Sweden England and Finland are now in the dark for longer and longer parts of the day. It’s rational that we would see it, but it’s interesting that we can see an illustration of how seasons change the pattern of daylight on earth.

With the Astronomy app on the Apple Watch you can see the same thing, but you can also see cloud cover over the part of the world where you are. In my case it’s Europe.

Gradual change

The changes are so gradual that if you look at your watch or phone every single day you wouldn’t notice unless you’re looking at the right time of day. If we went up to Kiruna now we might see that we’re in constant darkness according to our phones and watches. If we had a Garmin or Suunto device that displays sunrise and sunset we would see that the day may just be a few minutes long, at this time of year. We see this wherever we are, but to be in the arctic circle would be an extreme demonstration of the seasonal change.

And Finally

if you have an iphone play with the app and see what the pattern is like for your part of the world.

The Solitaire Puzzle

The Solitaire Puzzle

Byrichard

Recently I rediscovered my love of the game solitaire. It is the game we played on windows 3.1 and other windows operating systems, up to iOS and more. Solitaire is a simple game to play on a mobile phone, ipad or computer, whether laptop or desktop. 


I have found that a game of solitaire can last from two to four minutes between deal and win. It’s the type of game that takes a lot of focus when you’re learning to play it as a child. As an adult though I find that within milliseconds I make the decisions and move on to the next one. 


The paradox of solitaire is that it’s an old and simple game. Is the card red or black. Is there somewhere I can place the card. If not then I just deal, and deal, until I can. The more you play the quicker you recognise whether an opportunity exists or not. That’s why it becomes a relaxing thing to do, whilst watching television, or listening to something. 


The paradox of Soliaire is that such an old and simple game, is, in many ways more compelling than the games that require you to watch adverts every 30 seconds or so, depending on how quickly you fail, or succeed at a task. It’s the type of game you can play, fully focused, or as a distraction, and succeed. 


I have played plenty of modern mobile phone games and it’s the one that I gravitate towards now, because it’s the one that costs the least, and forces me to see the least adverts. It’s also the one that doesn’t require me to wait for three hours for A to b ready, before being able to do c, before completing task D. 


I think Solitaire is a great little game to play during our free time. 

The Pay To Play and Pay To Win iOS Games

The Pay To Play and Pay To Win iOS Games

Byrichard

I like casual gaming. I like to play games on the iPhone when commuting or waiting for something to happen. The problem is that casual gaming is about seeing adverts at the end of every puzzle or challenge. For every game of solitaire, every game of Woodoku and more games, you see adverts. 


The problem with these adverts is that they’re awful, and they’re for games that are all paid for by adverts rather than by people who enjoy the games enough, to actually pay for the game. 


Clash of Clans Etc.


I played Clash of Clans and Hay Day for what could be years, until finally I reached a level where the game became unplayable. Everything takes hours to do, unless you pay to play, but if you pay to win you end up in a never ending cycle that could cost thousands of francs, for nothing.


Hay Day and Clash of Clans are games that you can play, without spending any money, and without seeing ads, if you choose not to. 


The Watch Ads to Play Games


Tap Away, Woodoku, Stormshot, Solitaire and others require you to watch adverts after every game, whether you win or lose. They show adverts to other crappy games that also require you to watch crappy adverts for other crappy games in the same series and game style. If they spent time and money on making good, engaging games, they could ask those playing their games to pay for an ad free experience. 


The games are designed to give you just enough reward to play, watch an advert, play watch an advert, play watch an advert. With games like woodoku it feels as if they are deliberately making you lose, to watch adverts. The game feels dishonest, especially since it uses the tetris shapes, without allowing you to flip the shapes to flip the appropriate gaps. 


There is a reason for such crappy games requiring us to pay, or to watch adverts. Cloud services. The game interacts with cloud services. Cloud services cost money, so we are paying for a crappy game, via crappy adverts, when, if the game was available offline, there would be no need for such high server costs in the first place. 


It is a shame that so many iOS games are so awful. It’s a shame that they don’t produce high value games that we can play, and pay for. 


Diminishing Returns


There was a time when every search you did with Ecosia was enough to plant a tree, but as more people used their search engine, so it began to cost more and more requests, to plant a single tree. That’s because the more ads we see, the less value our seeing an ad has. With the “watch ads to play games” model we’re watching ads, but our time is being wasted, and the revenue that is generated from us seeing a single ad is dropping. They are devaluing ads, by forcing us to see so many.  If we play five games we might see five or more ads.  We see ads for games with the same design flaw. 


And Finally


What really bothers me is that the games feel as if they were designed to show people adverts, rather than to provide people with a good gaming experience. It feels as if the game makers are simply producing several dozen games, and attempting to hook people, to watch the maximum number of ads. 

Migrating from the iPhone 8 Plus to the iPhone SE (2020)

Byrichard

I went from the iPhone SE to the iPhone 8 plus to the iPhone SE (2020) because the 2016 iPhone was an excellent low budget iphone that did everything you needed, in a small package. I switched to the iPhone 8 Plus purely to use the bigger phone screen with a drone. If you can see what you’re doing then a big screen is worthwhile. Eventually I crashed the drone and the need for such a large screen degraded, and that’s why I eventually settled for the iPhone SE(2020).


Crosscall Core S4 – Good for hiking, climbing, via ferrata etc.


At first I considered a feature phone as a backup phone so I got the Crosscall Core S4 because I was curious to see whether a feature phone could replace a smartphone for twitter, facebook, web browsing and more. It can’t. KaiOS should go for text only website displays but it doesn’t. It is slow and clunky. The one good thing is that you can drop it in a puddle and not worry about a thing.


Low End Androids


I was then tempted by cheap android solutions for 200 CHF but the issue with these is that they’re usually low end android phones that are slow, laggy, and give the same experience of a feature phone, but without the small screen but with added fragility.


Fairphone


I then considered Fairphone, and with its price point it is close to the iPhone, but with a deal-breaker flaw for me. A big screen. The problem with big screen phones is that they’re heavy, bulky and annoying to cycle or run with. They are also hard to hold and use with one hand. I also worry that with Fairphone the OS, camera and general user experience will be mediocre.


The Car


Although idiotic one of the reasons for which I decided to stick with iOS is that the car plays well with car play and when I tried to play with Android’s equivalent I had no luck. If you can’t use your phone for in-car navigation then the car’s software version costs about 300 CHF per map or more. For that price, it’s worth sticking with iOS for now.


Context


We are now in 2022 and mobile phones have reached a plateau in terms of features, apps and more. Now it is a question of iterative changes rather than revolutionary changes. As I wrote this blog post I read the specs for the SE and the 8Plus and they are practically the same phone, except for the processors. In light of this buying a 1200 CHF phone will not give you a huge advantage over a cheaper phone. The SE and 8 plus are similar, but the SE is small and light.


For around 500 Francs you can get the iphone SE, whereas for the flaship iPhone 13 Max, with better specs you’d be paying two to three times more, for something that could drop out of your pocket and break. I’d rather spend 1300 CHF on a laptop or camera, than on a phone.


The Advantages


Small phones are easy to hold, easy to carry, fit into most pockets and they’re light. The phone ways 60 grams less, but when you consider the difference that a case would make then the difference can be more than a hundred grams. When you consider that you carry your phone everywhere all day long, it’s worth having something small and light.


And Finally


This isn’t meant to be a phone review. This is a demonstration of the thought process that you may go through before choosing a new phone. It isn’t simply a matter of getting the flagship device, or the cheapest device, or the smallest device. It’s about finding the device that fills the niche that you want to fill at that moment in time. At this moment in time I needed a new phone with a healthy battery and a smaller size. KaiOS doesn’t fill that need, and I don’t trust cheap androids to fill a niche. That I could not automatically use android’s car features with ease, sealed the decision. This was a thought-out decision, rather than an impulse purchase.